Some beginnings and some endsing for the roundup
If I kept this roundup to myself any longer I’d have to write another lengthy AoS reaction before it got out, so here’s a the few weeks of TV.
Arrow 7x20
First, we really need to acknowledge how many murders Team Arrow keep the facts to themselves about. I still don’t think Roy killing that cop back when he was dosed with mirakuru is on the record (although Roy did tell Quentin I recall); plus various murders committed when various people were dealing with blood lust; I think Oliver did eventually get caught, at least kind of, for Billy’s death but I’m not sure it ever got fully investigated. Plus Andy, not to mention the whole Havenrock issue (not murder but not something people know about or gets acknowledged). So really, don’t act like this is so out of character for them. More dangerous than before, maybe, but completely in character.
I’m still thinking through whether this counts as the conflict between the old and new teams that I always wanted but didn’t get last year. Since it seems Rene and Dinah don’t know where Roy’s been (and not just not all the specifics) that would indicate to me that there still is a difference between the way the old team ranks and the new team. Oliver says that Roy is and always will be as much a member of the team as anyone, but it’s always seemed to me that the newer members have never quite taken the place of the old. And I talked about that a lot in times past so this is more noting that it still kind of exists. But the writing doesn’t do a lot with it; in some ways I like that, as they are being fairly adult rather than petty children getting riled up over who is whose best friend, and it was more fitting for last year when the team was split up, but it’s something I still look for.
I’m not sure if I liked this episode. I think I did, I just don’t feel sure in that assessment. I do like the lack of flashforwards, I did not miss them at all. And the story structure was an interesting change of pace, although I’m not quite sure how they managed to cook up the lie that quickly or how Emiko got ahead of it that fast. I also don’t know how they’re going to get out of this, even as I continue to suspect we’re headed for some form of reset to the old status quo eventually. Also, these writers need to stop with the flashforwards as we know Oliver survives this, as does everyone else.
I feel like I should do a breakdown on why the flashforwards on this show just don’t work for me, when to this day I commend B5 for its use of being able to tell us the future and still make the journey interesting. Why is it that here I have no faith in it sticking, yet find it removes almost all tension from a lot of the journey? That sounds like a discussion for after the season is over though.
Arrow 7x21
I have to say I didn’t like that one, in fact I’m kind of having a hard time finding anything I did like about it. Probably the best part was the future stuff, and when I say that it means I did not like the main story since I still don’t like the future stuff.
I’m guessing Colin Donnell has the beard in whatever he’s presently working on and couldn’t shave it, because there is no reason why Tommy would have a beard in Oliver’s hallucination. I actually did think last week how similar Oliver’s situation was to Tommy’s death, but I didn’t expect that to be an important point. But as much as I love Tommy and miss him and wish there was a way for him to really come back, I hated those scenes. Family is notoriously Oliver’s blind spot and him getting past that to see what needs to be done was actual character progression. And considering we went through all that nonsense with Prometheus a couple years I think Oliver has more than proven that he doesn’t rush into killing his enemies at this point so we’re just retreading old ground here. I’m not even sure I understand the point of all the time we spent on this if it wasn’t for Oliver to accept the conclusion he’d already come to. This is all in Oliver’s head right? So Oliver’s mind is having ‘Tommy’ argue back against killing Emiko and Oliver needs to accept what he knows has to happen so that when the moment comes he stops having that family blind spot. I get that ‘Tommy’ is playing the conscience, but Oliver literally just decided to change his endgame, he doesn’t need to rethink back to what he’s been doing all along; what he’s been doing all along is what got him in this mess. If they were going to make such a thing of this it really should have more of a point to it than whatever this was about. I’m not saying I super want him to kill Emiko (as much as I hate her), I’m sure it would destroy him to do it, but this plot is stupid.
I am glad that the focus of the future plot has shifted back to William where it started, Mia is a fine supporting character, but was a bad focal character last time we were here. But I also think they’re hoping we forget a few plot gaffs they’ve built up. It was super obvious a few episodes ago when Oliver said that William wasn’t calling him back that they were trying to cover for the future plot saying William hadn’t heard from them since he left Star City. Now they’re trying to shift back to them having cut him out. And sure it’s clear that when they apparently go into hiding at that point they probably do have to stop trying, but these pieces are not fitting together cleanly.
I’m losing hope that this season is going to be able to pull it together in the end. In a way I’m glad it’s ending next season. If we were looking at an undetermined amount of seasons left I sort of feel like I’d have to seriously consider whether I was going to stick with it; but I can probably give them one more season where they know it’s the end and can build towards it. I’m not sure they’ll do it well, hard to have a lot of confidence after the downward slide the show has been on for a while, but I’m probably willing to see one more time.
Jane the Virgin 5x07
I’m always going to be Team Michael, that should be understood before I talk more about this episode. I like Michael and like Jane with Michael; I’m a lot more ambivalent toward Rafael and that relationship. To be frank, I’ve never really liked it, even at their best I only think they’re okay together though I do get why they would want to be together but I don’t think they work. I want Raf to be the best version of himself and be a good dad to the kids and a good friend/partner for the others, but I don’t really like him and Jane together.
All that said, and that I don’t quite think this is the end of Michael on the series, I think I understand Jane’s choice here. There isn’t going back in either her relationship with Rafael or Michael; it’s important to consider where they are now, and where they are now is a mess and nothing is certain. I’m not saying she’s making the easier choice, because that’s oversimplifying, but she is trying to hold to solid ground; Michael would feel like going backwards, and in some ways it would be, while in others it’s a bigger gamble since there’s less surety that who they are now fit so well. While she and Raf have things to work on at this point, and I’m not sure I think they work, they can be pretty sure what they’ll find if they get through it.
