Our heroes arrive in the 70s to find HYRDA, decades ahead of schedule, poised to unleash their nefarious Project Insight. That's only one of many changes to the timeline, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents step up their efforts to keep history on track. But the Chronicoms are learning to anticipate their meddling.
The final season's time-travel conceit continues to be a fun gimmick for wrapping up the series. Each new decade they visit is a new opportunity for fun costumes, jokes about fashion and pop culture, and references to the show's own history. In particular, the opening titles this episode -- which have changed with each new setting this season -- were a delight, with grinding guitar and voice-over.
Ming-Na Wen is being handed a real gift with May's story line this season, and is doing a great job playing it. Her "drunk by proxy" stagger and her enraged crashing into pedestrians on the street were comedic highlights of the hour. (Though, of course, nothing could top Enoch's deadpan "Come with me if you want to continue to exist.")
It was also fun to see Patrick Warburton back -- and not in an archival corporate video this time -- as Stoner. Warburton's delivery will never not be funny to me; it's just a question of whether a TV show can place him appropriately for the laughs. This show is definitely having fun with him (and his "woke" for the 70s behavior)... and with all the other references that were definitely loaded up this time: we met a young Gideon Malick, heard mention of Whitehall, got a name drop on a young Bruce Banner, and generally just played Marvel's hits in a relatively fun way.
There was a fair amount of hand-waving in the episode too, though, and that was not as effective at swatting away questions as the writers probably hoped. "We can't just shoot down the rocket or it'll give away our position" felt like a flimsy excuse in the moment. Retroactively it seemed even worse, as they dove into the most elaborate Plan B only to watch it fail and then return to "shoot down the rocket" anyway. I expect some serious consequences to this in the next episode to justify all the effort.
They've also stretched the "where's Fitz" thing past the point where I feel teased and well into the point where I'm just annoyed now. Explicitly mentioning him so much in the dialogue, and highlighting that there's something strange with Simmons, all without even beginning to suggest any of the answers -- it's just flat out not working for me. Was Iain de Caestecker off shooting a movie for two months when they filmed all this? Could the writers just not resist one more contortion in the FitzSimmons relationship and just give us a happy couple in the Final Freaking Season goddammit?! Seriously, this has stopped being a fun mystery for me and has become something that is actively making each new episode without Fitz worse.
But I did find it all an improvement over the moody and indulgent film noir diversion of the week before. And overall, pretty fun to watch. I'd say it was about a B- for me.
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