REVIEW: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Orientation"
As a rule, I actually enjoy two-hour finales. They guarantee an ample enough of time to wrap up season-long story arcs while at the same time insuring that the characters we like get proper moments of badassery. It’s also one of the few times we have all or nearly all of the answers, and we have a long time to process such developments. The same unfortunately cannot be said for two-hour introductions, even if we finally get some lousy context. Welcome to season five.
Where it stands, the entire first hour is just one big exposition dump without the exposition. That may sound illogical, but follow me for a second. Most of the time is spent trying to figure out a lost cause scenario where a bunch of the characters are separate. Daisy doesn’t even show up until about twenty minutes in, and we have yet to even see how Fitz is doing. It’s not until the last minutes that everything is explained to us, and even then we still need more universe development from episode two. We could have just saved everyone’s time to just say “hey, the world’s destroyed” and the second episode would have felt exactly the same.
I’m not completely disappointed in this premiere since eventually (EVENTUALLY) we do get answers as to where they are and what they need to do. For the most part, it’s pretty interesting and fairly unpredictable. Being on a space station in the future is certainly not something I thought I would see on this show, and the special effects surprisingly hold up well for a network show. For what it’s worth, I’m also vastly more invested in the plots of the characters than I was in the previously season even if they tend to make less sense than season four, if you can believe it.
Granted, most of the characters are on the same boat, trapped in the future, but there is enough variety to stop us from staring at charcoal walls for an hour every week. The team become salvage workers! Simmons lives in this world’s version of A Handmaid’s Tale! Daisy destroyed the world! Okay, that last one I don’t buy for a minute, but it is fun to pretend that a character you like has the power to destroy a planet. Maybe that should motivate new characters to STOP YELLING AT HER, but more on that later.
Of course a new planet Earth can’t exist with a few dozen new people. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I don’t care for any of them. Virgil seemed nice, but he was dead before anyone could care about him. Most of the others would be satisfied with killing them or worse. Tess seems the most likeable if only because her existence isn’t based on how many people she can tick off in one scene. Plus, she saves May’s life. That’s a plus.
And then there’s Deke, who deserves his own paragraph. He’s the guy who guy who pawns off dead bodies, constantly insults our characters for knowing nothing, and screams about how there’s no hope. And we care about him because…why? Because he wants to survive? That’s not new for anyone. Because he builds an escape Framework for people to enjoy? The last people who did that were evil. Because he knows things? That’s not exactly a beloved character trait. What’s worse is that he appears to be spending more time with Daisy in the future. Sheesh, why is it that the only decent potential love interest she shared screen time with had a flaming skull head and now romantic movement? I’m already bothered.
Elaborating on the new characters does make me more fully appreciate the ones we already know. Just ten minutes in, and I’m more concerned with these guys leaving a room than the Inhumans leaving the moon. They’re fun, funny, constantly active, and don’t get caught up into plots based on stupid decisions. No, our characters only get caught up in situations based on doing things the sane or decent way. Once again, these people demand immediate physical and mental therapy after only two episodes.
Sadly, there are still a few cliched bumps we need to cross for this season. Fitz and Simmons are split for about the twelfth time if that’ll ever get solved. We are likely going to have to wade through a number of episodes caring about plots that have nothing to do with the main struggle about the whole Earth thing, and we will likely meet more characters we will not care about for long. SHIELD never seems to learn from its mistakes.
However, this does seem to be an interesting new development for the show. Even if it’s not necessarily world-shaking (ha), there is some fun give-and-take that can certainly keep me occupied for the next week. That’s all the show needed to do.