On the flip side, if this is my last chance to mention it, something about this arc has been bugging me. We really should have gotten more scenes with Michael and other characters, but all we got was him and Jane and little bit with Raf (and barely that). I want to see stuff with him and Xo and Ro and Alba and would have liked to have seen a real scene with him and Mateo (even though that would be really awkward, I wanted it) but we just kind of ignore the fact that he had relationships with other members of the family. And it’s probably contributing to why this story doesn’t feel fully explored yet.
Also there was way too much attention given to Michael’s supporting cast in Montana for this to be all we see of them. I won’t be entirely surprised if we hear he and Charlie end up together (I was sort of expecting part of their feud to be a fling already), but that’s not exactly what I’m expecting. I just don’t think this is the end for Jane and Michael, there’s having an occasionally unreliable narrator and then there’s not sticking to the Michael loved Jane until his dying breath line. That’s just not a line I think they can go back on.
I also have some meta thoughts but I’m not sure how to express them, so they’ll wait a little longer I guess.
Agents of SHIELD 6x01
I can’t decide whether to think of this more as ‘Agents in Space, really this time’ or ‘Agents of not fitting in the MCU timeline’ or ‘Agents of I’m not sure this is reality.’
Let’s talk Agents in Space first. For one, they finally remembered Davis has a kid, and one he apparently sees sometimes, just not very often when he’s in space. I also really like Davis and Piper, have sort of weird feelings about Simmons, and continue to not like Daisy. I’m not quite back to my Daisy hating that I did for a while in s5, but it’s early and so far we’re not claiming she’s some kind of great leader with the team of four that she doesn’t seem to command very well. Simmons though...this could be interesting, her desperation and increasing hardness making her rash and probably making mistakes, definitely choices that are going to have consequences. And that’s definitely potentially interesting, but I’m going to have to see how it plays out before I make much judgement of it.
This is kind of a joint point between Space and not fitting with movie canon, but they apparently now have jumpgate technology and have rendered Captain Marvel more silly than it already was with that whole lightspeed engine (of course the movie itself got that kind of wrong since Guardians have jumpgates too, not to mention the whole space-is-big fact). So a human scientist without an Infinity Stone (and this was after Fitz was gone) could figure out how to retrofit alien tech to work with a human ship that by itself is still pretty experimental and that took at most a few months, what was Mar-vel doing all that time?
But mainly, they are not at all dealing with Infinity War-Endgame. If we go strictly by the dates here, this would be during the lost years, and not only are all our main characters here but the world doesn’t seem at all effected which is really not what we see in Endgame. They went to a fair amount of trouble last year to keep in line with the buildup in IW and now it just...isn’t a thing.
Which feeds into my nagging feeling that this isn’t real. The stuff in space feels possibly real, though the timeline is wonky and I do have questions; but on Earth, there is something up that they aren’t telling us yet. I’d hate to think that in a shortened season they were yanking our chain for even one episode and this is set to continue so I’m not committed to saying it’s fake, but it’s off. Relevant to this is that I get that we’re in media res here, we’re not privy to a lot of what’s happened in the past year, and how we got from there to here, but what they choose to fill in and what they don’t and where they focus with where we are feels...off.
It’s not weird to me that Mack and Elena broke up, I kind of expected it honestly. I’m not sure they’re entirely off the table for the show to come back to, but I kind of thought he would have difficulty being Director and keeping their relationship, and apparently I was right. But at the same time there is something a little weird about her and the new guy. Not wrong or bad (although if he’s destined to be cannon fodder like his friend I won’t be surprised), and maybe just underdeveloped so far, but I guess I feel like we’re being kept at a distance from seeing it.
SHEILD being back like this, is again not exactly a bad step, but added to the timeline problem it’s hard for me to not feel a little thrown by it. They’re obviously still not where they were before the fall of SHIELD, but they are definitely public and known and staffed and not fugitives or terrorists. I know they started that way with the rescue in Chicago, but there’s a lot of ground between public enemy number 1 and legit organization. It would make more sense if we were in the real MCU and people needed to step up and take care of things there; but that world (not to mention other planets), even a year on, would be reeling from the Snap still and we definitely would have had it referenced. So I could have used a little more hand holding on how we got here.
And there’s something weird in the writing when they reference having lost a leader but not in those moments referencing Coulson by name. They do reference Coulson, so it’s not like they’re avoiding it or it’s still too fresh a wound (and let’s be real, the person it would make the most sense to tiptoe around is May, and she seems fine), but the sentence structure almost draws attention to not using Coulson’s name at some specific moments it would be natural. I also get a kind of weird vibe off this being basically exactly a year since he died that he’s coming back; on its own I would chalk it up to dramatic irony (oh, you thought you were over the first year of living without him, what if he came back?), but with everything else I end up wanting to read something else into it.
The fourth thing this episode could be called is “Agents of what the hell is up with May?’ This is kind of the biggest catch for me, but in a way I’m going to have to dissect. Because I don’t think she’s acting out of character; as much as it’s commented on that she’s talking more, it feels to me like it could be a natural version of her. Yes she’s talkative, even gossipy in places, but she’s happy and present and lively and rather adorable. This is a May I realize always wanted but never got and after last season never really expected to get, but I have always thought this version was in her. I love her new dynamic with Mack and with Yoyo; I think her position within SHIELD feels very natural for now; and I can even just about headcanon how we got *close* to here with her character, but the part I can’t see makes the whole thing feel either wrongly written or just wrong like something is off.
