REVIEW: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Deals With Our Devils"
And we are back in what has been possibly the most painfully long three-week break. Seriously, I believed the Agent Carter seasons have felt shorter than waiting through November, but now it’s finally ended…for about another week. This is still preferable to any Agent Carter story, but this wait to finish the season is already exhausting and we just started December. So how is the first (in many) returns? Let’s see.
For starters, wow that was fast. Here I was legitimately thinking that the show wouldn’t even mention where Coulson, Fitz, and Robbie were until the tag, but now they’re already back. Granted, that’s not necessarily a bad thing since that would have gotten dull very fast. In fact, it did get dull very fast in this episode for the first fifteen minutes. That’s how awful things get when take out half the characters.
However, it does get points off for automatically solving their problems. Heck, it took them longer to get Simmons off another planet, and they had to travel to the other side of the world. When these things happen, I just feel…whelmed. It also doesn’t help that the alternate dimension mostly meant watching the same scene twice. I don’t care if the scene got better the second time around. That still means what I watched should have only been a half-hour.
Another point gets taken off because of the fact that I’m still not completely sure what’s happening here. Yeah, Eli Morrow is crazy with Agent Carter superpowers, but that’s not a plan or a motive. I still don’t understand the other dimension thing even after seeing Doctor Strange. Heck, I barely understand the Ghost Rider situation, and that was probably the clearest thing in this episode. At least he said something…and now I realize how weird that is.
It’s not new to the Ghost Rider canon, but there’s something disheartening and slightly stimulating about Mack being a Ghost Rider for a little bit, especially since that involved being on a motorcycle. On the one hand, it’s hard to tell how the Ghost Rider fits as a good guy, a bad guy, or just a guy that doesn’t care at this point. On the other hand, Mack was Ghost Rider. As a fan of him, I can’t deny how awesome it looked to see it happen. That body was just made for a large flaming skull to burst through on the screen.
Also, raise your hand if you weren’t surprised that reading an evil book was bad. There we go. Now, raise your hand if you don’t want another love triangle anywhere near FitzSimmons again. You think it’s not possible? You haven’t watched all of television in the past five years. It’s a shame because I am eager to see more of a guy with superpowers that doesn’t make me want to punch him in the face. Present Ghost Rider excluded.
Despite this being one of about three penultimate episodes in this season, I have to once again appreciate the relief of the smaller cast. Everyone had their own unique moment, except maybe for Daisy, but the less we mention her need to leave SHIELD the better. I honestly prefer character moments that are more unique to the character, so getting trapped in another dimension, making a stupid decision to read an evil book, or getting possessed isn’t entirely a stretch for any of them. But they at least remember to cut back to what one of them is doing rather than go an episode leaving them alone. Seven episodes in, and the cast still works.
Still, there was a whole bunch of questions unanswered for the previous episodes, and the only ones solved were the ones that they threw in at the last instant. SHIELD does that. I don’t like it. It also doesn’t help that they throw in other story ideas (not plots mind you) that could or could not become actual plots. At the very least, AIDA could somehow become the villain of the show. There’s still time to make that happen…that is until I just said it. Now, we’re just going to drop it.
All in all, this was just…episode seven. Nothing too shocking was revealed, and nothing was too remarkable. I don’t even know if the next episode will actually qualify as a winter finale since this schedule is so mixed up. The only thing that really stands out for me for this episode aside from Ghost Rider Mack is hoping that this is the last episode with the word “devil” in the title.
