Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Adapt or Die (7x06)

Oh my gosh, poor Mack!! I'm going to rush my way through this one, sorry.

Cons:

Are they setting up a Sousa/Daisy thing? I'm going to be honest, I'm not mad about it if so. I know I keep griping about this, and it's cool to see Sousa and I love his character... but I guess I'm still bitter about the fact that Agent Carter, an excellent show (better than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. honestly) has been done so dirty by the MCU. So there's this part of me that's salty that the setup and care given to Peggy and Sousa's relationship in that show has been tossed aside and can't even really be properly deconstructed here, as to say anything unfavorable about Steve/Peggy would be anathema to the brand or whatever. I'm gonna grump about it even as I'm glad to have Daniel Sousa along for the journey.

This episode wasn't as "fun" as the other ones, and it wasn't meant to be, which is fine - but I felt less immersed in the time period, less like I was seeing anything essential or specific about the decade. Hopefully '80s shenanigans come back in for next week's installment. That should be lovely.

Also - still missing Fitz big-time.

Pros:

Oh my god. Mack... this was heartbreaking. Honestly, his character hasn't been gripping me all that much this season, because he's basically just been being the boss and doing a decent job of it. I didn't really know what his arc was. But here, seeing him fight so hard to save his parents, seeing him succeed, and then having it all ripped away... pushing the Chronicom wearing his mother's face out of the plane... this was straight-up devastating. It really put a more concrete, personal evil on the villains of the season, too. Sure, we all know why our team of good guys want to stop the Chronicoms, but now it's very personal for Mack, and I'm excited to see how that's going to shift things moving forward.

Also, the team is splintering! Oh no! But also - yay, exciting! Deke and Mack have been sort of chafing against each other this whole season, and after Deke's decision to disobey Mack's orders and take out Malick (an understandable decision, frankly), Mack is pretty pissed off. When Mack goes off to be alone to process the death of his parents, Deke follows. And then... the ship makes another unexpected time jump, stranding Mack and Deke in the '80s while the rest of the team (minus Coulson which I'll get to in a minute), zooms off to destinations unknown. I'm excited to see Mack and Deke paired up for a whole episode. That dynamic has a lot of promise.

As I mentioned above, I wouldn't be mad if Sousa/Daisy became a thing! It was sweet how worried about her he was, and Sousa is certainly attracted to women who could straight-up kick his ass, so no issues there. This is still early-stages, but the moment at the end when Sousa had the opportunity to leave and decided to stay was really sweet. He says "I'm where I'm supposed to be" while looking at Daisy. Aww!

The mystery with Simmons continues, but we do get some answers - she's having parts of her memory blocked for safety reasons... nobody can know where Fitz is or the Chronicoms will kill him, and he's "steering" them in some way through time, in order to guide the team on their quest. This is all fine, or whatever, as an excuse for why Fitz hasn't been around all season, even if I'm still sad about that. What I really liked about this development was Deke turning on Enoch and then the apology later. It's fun to have Enoch as a part of the crew, and to see how people react to him.

Finally, Coulson. So, he appears to have "died" again but I'm sure it won't stick. They even make comments about how he always comes back. There are a couple of different ways that fantasy/sci-fi shows can handle characters coming back from the dead, and I tend to think that they are doing a good job in this instance of exploring death and what it means to be alive - if Coulson does return again, his consciousness in another robot body, or maybe as a Chronicom, is he really still Coulson? How far removed does a person have to be from their original flesh-and-bone self to still be the same individual? In Supernatural, the characters die so frequently that trips to hell have become like making a milk run. And while there's something problematic in that, in trying to make death seem like a realistic threat after so many fake-outs, it's also a chance to think about life and death in a way that isn't possible in a genre without the literal capability for people to come back. That's all a long way of saying that while I was kind of bummed that Coulson returned as Sarge, and now as an LMD, because I thought his send-off was so perfect, I'm not mad that we're getting the opportunity to explore the very concept of death a little more closely with his character.

And May! I liked the banter with Coulson, and how it felt in some ways like the May we once knew. But it's all filtered through this reality where she's really just feeding off of how other people feel, and mirroring the emotions of the people around her. Once again the performance is excellent, as we see that just because May can't feel, doesn't mean that she lacks all sense of empathy or care. She remembers that she loves her friends, her chosen family, even if she can't really access the depth of that right now. It's why she touches Mack to feel his grief, to commiserate with it. She's not shying away from the opportunity to experience emotion when it presents itself, and she's handling it both strategically and compassionately.

Wow, I said I was going to rush through this one and I ended up rambling on. Typical! Point being, this probably wasn't my favorite episode this season, in terms of stand-alone stuff. But it's setting up plot elements and character arcs that I'm desperate to learn more about, so that makes it a win in my book!

8/10