I’m willing to accept a headcanon that after Coulson’s death she opted to embrace life while she had it, with a side helping of living for both of them. That doesn’t feel impossible considering what we’re shown here, but considering a couple other factors I can’t fully buy into it so far.
Which has led me to a new bit of lingo I might find uses for: the difference between loud angst and quiet angst. Loud angst being things like a lot of crying, a lot of anger, running away from things, various obvious displays of being in pain and emotional turmoil. Quiet angst being more confined to occasional looks and voice quivers and word choice in places. I’m big on loud angst in my fiction, I like people yelling about their problems even if doesn’t seem real true to life most times.
And May has always been a weird combination of the two; silently screaming her pain. She internalizes a lot of it, and being so stoic it often works, but she also tends to have more visible problems too. Her reaction after Bahrain being a key example (and one that is largely independent of Coulson), she didn’t exactly want people to get inside her protective shell so she retreated from most of the people who would have, but that doesn’t make the pain that drove her to that less obvious to those people. And there’s a multitude of ways she responded to the idea of Coulson dying that show that angst duality; she projects strength as often as she can, but the mask slips quite a few times.
So yeah, most of my fic experiments since s5 have had May in fairly loud angst (stoicism can be loud too if it’s obviously forced); but that we’re not getting that isn’t exactly my problem with her portrayal. Quiet angst would have been fine (and acceptable as a contrast to Simmons’ very loud angst), but we barely even got that and again it kind of feels deliberate. Had we continued in the vein of her scene with Mack in the office I probably wouldn’t even feel the need to dwell on this point, certainly not this much. That scene had a decent amount of quiet angst; very aware of Coulson’s absence from their lives, but not consumed by it; that scene plays to the idea that May has decided to live instead of following him to the grave (and you didn’t really think I wouldn’t say it). And starting the arc this way could have made a lot of sense, she thinks she can live without him, miss him but not have it be an open wound, and then he comes back (or at least someone who looks like him, and I’m still not ready to say this definitely isn’t Coulson) and kicks all those feeling sup again.
The problem is that the rest of the episode doesn’t play with missing him the same way; while at the same time having some lines and scenes that practically beg for it. Yoyo talking how Mack shut himself off in the office and the job got too big to leave room for them is kind of invitation for May to smile wistfully and say something about Phil being the same way for a long time, and how Yoyo chooses to respond to it is up to her. May’s line about how the last year has taught her life isn’t meant to be lived alone is not said with the sadness and regret that one would expect from a woman who is coming up on the anniversary of the death of the love of her life. And I use that deliberately because professor man (I want to say Malcolm) has a speech that could have practically been written by May if they were talking about scotch instead of cocktails and not even needed to change the genders. I actually thought that in the middle of the scene; that I wonder if May drinks scotch anymore, to remember or forget, or if the memories are too strong if she does. And the parallel that the lines invite is so strong that I have a hard time thinking it’s not deliberate; even though there’s no actual acknowledgement of how these bits could and should affect her; and that lack of acknowledgement leads me to feeling like something is deliberately kept from us about her feelings on the subject.
So let’s wildly spitball for a minute (looks at length of review...maybe there’s a reason writing my Endgame thoughts seemed too daunting). Ignoring the greater MCU timeline question, my notions of what this adds to are mostly around something like the Framework and/or Coulson not being dead (they’re not mutually exclusive). How the Space side fits into those ideas I’m still a little shaky on, but it can work.
For something like the Framework, my mind goes to either Coulson or May being in it (not entirely mutually exclusive but more likely). Maybe they’re close on a way to treat Coulson, but they needed to put him in chryo but also kept his mind active for some reason, and he’s weirdly being fed the happy version of him being gone. No one is broken by his absence; Mack is a great leader, Yoyo is adapting well to being a senior agent and her lack of arms; SHIELD is flourishing; May is fine, and unlike most his mind can supply the happier May that she once was (also, the Snap never happened). I’m not sure how new-Coulson fits in with this idea, but we’re spitballing. If it’s May and ignoring any particularly dark ideas like her doing this to herself, maybe she’s been captured by someone who wants info about SHIELD so they’re putting her in a scenario where she’s there but not really suffering from the loss of Phil. In that case, new-Coulson makes a lot of sense as the one set to tear down this false world, whether it’s real-Phil bursting in to find her or who her mind would bring to pull her back, it would work. The advantage of these options is that the timeline and life out in the real world could be in a mid or post Snap world.
For Coulson being alive, what we’re seeing can be reality (but not accounting for the MCU events), but there are details we don’t have yet. When they say they carry on in their lost leader’s name but don’t call him by name, it may or may not even mean him (I’m not sure who else it would be, Talbot?). They do talk about Coulson in the past tense like he’s not around, but without much pain at his absence. So, what if before he would have died someone came and offered to save him, and maybe promised he would be back in a year? The lack of Coulson related angst (from anyone but especially May) would be fine then, because he’s out there, not even lost, just needs time; and don’t tell me for a second May would have hesitated to take that option. She absolutely would have gone back to SHIELD then, wanting it to be the best in can be in that year (whether or not he was planning to come back to SHIELD once he was healed); she would she would be chill and happy and not that sad about the understanding that we’re not meant to live alone, because he will come back to her; Mack would not to remind her of the day (and they would want to be able to show off when he got home) because even allowing some travel time this is when she starts expecting him back soon. And that makes what we’re looking at pretty harsh because he comes back right on schedule, but he’s not Phil; whether that’s just convenience or someone stole his body through that year we’d have to see.
