Adapt or Die

Last week's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wrapped things up in the 70s with an episode that was a bit lighter than usual on action, but packed full of more meaningful character moments to compensate.

The gang is split up. Mack and Yo-Yo head back into the Lighthouse to rescue Mack's parents. Coulson and May try to convince Stoner they're not the enemy. Daisy and Sousa suffer in the hands of Malick. And Deke suspects that Enoch is betraying the team when he catches him in a nefarious-looking situation with Simmons.

This episode had its stronger plot threads and weaker ones, but I do sort of suspect different viewers may rank them differently. It was a good "something for everyone" kind of episode. (Except for people wanting to finally see Fitz.)

Being captive the whole episode, there wasn't much happening with Daisy and Sousa. The entire subplot, capped by a villain who offed himself, seemed constructed to push the two toward a romantic relationship. That in and of itself works for me, and I'm certainly glad that Sousa has more to do than when he was first brought into the series a few weeks back. But there's also something a little icky about actual torture as the vehicle to bring the couple together.

Finally, we got context for Simmons' mysterious behavior. The fickleness of her implant is a sort of ticking clock toward more jeopardy -- albeit one whose countdown we can't quite see. (I guess it'll last until Iain De Caestecker finishes making a movie somewhere else, or whatever was happening behind the scenes.) Between now and then, I hope the show can dig more into the sacrifice in all this; this episode focused more on her fear that she'd remember something that would put Fitz at risk, but it feels to me like the bigger thread is the cost of forgetting things about the person she loves.

The rescue of Mack parents seemed a little too neat and easy. Thus, that his parents wound up being fake was not exactly the most shocking twist (not after Coulson and May's discovery that the Chronicoms had evolved to be able to express emotion). Still, Mack was shocked, and that's what mattered. Having the faces of his parents turn on him -- and having to kick the face of his mother out of the back of the plane -- was an effective twist of the knife, and one of the more dramatic situations his character has faced in some time. (The post-credits scene made this especially tantalizing; he and Deke are going to be separated from the group for some years, it would seem. And not at all on the same page at the start of it.)

But my favorite thread was the one with Coulson and May, as they dug into her peculiar reaction to his return and he embraced his "superpower" of death. I really like the writers' decision to almost immediately kill Coulson again in the wake of his revelation, and I love that they're not trying to wring suspense from it. May speaks for all of us -- he'll be back. That takes "you're not fooling us" right off the table and let's us all enjoy speculating about how it'll happen. That's just a much more interesting place for the story, I think.

I'd give "Adapt or Die" a B. After a couple episodes that were a bit uneven for me, I feel like the season is trending back in a promising direction.