Captured by Sarge, May learns more about what he's doing on Earth and what the team is truly up against. Meanwhile, in space, Fitz's rescue team is captured by a Chronicom fleet. They're the last survivors of the destruction of their world, and have big plans for their prisoners.
It's a tricky thing, plotting a serialized television story. If you think of the whole thing as a novel, it's not at all unusual for the true shape of the plot not to come together until the end of the "first act." With this season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., this was the fifth episode of a 13-episode season, more or less a third of the way into the story, so it's not that odd to withhold answers until now. On the other hand, though, this season has been running more than a month, and leaving us largely in the dark that whole time. So it was really nice to finally learn the outline of this season's conflict: "shrikes" have come to destroy the planet, Sarge is here trying to stop them once and for all.
The episode wasn't just about connecting dots of the plot, though. The running flashbacks of May's final moments in Tahiti with the real Phil Coulson were a nice element woven throughout to add a more personal and emotional element. Also, they gave Ming-Na Wen something deeper to do than just perform fight choreography. (Though, of course, she still got to do that -- and was great at it, as always.) The scenes between Coulson and May -- and between Sarge and May -- were a highlight of the hour. It was exceptionally clever how the episode's title was spoken twice, by two different Clark Gregg characters, each time with two very different meanings.
I was less swept up in the spacebound story line, though it too had its moments. Agents Davis and Piper still feel a long way from being fully fleshed out characters, but the rivalry between them is a lot of fun. They have at least reached the point where they serve a part in a story that can't just be filled by any random one-off characters you'd drop in there.
I was also glad that this part of the story ended this week with most of the characters returning to Earth. I don't think the show has benefited so far this season from keeping the characters in separate narrative silos, unable to interact with each other. That hasn't been completely resolved yet, but bringing Daisy (and Davis and Piper) back home feels like it will help.
The continued development of Dr. Benson was also a nice element. Too often, characters in these sorts of fantastical stories take too much in stride things that are too amazing. They don't react as a real person would... or maybe they get one slack-jawed moment, and then snap right into the groove. Seeing Benson really live in how out of his element he is in all this was a welcome change of pace. Also nice, the way they casually worked in that he's gay and mourning the loss of his husband. I do like how more TV shows are realizing that it's this easy to get LGBT characters into a story without upsetting other things they want to accomplish. (Sure, the ultimate "prize" is more central, more heroic representation. But this is nice too.)
Now that it's easier to wrap my head around the story this season is telling, I'm beginning to be more engaged. I give this episode a B.
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