I don’t know that I expect any of these are true, but with the falseness I felt from the story this is how I’m making sense of it without further information (aside from a small speculation that maybe the trailer was misleading and Daisy wasn’t talking to May when she said “the man in there is not the man you loved,” she could be talking to Simmons too).
So all that, and I never really said if I liked the episode or not. Partly because I’m not sure if I liked it or not. I just got done rewatching the last couple seasons (season 4 is still really good; s5 seems better either for knowing the whole picture or because of binging, though still not great and pretty bad in places, but nowhere near as bad as it seemed at the time) and I was expecting the show to fit in with movie events, and of course I expected much more loud angst so this was very unexpected. I didn’t dislike it, but because of the elements that feel wrong to me (that for now I’m inclined to think is deliberate as opposed to a misstep) I need to know more of the picture before I can judge it. If it’s real, these things are bigger problems, not necessarily show-breaking ones but it’ll need to be that much of an exceptional story for me to roll with them; if it’s fake I want to know why and how and what the truth is before I can judge whether this artificial story is worth watching. So we’re off to an odd start, one I hope I will have more definite and less confused feelings about next time.
Arrow 7x22
Apparently we don’t get 23 episodes this year, that’s probably just fine.
This episode makes clear what this season really was: filler. As soon as they decided to do Crisis on Infinite Earths, this season became just filler until next year’s crossover (whether that’s in its usual position around winter break or at the start of the season to establish the new status quo next year will have). They had some ideas for the early season while Oliver was in prison, but after that it pretty much became them doing whatever to fill out the season. Nothing matters, nothing feels like it’s going to matter moving forward, I don’t feel like we went anywhere and the journey going nowhere was not that good.
A couple positives though. This episode did a better job explaining why Oliver needed to control the impulse to kill Emiko than the episode that was focused on him deciding that. The idea that once he found out she was partly responsible for Robert’s death Oliver was piling all the bad that’s happened since Robert’s death on to her, is something he should be mindful of and not react on blind vengeance; I actually think that’s a valid point that last episode should have made. Also, I’m a sucker for a big team event, so I like having everyone together for this (although how Curtis or especially Laurel got there but Barry couldn’t come is weird, and Thea was of course still missing). I guess it was surprising that Tiger survived this episode since he has to die at some point, and I guess I like for now.
From here I wonder if it’s because this was the season finale so I want to cover a whole lot of things, or if my long winded AoS ramblings opened the floodgates and now I’m finding my rambling reviews again. But there are three (kind of four) elements to talk about here; the resolution of the Emiko plot, the showdown in the future, and the Crisis material; plus kind of the elements bridging the present and future parts.
Damn the Emiko plot was stupid. But there’s a special kind of stupid in the line about how her plan is so much more dangerous and personal than anything they’ve gone up against before. This is basically a combination of Slade and Ra’s’ plans; she’s even hanging out in the QC offices like Slade did back in the day (although the set looked different). Slade’s motivations were literally insane and they still made more sense than Emiko’s; they were also the same, wanting to destroy the city because it’s important to Oliver and he should see everything he loves taken away from him. Also, Darhk was trying to destroy the world, let’s not forget that; sure didn’t give much of a damn about Oliver personally, but his plan was worse.
I still don’t really think I understand what the goals here were, what the various players wanted (aside from Emiko wanting revenge on someone who has already lost the family fortune and resources) or why it needed to take all season to gather the components for this scheme. And while I may have said it as a joke, the absence of Thea is a huge problem; and yeah clearly WH is out of the show, but acknowledging her absence would actually have helped the story they had. It was not a good story to tell in parallel to the exploration of public vigilante officers. And I suspect it’s even worse if you watch other shows in this universe; not because I think they’re better (if I did I’d still be watching them) but because there’s no way the policies we’re expected to be on board with here are having any impact elsewhere.
The public enemy aspect of this plot was way too easily resolved. Yes they weren’t guilty of the attack on the police station (cop buddy being conveniently unconscious, then conveniently conscious when needed) but part of the problem was the reveal of what happened to the transport workers, and that’s never resolved. This story just doesn’t work on any level.
As for the future plot...on its own I suppose it’s fine. There are a lot of conveniences, from Zoey showing up at just the right moment at the beginning to the wall being rigged to explode that easily. I’m pretty sure this is the final nail in question of if there was any reason to make Conner not JJ, and I don’t see one; so see me expecting CoIE to restore Sara in JJ’s place and allow them to keep Conner. Though I do suppose that it works to show that this also isn’t the future we saw in Legends, since Oliver was around for that.
I also think it’s further showing how the Emiko plot was waste of time and space, it was resolved with a lot of episode to go, while splitting time with a pretty sizable future plot for this episode. The future plot doesn’t make a ton of sense either, but I kind of liked it better at times, and that’s practically a condemnation of the main plot. Also, is it ever daylight in the future? I can’t remember a time it was.
