REVIEW: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "The Good Samaritan"
Well, that was a fun mid-season finale. It had a good bit of tension, some decent answers to questions, and an interesting set-up for where we’re going from here all topped off with the classic finding out of who’s the real villain. It was a standard of what I’ve come to expect for the winter…wait, this is episode six? As in, we still have fifteen episodes of the season to go? Uggh, let’s go through this.
Yes, the fact that they seemed to have given the big cliffhanger does bring the episode down for me. There’s the potential that we have to go through another one of these in four more episodes just to wait another four weeks for the rest of the season where this will probably happen again to balance out the extra time without Agent Carter. No, this is not a defense of Agent Carter nor did I want a third season, but I am going to notice the show trying to stretch for another ten weeks.
That being said, I can judge the episode on its own (and probably will more with four weeks until the next one). Like I mentioned earlier, the episode seems to mostly emulate the mid-season finales of the past with some more focus on much-needed backstory which I’ll talk about later. By that, I mean the stories finally converge to try and give a point. Every character is given something to do, and there is a real tension in the fear of them getting caught or worse. Of course, that leaves several things unanswered since we have a dozen episodes left to explain what happened. Where did Coulson, Robbie, and Fitz go? What will Eli do with his new powers? Where was Simmons sent this whole time? Let’s go through them spoilers and all.
First, we are finally confirmed that Eli is indeed a bad guy. He turned the other scientists into ghosts and sought the power to create matter for himself. Now, with the same machine, he gained the ability himself through his own disregard for human life. And if anyone cares to notice, yes this was the same corporation from Agent Carter season two, and yes they went through the same motions to get through the dark matter thing. I know this guy’s evil just for the fact that his role here forced me to mention Agent Carter for a second time.
Onto better things, we finally get the backstory to Robbie Reyes as Ghost Rider which I have to admit surprised me. The reason for that is because we actually got a cameo from JOHNNY BLAZE. That’s right, Johnny Blaze himself rides up on his motorcycle to transfer his powers to Robbie Reyes. I don’t know if this was to show off Marvel’s rights to the character, to add a wrinkle to the mythology of the Ghost Rider mantle, or to send a screw-you to Columbia Pictures for looking exactly like their character almost ten years later, but they’ve officially introduced him to the canon. That’s pretty exciting.
On the other hand, it’ll be a little hard for them to expand the Ghost Rider legacy if there is no Ghost Rider, and now a portion of our cast seems to have disappeared. Where did they go? What does that mean? How will they get them back? We can at least rule out alien planet since they’ve done that route, but hopefully they can still go down the they will solve this in two episodes route, even if this is another dimension. Sure, they’re smart enough, and that have a supernatural superhero on their side. I’m trying my best over here.
I guess other issues are the slightly smaller but still annoying threads that were somewhat addressed but not completely solved yet, hence why they’re annoying. They haven’t talked about the AIDA thing in a while which means it will probably blow up in people’s faces. By the way, I’m still not sure about whether Daisy’s still on the team. They said something about her leaving in the previous episode, but she’s still here. I greatly prefer it, but it will also be coming back. Then there’s that senator who’s doing…something I hope rather than being evil.
For now, I’m just preferring the good things that came out of this surprisingly good episode. I liked the subtle differences between Robbie before and after Ghost Rider. I liked the fact that all the ghosts are finally dead, and I mean dead this time. I even liked Mack meeting Gabe for some reason. Don’t ask me why.
Either way, it’s much better than thinking of the things that will come before we see episode seven. Let’s see, there’s Thanksgiving, another Marvel movie, a new president. Four weeks can just be a long time sometimes.
