Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Know Your Onions (7x02)

I'm definitely more on board with this week's episode than I was last week!

Cons:

Still no Fitz... I'm getting a little nervous about how little we know of Simmons and Fitz's time together before the time travel began. Here's my off-the-cuff guess that I hope is wrong. They lived a full life together, grew old, etc. etc. and then had to part ways. Simmons is actually an LMD so that the rest of the team doesn't know for some reason; her real body is somewhere else, and elderly woman - maybe even dead? I know I'm probably nowhere close to right, but I just had to put the theory out there so I can seem super smart if it turns out to be true. The point, really, is that I'm worried Fitz is hardly going to be in this season at all, and we won't really get to see Fitzsimmons live out any of their happily ever after. That would be a huge bummer.

I'm not super interested in May's story yet. I think I probably will be soon, but thus far it's a shrug from me.

Is that the last we'll see of Enoch? Is he just... stuck in the 1930's now with Koenig? That would also be a bummer.

Pros:

While I said I'm not interested in May's story-line all that much yet, I do want to praise Ming Na Wen's performance. May is already a very tactical, very unemotional person. She's not prone to overly emotional displays. And yet when we have this May, it is immediately so clear that something is off with her. The flat performance, the way she doesn't seem totally robotic, yet she does seem undeniably off. And that moment with Coulson, when he says "I was dead" and she says "you still are" was really chilling.

Yo-Yo hasn't had a ton to do yet this season, but may I just say I love the way she looked in her '30's garb? Just a small note I wanted to make.

So the whole conundrum here, about saving the guy who is going to go on to found Hydra, is really interesting. We've got the butterfly effect, and Daisy being hell-bent on trying to save lives, and then the intriguing fact that apparently what this guy is delivering is actually an important ingredient for the super soldier serum, so if they stop him, they're stopping Hydra... and also stopping Steve Rogers from ever becoming Captain America. I am such a sucker for the stupid MCU, that any tenuous connection to it sets my heart soaring.

This kind of dilemma isn't exactly unique when dealing with science fiction and time travel, but I like the way it plays out. You've got the gang back at the Speakeasy finding out the truth about Freddie, meanwhile Mack and Deke are with Freddie and don't know anything about him other than the fact that the Chronicoms want him dead. When Daisy tells Deke to take the shot and kill Freddie, after all the bonding they'd been doing... that was a genuinely tense moment. Not because I thought Deke was going to do it - I assumed the gang would make the right call and save the future or whatever. It was more tense because it was such a... Skye thing to do. It's been a long time since the Daisy we know now reminded me of her origins, but this felt like the brash kind of decision-making that was present in the character when we first knew her. And I mean that in a good way, by the way. It's interesting if Daisy goes a little off the rails, here. I can't wait to see how that continues to play out.

Koenig is so funny and charming in every iteration he takes. I adore the concept of having this one actor play these people in the same family, even throughout time. This particular Koenig is self-serving and profit-motivated, but he also has a curious mind and loyalty to his people. He is completely in the dark as to the bigger picture of what's going on, but as some of the truth starts to come out, he buckles down and decides to help, all while being over-awed and intrigued by the "rocket ship" and the "robots" that he's encountering. While I'll miss Enoch if he really is stuck in the past now, I like the idea of him and Koenig going on their own adventures in the '30's, helping with early S.H.I.E.L.D. activities.

I love that we're jumping to a new period of time, now! how exciting, this idea of jumping all around through history for the last season. I'll admit I didn't see that coming, I thought we'd be hanging around in the current setting for a bit longer. This is a great way to invigorate things as we make our push to the finale of the show. I just hope Fitz can come along for more the ride...

But hey, if we can't have Fitz just yet, at least we get... DANIEL?!?! My boy? My boy from Agent Carter who was done SO DIRTY by the ending of Avengers: Endgame even though he wasn't even mentioned? I am so excited to see him holy shit. I love that guy.

So yeah, I think that's all I've got to say here. This episode got me a lot more excited than the premiere did last week. Onward we go!

8/10