But...I continue to think this story is just filler and setup for future things. I don’t think it really matters. I don’t buy this as an endpoint for the series; everything they do was for nothing, their kids doomed to continue the unwinnable fight, not a single person gets a happy ending. Yeah, somehow Arrow became the whipping boy of its own universe, and the oversight team doesn’t particularly care about showing them in a great light (ironic that I think they’re the most compelling and least terrible members of the verse), but that doesn’t justify leading to and leaving with a grim dark future.
I do think it’s going to matter in CoIE, that characters introduced from the future (here and on Flash, maybe even Legends) will come into play there. Considering what this episode set up, I think Mia has a big part to play in that. But that’s setup for the next big event, not the arc of this show; and sacrificing most of this season of the show only thinking of where to be as setup for CoIE just proves my point about the oversight team not caring about this show.
I still don’t really understand the deal Oliver made with the Monitor, but I’m not surprised that the cost was something like this. At least he said he thought he would have more time, if he thought it was more a Sword of Damocles rather than a ticking clock it’s a little more forgivable that he didn’t say anything. Still probably should told Felicity and made preparations for when the time came, but a little less damning that he didn’t do it, it’s not like they don’t have a number of Swords hanging over them most of the time anyway.
But the closing scenes were the only ones that got any emotional reaction from me. Oliver’s departure (as much as I don’t see this mattering in the long run) and Felicity’s (much as I don’t really believe this as a choice she would make at that point) at least had some emotional punch to them that nothing else in the episode pulled off. But we’ll have to see how long any of this matters.
It was also a weird combination of rushing to draw connections to the future storyline and utterly failing to do anything that bridged the gap. Had to rush the decision to go into hiding while trying to pretend it makes any sense not to tell people about the baby. Had to hurry up and get everyone tattoos, but only for the people we already said had them, Curtis couldn’t stick around another 30 seconds or we’d have to explain why he didn’t get one. But vigilantes are still cool in Star City (it seems) rather than explaining why things are the way they are down the road. I guess if next season doesn’t have a big reset button it can start explaining how we get there, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have a good explanation in mind yet.
This season...was not good. I’m not sure it’s as angering as s5 was, but it was aggressively meh. It was bland and by the end clearly filler and that’s not a feeling I appreciate being left with. It might depend on what else I’m watching next fall, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this at least gets downgraded to streak-watching rather than worrying about it week to week. I’m not quite ready to be done with this show, especially since they’re going to get a chance to end it next season and I would like to stick it out to the end, but I can’t shake the feeling it’s going to limp across the finish line unless they have a really good plan for what to do for the close.
Arrow 7x20
First, we really need to acknowledge how many murders Team Arrow keep the facts to themselves about. I still don’t think Roy killing that cop back when he was dosed with mirakuru is on the record (although Roy did tell Quentin I recall); plus various murders committed when various people were dealing with blood lust; I think Oliver did eventually get caught, at least kind of, for Billy’s death but I’m not sure it ever got fully investigated. Plus Andy, not to mention the whole Havenrock issue (not murder but not something people know about or gets acknowledged). So really, don’t act like this is so out of character for them. More dangerous than before, maybe, but completely in character.
I’m still thinking through whether this counts as the conflict between the old and new teams that I always wanted but didn’t get last year. Since it seems Rene and Dinah don’t know where Roy’s been (and not just not all the specifics) that would indicate to me that there still is a difference between the way the old team ranks and the new team. Oliver says that Roy is and always will be as much a member of the team as anyone, but it’s always seemed to me that the newer members have never quite taken the place of the old. And I talked about that a lot in times past so this is more noting that it still kind of exists. But the writing doesn’t do a lot with it; in some ways I like that, as they are being fairly adult rather than petty children getting riled up over who is whose best friend, and it was more fitting for last year when the team was split up, but it’s something I still look for.
I’m not sure if I liked this episode. I think I did, I just don’t feel sure in that assessment. I do like the lack of flashforwards, I did not miss them at all. And the story structure was an interesting change of pace, although I’m not quite sure how they managed to cook up the lie that quickly or how Emiko got ahead of it that fast. I also don’t know how they’re going to get out of this, even as I continue to suspect we’re headed for some form of reset to the old status quo eventually. Also, these writers need to stop with the flashforwards as we know Oliver survives this, as does everyone else.
I feel like I should do a breakdown on why the flashforwards on this show just don’t work for me, when to this day I commend B5 for its use of being able to tell us the future and still make the journey interesting. Why is it that here I have no faith in it sticking, yet find it removes almost all tension from a lot of the journey? That sounds like a discussion for after the season is over though.
Arrow 7x21
I have to say I didn’t like that one, in fact I’m kind of having a hard time finding anything I did like about it. Probably the best part was the future stuff, and when I say that it means I did not like the main story since I still don’t like the future stuff.
I’m guessing Colin Donnell has the beard in whatever he’s presently working on and couldn’t shave it, because there is no reason why Tommy would have a beard in Oliver’s hallucination. I actually did think last week how similar Oliver’s situation was to Tommy’s death, but I didn’t expect that to be an important point. But as much as I love Tommy and miss him and wish there was a way for him to really come back, I hated those scenes. Family is notoriously Oliver’s blind spot and him getting past that to see what needs to be done was actual character progression. And considering we went through all that nonsense with Prometheus a couple years I think Oliver has more than proven that he doesn’t rush into killing his enemies at this point so we’re just retreading old ground here. I’m not even sure I understand the point of all the time we spent on this if it wasn’t for Oliver to accept the conclusion he’d already come to. This is all in Oliver’s head right? So Oliver’s mind is having ‘Tommy’ argue back against killing Emiko and Oliver needs to accept what he knows has to happen so that when the moment comes he stops having that family blind spot. I get that ‘Tommy’ is playing the conscience, but Oliver literally just decided to change his endgame, he doesn’t need to rethink back to what he’s been doing all along; what he’s been doing all along is what got him in this mess. If they were going to make such a thing of this it really should have more of a point to it than whatever this was about. I’m not saying I super want him to kill Emiko (as much as I hate her), I’m sure it would destroy him to do it, but this plot is stupid.
