The Zephyr is caught in a "time storm," as Daisy and Coulson are caught in a time loop. They keep reliving the same few minutes, even as the ship is inching closer to destruction. Not only must they escape the loop and save the ship, they must discover who is trying to prevent them from doing so.
With this episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made the same tweak to time looping that the movie Palm Springs made to such good effect: having two characters stuck together in a time loop really does change things up. To this, they added changes that served to depart even more from the formula: the duration of looping time was confoundingly short, plus we got the wrinkles that Daisy could "reset" if she died (quite a "pain in the ass"), while Coulson remembered -- but did not participate in -- every loop.
The script also didn't spend that much time actually showing us repeated moments. Aside from a few well-chosen jokes (the second opening title card, the moments of "well, that didn't work" humor), each loop basically skipped ahead to the important part. Not only did this preserve story momentum, it made sense. This team has worked together for too long, and has seen too much strange stuff, to be particularly thrown by being stuck in a time loop -- so not much time really deserved to be devoted to watching Daisy and Coulson convince the others of their predicament.
But there was time devoted to some impactful moments between the characters, and they were real highlights of the episode. We did get a great final scene for Enoch, all the more moving for what a 180 it represented after having to deal with him as an adversary earlier in the episode. The subtext of the scene was strong too, with Coulson of all people being positioned to tell Enoch he was more than just a machine.
That landed because of the episode's best scene, which came earlier, in which Daisy and Coulson really dug into the horror of watching their friends die repeatedly. Coulson spoke of the horror of immortality, of knowing you'll outlive everyone. Even the description of watching friends die as "soul-crushing" was salt in the wound, in Coulson's unique situation. Daisy got to express a more specific and concentrated pain, of watching one person in particular who means so much to her, dying over and over. Both Clark Gregg and Chloe Bennet were great in the scene.
It was also a stellar episode for Elizabeth Henstridge. She took the director's chair for the first time ever, and did a great job. No doubt being so familiar with the cast made things easier, and they all wanted to do their best for her. Still, there were very smart shot choices made to support the time looping shenanigans, and a mostly active camera throughout except during those more serious scenes I mentioned. Henstridge was also strong on camera, in the moment where removing her brain implant led to an emotional breakdown. (I don't want to be right about this guess, but her tears sure read to me that the memory she's been suppressing might not be Fitz's location, but rather Fitz's death.)
By a wide margin, this was the best episode so far of this last season. Really, the only "meh" note in the entire thing for me was the post-credits tag reminding us that oh yeah, I guess we're supposed to be worried about Nathaniel and Kora? Whatever. Could have done without that. But still, I think the episode merits an A-.
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