Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Honeymoon (5x17)

Wow, a ton of stuff happens in this episode.

Cons:

I mean, a ton. This episode felt a bit crowded. I get that it's setup for what's coming down the road, but it felt like quite a lot of important plot points to squeeze in to one hour of television.

Ruby and Hale didn't interest me, even here during their emotional scene. I want to care about their relationship, and the way that Hale has always raised Ruby to be a soldier and all of that... but I just can't make myself feel anything about it.

Pros:

Even though there was sort of too much going on in this episode, I will say that for the vast majority of it, I was enjoying the scenes we were getting.

For example, Deke gets shot, and Mack has to perform surgery on him once they get him back to the base, because of course Fitzsimmons have run off. I didn't think they'd really kill Deke, but there was quite a bit of fun and interesting tension in this scene, leading to the emotionally cathartic payoff of Deke, drugged up to the gills on pain killers, confessing in the most hilarious fashion that he has a crush on Daisy. Mack knocks him out with drugs before Daisy can come in and hear this embarrassing confession. All of that was priceless.

Despite Ruby being less than interesting to me, the one moment with her that I really enjoyed was the aborted showdown between Ruby and Daisy. It was fun to see these two start to fight, and frustrating (in a good way) that the fight was cut short. Ruby's weird hero worship of Daisy is an interesting element to her character that I wish could be explored more.

Now that Coulson and Talbot have been rescued and returned to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hideout, May gets to have words with Coulson, and it's... one of the best scenes of the whole season. May is pissed off at Coulson for all of the decisions he's been making lately - namely, his lack of self-preservation skills. Coulson goes back to the same tired line that he's accepted his fate, but May points out that he seems to have no regard for his life in the meantime. She then drops the bomb that he doesn't get to make decisions like this on his own - he needs to consult with the people who love him. "I love you," May says to Coulson. And then she storms off. This scene was just... delicious. Coulson keeps trying to interject as May is lecturing him, and she cuts in with: "let me speak!" May is so not messing around, and I am here for it.

Team Invincible seemingly make big strides into defeating Hydra, but they are stymied in the end as Fitzsimmons gets taken hostage and forced to repair a piece of equipment that they had destroyed to try and prevent Ruby from harnessing the power of gravitonium. There are lots of interesting conversations around the inevitability of time. As Simmons keeps insisting that she can't die until they break the loop, Fitz keeps saying that there's no way to break the loop at all. And for now, nothing has disproved Fitz's theory. As the episode ends, they are forced to help their enemies, or else they will be killed. Fitz knows he'll comply when Ruby is holding a blade to Simmons' throat. How could he not? There were lots of cute Fitzsimmons moments sprinkled throughout the episode. I think my favorite is when Yo-Yo suggests that she stay with one of them while the other go back to the jet, and they say no, because they have a rule - they never leave each other's sides anymore. My heart!

Yo-Yo discovers that her new robot arms are not compatible with her super-speed, which is... a really fascinating complication that I had not previously thought about. Fitz might be able to fix it, but in the short term, Elena has to be more creative with her fighting and can't rely on her power. I enjoyed seeing Daisy without her Quake abilities, and it was equally interesting to see Elena without her Yo-Yo powers.

Talbot is still a bit shaken, obviously, but he's back with team S.H.I.E.L.D. where he belongs, and there were a number of interesting moments between him and Daisy in this episode. Daisy thinks that Talbot must have difficulty being around Daisy because of how he got injured, which is such an interesting dynamic to explore. And then there's that ending... Daisy manages to get a secure line to Talbot's wife, so he can connect with her and with his son. But there's someone there, feeding lines to Mrs. Talbot, and by the end Talbot is "ready to comply," a la Bucky in Captain America: Civil War. Uh oh.

See what I mean about a lot of plot happening? I enjoyed so many of the scenes in this episode, but at the end I was left a little shell-shocked by the sheer number of things that had happened. Still, I'm so pumped for how the season is going to shake itself out as we near the end, and I'm all here for it. Is Coulson really going to die? And if not, can they break the time loop?

8/10