I am glad that the focus of the future plot has shifted back to William where it started, Mia is a fine supporting character, but was a bad focal character last time we were here. But I also think they’re hoping we forget a few plot gaffs they’ve built up. It was super obvious a few episodes ago when Oliver said that William wasn’t calling him back that they were trying to cover for the future plot saying William hadn’t heard from them since he left Star City. Now they’re trying to shift back to them having cut him out. And sure it’s clear that when they apparently go into hiding at that point they probably do have to stop trying, but these pieces are not fitting together cleanly.
I’m losing hope that this season is going to be able to pull it together in the end. In a way I’m glad it’s ending next season. If we were looking at an undetermined amount of seasons left I sort of feel like I’d have to seriously consider whether I was going to stick with it; but I can probably give them one more season where they know it’s the end and can build towards it. I’m not sure they’ll do it well, hard to have a lot of confidence after the downward slide the show has been on for a while, but I’m probably willing to see one more time.
Jane the Virgin 5x07
I’m always going to be Team Michael, that should be understood before I talk more about this episode. I like Michael and like Jane with Michael; I’m a lot more ambivalent toward Rafael and that relationship. To be frank, I’ve never really liked it, even at their best I only think they’re okay together though I do get why they would want to be together but I don’t think they work. I want Raf to be the best version of himself and be a good dad to the kids and a good friend/partner for the others, but I don’t really like him and Jane together.
All that said, and that I don’t quite think this is the end of Michael on the series, I think I understand Jane’s choice here. There isn’t going back in either her relationship with Rafael or Michael; it’s important to consider where they are now, and where they are now is a mess and nothing is certain. I’m not saying she’s making the easier choice, because that’s oversimplifying, but she is trying to hold to solid ground; Michael would feel like going backwards, and in some ways it would be, while in others it’s a bigger gamble since there’s less surety that who they are now fit so well. While she and Raf have things to work on at this point, and I’m not sure I think they work, they can be pretty sure what they’ll find if they get through it.
On the flip side, if this is my last chance to mention it, something about this arc has been bugging me. We really should have gotten more scenes with Michael and other characters, but all we got was him and Jane and little bit with Raf (and barely that). I want to see stuff with him and Xo and Ro and Alba and would have liked to have seen a real scene with him and Mateo (even though that would be really awkward, I wanted it) but we just kind of ignore the fact that he had relationships with other members of the family. And it’s probably contributing to why this story doesn’t feel fully explored yet.
Also there was way too much attention given to Michael’s supporting cast in Montana for this to be all we see of them. I won’t be entirely surprised if we hear he and Charlie end up together (I was sort of expecting part of their feud to be a fling already), but that’s not exactly what I’m expecting. I just don’t think this is the end for Jane and Michael, there’s having an occasionally unreliable narrator and then there’s not sticking to the Michael loved Jane until his dying breath line. That’s just not a line I think they can go back on.
I also have some meta thoughts but I’m not sure how to express them, so they’ll wait a little longer I guess.
Agents of SHIELD 6x01
I can’t decide whether to think of this more as ‘Agents in Space, really this time’ or ‘Agents of not fitting in the MCU timeline’ or ‘Agents of I’m not sure this is reality.’
Let’s talk Agents in Space first. For one, they finally remembered Davis has a kid, and one he apparently sees sometimes, just not very often when he’s in space. I also really like Davis and Piper, have sort of weird feelings about Simmons, and continue to not like Daisy. I’m not quite back to my Daisy hating that I did for a while in s5, but it’s early and so far we’re not claiming she’s some kind of great leader with the team of four that she doesn’t seem to command very well. Simmons though...this could be interesting, her desperation and increasing hardness making her rash and probably making mistakes, definitely choices that are going to have consequences. And that’s definitely potentially interesting, but I’m going to have to see how it plays out before I make much judgement of it.
This is kind of a joint point between Space and not fitting with movie canon, but they apparently now have jumpgate technology and have rendered Captain Marvel more silly than it already was with that whole lightspeed engine (of course the movie itself got that kind of wrong since Guardians have jumpgates too, not to mention the whole space-is-big fact). So a human scientist without an Infinity Stone (and this was after Fitz was gone) could figure out how to retrofit alien tech to work with a human ship that by itself is still pretty experimental and that took at most a few months, what was Mar-vel doing all that time?
But mainly, they are not at all dealing with Infinity War-Endgame. If we go strictly by the dates here, this would be during the lost years, and not only are all our main characters here but the world doesn’t seem at all effected which is really not what we see in Endgame. They went to a fair amount of trouble last year to keep in line with the buildup in IW and now it just...isn’t a thing.
Which feeds into my nagging feeling that this isn’t real. The stuff in space feels possibly real, though the timeline is wonky and I do have questions; but on Earth, there is something up that they aren’t telling us yet. I’d hate to think that in a shortened season they were yanking our chain for even one episode and this is set to continue so I’m not committed to saying it’s fake, but it’s off. Relevant to this is that I get that we’re in media res here, we’re not privy to a lot of what’s happened in the past year, and how we got from there to here, but what they choose to fill in and what they don’t and where they focus with where we are feels...off.
