Agent Daniel Sousa has a rendezvous in Los Angeles to deliver technology important to the future development of S.H.I.E.L.D. But it's also a fateful rendezvous, as history records he died in the effort. As our heroes hide the truth from Sousa and debate the wisdom of meddling with time, Deke is abducted by goons and taken to an intimidating meeting with Malick. And May learns the nature of her emotional extremes.
This episode was a film noir meal with all the trimmings -- Dutch angles, moody black-and-white cinematography, and dispassionate narration. It even opened with an explicit shout out to Sunset Boulevard: a dead body floating in a pool. But while it all looked pretty great, I found the genre to be a harsh clash with the narrative content. The stated justification was that LMD Coulson was on the fritz, seeing a world leeched of color and having an uncontrolled inner monologue. But half the scenes didn't even include Coulson, puncturing the logic. And too many of the series' elements stuck out like a sore thumb in the throwback style. Outside of, I suppose, Blade Runner, there aren't a lot of robots in film noir, nor cloaking airplanes, futuristic guns, and so forth.
Because the trappings were already keeping me at a distance, the story itself wasn't reaching me very effectively either. It was essentially playing an "Edith Keeler must die" type of narrative, in which a good person must be sacrificed to preserve the future. But both getting into and out of that story was a bit awkward. You'd think if 1955 was the year Sousa died that someone might have mentioned it last episode; it felt like it came out of the blue this week. And any drama inherent in the premise was lost when they found a way to cheat fate and have it both ways -- save the future and Sousa.
So no, not a favorite episode of mine... though there were some good elements in the spaces between the main plot. Showing the Macguffin of the episode -- a featureless metal rod that's somehow the origin of the future -- made for some fun, from those who revered it to those thoroughly unimpressed by its blandness. There were also good laughs at the expense of poor Enoch, who waited two decades to reunite with his friends only to become their switchboard operator for a brief time... and then be abandoned again. (We're not heading toward angry, alienated Enoch as the season's surprise Big Bad, are we?)
Then there was the material surrounding May, which I enjoyed more than I expected. After teasing that she might be repressing, and suggesting a PTSD-themed storyline ahead, we instead learned that another previously non-powered character on the show has contracted a case of superpowers. May's empathic gifts has obvious applications; but the lack of her own emotion seems like a hell of a drawback. Ming-Na Wen made the most of her scenes; seeing May act positively giddy was more unsettling in its own way than even her full panic attack last week.
So, call it a C+ overall? Perhaps destined to be a B- in retrospect, depending on where the May and Sousa stories end up later this season? The odd stylistic choices here were clearly a one-off, so this was hardly a dive the show can't pull out of. Still... I need some Fitz, stat!
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