And we’re back! Last week’s review had to wait a week due to a busy convention weekend, so we’re taking a look at two episodes today. Fortunately, one episode was set in space, the other on Earth, so we can give it a nice even split with three thoughts apiece. So without further ado, let’s look at episodes 3 and 4 of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 6.
1. Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
When Fitz and Enoch take a detour to Kitson, Enoch neglected to mention what kind of planet it is. It turns out it’s a planet known for thieves, casinos, brothels, and poor lighting conditions. My first thought was “Mos Eisley cantina, except a planet.” There’s plenty of space gambling and drinks, designed to look distinctly alien, but it still has regular Earth gambling concepts like chips, dealers, and going all-in on a bluff.
Although the S.H.I.E.L.D. space team makes a mistake you’d really think they’d have learned to avoid by now. Who immediately eats strange space food without checking to make sure it’s safe for humans first? In this case, it gives Daisy, Simmons, and Davis a real strong high, but it could have been worse.
2. Bureaucracy in Space
On the other hand, there’s also the planet Naro-Atzia, where Simmons initially goes to find Fitz. She’s right in that he was initially planning on going there, but she didn’t expect that he’d make a detour to drop off the crew he saved (even though we never really hear anything from them again). So instead the crew gets slowed down dealing with bureaucracy that begins the moment they set down on the planet. It reminded me of the Vogons from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” who are known to be unwilling to “save their own grandmothers… without an order, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft pea for three months and recycled as firelighters.”
The planet of the paperwork aside, this is a common tactic employed by science fiction. Pick a concept, and that’s what everything we see in the planet is built around (A “Planet of Hats,” as the trope is called). While there could be more to Naro-Atzia than forms and paperwork, that’s our only encounter with them in this episode.
3. Enoch
The character that gets the most focus this episode is Enoch, of all beings. As a Chronicom, he’s super-intelligent, although he’s always been presented as more or less emotionless. This time, we actually get to see actor Joel Stoffer do more with the character.
First off, Enoch thinks of Fitz as his best friend. That’s actually pretty sweet, even if Fitz is not in the mood for friendship. Then we see him put his supercomputer of a brain to use in a casino, counting cards and calculating probabilities to help them win. However, he’s not as good at reading people, leading to him getting bluffed.
When a Chronicom hunter named Malachi sabotages Enoch, we actually get some emotion from him – a depressed funk from his failure, which Fitz helps him through by acknowledging their BFF status.
This is a new step for the character, adding a layer of personality to him we didn’t get before. While Enoch has always had a well-delivered character and mannerisms, the new levels of emotion are a good touch for the character.
4. Deke the Tech Bro
Then we get back to Earth, where we catch up with Deke. After the events of last season, he’s used his future knowledge and a bit of S.H.I.E.LD. tech to become… a tech bro. He does fit in to the role quite well, with his eccentricities seeming like normal “wacky Silicon Valley entrepreneur” behavior. It’s even a nice touch how he’s sensitive about things going on his wrist, after spending his life with basically a tracking system stuck in his wrist his entire life.
He’s also dating a social media “influencer” (although, let’s face it, her videos are not exactly quality content) who is just the right level of obnoxious. She wanders obliviously into a building on lockdown then uses it for social engagement, whining “ugh” as they try to escape. Honestly, I’m a little surprised she survived the episode with that level of self-preservation instinct. It’s not a solid relationship, though, as Deke is clearly still carrying a torch for Daisy, which leads to a funny moment where he offers Mack a 2% share in his company in exchange for not letting anyone know he built a love interest NPC into his virtual reality game designed to look like her.
Continued belowAnd to give Deke some credit, he did see through Sarge’s ploy to learn more about Coulson. Being a time traveler who hung out with his own grandparents helped with that, but he managed to figure it out on time. Using his Framework VR game to trap and capture another one of Sarge’s dimension-hopping soldiers was clever too, even if earlier he was less than smart about dealing with one of them.
It’s hard to say how well the tech life has been treating Deke at this point. The culture has definitely gone to his head.
5. A Little Batty
Now we’re learning a little more about why Sarge and his team are on Earth. They seem to be hunting down these parasitic bat-like creatures. They fly into their victims’ mouths and control them from the inside like a parasitic pilot, before causing them to erupt into crystals upon death.
We’ve seen swarms of these bat things before in the memory chip from their lost soldier. Several of them also flew out through the dimensional rifts they came through. So what is the goal here? Are they trying to kill the bats, or help them spread? It’s another level of mystery, although until we learn what exactly they’re after, we have little reason to know or care much about them.
Speaking of characters we didn’t really get to know: Alas, poor Agent Keller. He proved to be a test case for what happens when the bats fly into someone, quickly dying then erupting into crystals before Yo-Yo had to stab him for their own safety.
That’s going to leave an emotional scar.
6. Fun With Fight Scenes
There is a significant chance that every episode will give us something awesome from Ming-Na Wen. In this case, we get a fun fight scene with Agent May versus Snow, the butterfly-obsessed knife-user from Sarge’s team.
The cinematography during this fight is pretty good, using white smoke in the background to make the black-clad combatants stand out more. It ends with a very nice clothesline that sends Snow flipping, before Sarge gets the drop on May and takes her captive. So will May employ Black Widow’s technique of “letting the villain spill their guts while she’s captured,” or is a worse fate in store for her?
Another noteworthy moment in that fight: at one point, May uses a phone to smack Snow, at which point the phone goes “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” I’m 90% certain that this is a reference to Weird Al’s “Albuquerque,” where something identical happens in a fight against a one-nostril’d man. I’ve reached out to the cast for confirmation but have not heard one way or another yet.