It’s not weird to me that Mack and Elena broke up, I kind of expected it honestly. I’m not sure they’re entirely off the table for the show to come back to, but I kind of thought he would have difficulty being Director and keeping their relationship, and apparently I was right. But at the same time there is something a little weird about her and the new guy. Not wrong or bad (although if he’s destined to be cannon fodder like his friend I won’t be surprised), and maybe just underdeveloped so far, but I guess I feel like we’re being kept at a distance from seeing it.
SHEILD being back like this, is again not exactly a bad step, but added to the timeline problem it’s hard for me to not feel a little thrown by it. They’re obviously still not where they were before the fall of SHIELD, but they are definitely public and known and staffed and not fugitives or terrorists. I know they started that way with the rescue in Chicago, but there’s a lot of ground between public enemy number 1 and legit organization. It would make more sense if we were in the real MCU and people needed to step up and take care of things there; but that world (not to mention other planets), even a year on, would be reeling from the Snap still and we definitely would have had it referenced. So I could have used a little more hand holding on how we got here.
And there’s something weird in the writing when they reference having lost a leader but not in those moments referencing Coulson by name. They do reference Coulson, so it’s not like they’re avoiding it or it’s still too fresh a wound (and let’s be real, the person it would make the most sense to tiptoe around is May, and she seems fine), but the sentence structure almost draws attention to not using Coulson’s name at some specific moments it would be natural. I also get a kind of weird vibe off this being basically exactly a year since he died that he’s coming back; on its own I would chalk it up to dramatic irony (oh, you thought you were over the first year of living without him, what if he came back?), but with everything else I end up wanting to read something else into it.
The fourth thing this episode could be called is “Agents of what the hell is up with May?’ This is kind of the biggest catch for me, but in a way I’m going to have to dissect. Because I don’t think she’s acting out of character; as much as it’s commented on that she’s talking more, it feels to me like it could be a natural version of her. Yes she’s talkative, even gossipy in places, but she’s happy and present and lively and rather adorable. This is a May I realize always wanted but never got and after last season never really expected to get, but I have always thought this version was in her. I love her new dynamic with Mack and with Yoyo; I think her position within SHIELD feels very natural for now; and I can even just about headcanon how we got *close* to here with her character, but the part I can’t see makes the whole thing feel either wrongly written or just wrong like something is off.
I’m willing to accept a headcanon that after Coulson’s death she opted to embrace life while she had it, with a side helping of living for both of them. That doesn’t feel impossible considering what we’re shown here, but considering a couple other factors I can’t fully buy into it so far.
Which has led me to a new bit of lingo I might find uses for: the difference between loud angst and quiet angst. Loud angst being things like a lot of crying, a lot of anger, running away from things, various obvious displays of being in pain and emotional turmoil. Quiet angst being more confined to occasional looks and voice quivers and word choice in places. I’m big on loud angst in my fiction, I like people yelling about their problems even if doesn’t seem real true to life most times.
And May has always been a weird combination of the two; silently screaming her pain. She internalizes a lot of it, and being so stoic it often works, but she also tends to have more visible problems too. Her reaction after Bahrain being a key example (and one that is largely independent of Coulson), she didn’t exactly want people to get inside her protective shell so she retreated from most of the people who would have, but that doesn’t make the pain that drove her to that less obvious to those people. And there’s a multitude of ways she responded to the idea of Coulson dying that show that angst duality; she projects strength as often as she can, but the mask slips quite a few times.
So yeah, most of my fic experiments since s5 have had May in fairly loud angst (stoicism can be loud too if it’s obviously forced); but that we’re not getting that isn’t exactly my problem with her portrayal. Quiet angst would have been fine (and acceptable as a contrast to Simmons’ very loud angst), but we barely even got that and again it kind of feels deliberate. Had we continued in the vein of her scene with Mack in the office I probably wouldn’t even feel the need to dwell on this point, certainly not this much. That scene had a decent amount of quiet angst; very aware of Coulson’s absence from their lives, but not consumed by it; that scene plays to the idea that May has decided to live instead of following him to the grave (and you didn’t really think I wouldn’t say it). And starting the arc this way could have made a lot of sense, she thinks she can live without him, miss him but not have it be an open wound, and then he comes back (or at least someone who looks like him, and I’m still not ready to say this definitely isn’t Coulson) and kicks all those feeling sup again.
The problem is that the rest of the episode doesn’t play with missing him the same way; while at the same time having some lines and scenes that practically beg for it. Yoyo talking how Mack shut himself off in the office and the job got too big to leave room for them is kind of invitation for May to smile wistfully and say something about Phil being the same way for a long time, and how Yoyo chooses to respond to it is up to her. May’s line about how the last year has taught her life isn’t meant to be lived alone is not said with the sadness and regret that one would expect from a woman who is coming up on the anniversary of the death of the love of her life. And I use that deliberately because professor man (I want to say Malcolm) has a speech that could have practically been written by May if they were talking about scotch instead of cocktails and not even needed to change the genders. I actually thought that in the middle of the scene; that I wonder if May drinks scotch anymore, to remember or forget, or if the memories are too strong if she does. And the parallel that the lines invite is so strong that I have a hard time thinking it’s not deliberate; even though there’s no actual acknowledgement of how these bits could and should affect her; and that lack of acknowledgement leads me to feeling like something is deliberately kept from us about her feelings on the subject.
So let’s wildly spitball for a minute (looks at length of review...maybe there’s a reason writing my Endgame thoughts seemed too daunting). Ignoring the greater MCU timeline question, my notions of what this adds to are mostly around something like the Framework and/or Coulson not being dead (they’re not mutually exclusive). How the Space side fits into those ideas I’m still a little shaky on, but it can work.
For something like the Framework, my mind goes to either Coulson or May being in it (not entirely mutually exclusive but more likely). Maybe they’re close on a way to treat Coulson, but they needed to put him in chryo but also kept his mind active for some reason, and he’s weirdly being fed the happy version of him being gone. No one is broken by his absence; Mack is a great leader, Yoyo is adapting well to being a senior agent and her lack of arms; SHIELD is flourishing; May is fine, and unlike most his mind can supply the happier May that she once was (also, the Snap never happened). I’m not sure how new-Coulson fits in with this idea, but we’re spitballing. If it’s May and ignoring any particularly dark ideas like her doing this to herself, maybe she’s been captured by someone who wants info about SHIELD so they’re putting her in a scenario where she’s there but not really suffering from the loss of Phil. In that case, new-Coulson makes a lot of sense as the one set to tear down this false world, whether it’s real-Phil bursting in to find her or who her mind would bring to pull her back, it would work. The advantage of these options is that the timeline and life out in the real world could be in a mid or post Snap world.
For Coulson being alive, what we’re seeing can be reality (but not accounting for the MCU events), but there are details we don’t have yet. When they say they carry on in their lost leader’s name but don’t call him by name, it may or may not even mean him (I’m not sure who else it would be, Talbot?). They do talk about Coulson in the past tense like he’s not around, but without much pain at his absence. So, what if before he would have died someone came and offered to save him, and maybe promised he would be back in a year? The lack of Coulson related angst (from anyone but especially May) would be fine then, because he’s out there, not even lost, just needs time; and don’t tell me for a second May would have hesitated to take that option. She absolutely would have gone back to SHIELD then, wanting it to be the best in can be in that year (whether or not he was planning to come back to SHIELD once he was healed); she would she would be chill and happy and not that sad about the understanding that we’re not meant to live alone, because he will come back to her; Mack would not to remind her of the day (and they would want to be able to show off when he got home) because even allowing some travel time this is when she starts expecting him back soon. And that makes what we’re looking at pretty harsh because he comes back right on schedule, but he’s not Phil; whether that’s just convenience or someone stole his body through that year we’d have to see.
I don’t know that I expect any of these are true, but with the falseness I felt from the story this is how I’m making sense of it without further information (aside from a small speculation that maybe the trailer was misleading and Daisy wasn’t talking to May when she said “the man in there is not the man you loved,” she could be talking to Simmons too).
So all that, and I never really said if I liked the episode or not. Partly because I’m not sure if I liked it or not. I just got done rewatching the last couple seasons (season 4 is still really good; s5 seems better either for knowing the whole picture or because of binging, though still not great and pretty bad in places, but nowhere near as bad as it seemed at the time) and I was expecting the show to fit in with movie events, and of course I expected much more loud angst so this was very unexpected. I didn’t dislike it, but because of the elements that feel wrong to me (that for now I’m inclined to think is deliberate as opposed to a misstep) I need to know more of the picture before I can judge it. If it’s real, these things are bigger problems, not necessarily show-breaking ones but it’ll need to be that much of an exceptional story for me to roll with them; if it’s fake I want to know why and how and what the truth is before I can judge whether this artificial story is worth watching. So we’re off to an odd start, one I hope I will have more definite and less confused feelings about next time.
Arrow 7x22
Apparently we don’t get 23 episodes this year, that’s probably just fine.
This episode makes clear what this season really was: filler. As soon as they decided to do Crisis on Infinite Earths, this season became just filler until next year’s crossover (whether that’s in its usual position around winter break or at the start of the season to establish the new status quo next year will have). They had some ideas for the early season while Oliver was in prison, but after that it pretty much became them doing whatever to fill out the season. Nothing matters, nothing feels like it’s going to matter moving forward, I don’t feel like we went anywhere and the journey going nowhere was not that good.
A couple positives though. This episode did a better job explaining why Oliver needed to control the impulse to kill Emiko than the episode that was focused on him deciding that. The idea that once he found out she was partly responsible for Robert’s death Oliver was piling all the bad that’s happened since Robert’s death on to her, is something he should be mindful of and not react on blind vengeance; I actually think that’s a valid point that last episode should have made. Also, I’m a sucker for a big team event, so I like having everyone together for this (although how Curtis or especially Laurel got there but Barry couldn’t come is weird, and Thea was of course still missing). I guess it was surprising that Tiger survived this episode since he has to die at some point, and I guess I like for now.
From here I wonder if it’s because this was the season finale so I want to cover a whole lot of things, or if my long winded AoS ramblings opened the floodgates and now I’m finding my rambling reviews again. But there are three (kind of four) elements to talk about here; the resolution of the Emiko plot, the showdown in the future, and the Crisis material; plus kind of the elements bridging the present and future parts.
Damn the Emiko plot was stupid. But there’s a special kind of stupid in the line about how her plan is so much more dangerous and personal than anything they’ve gone up against before. This is basically a combination of Slade and Ra’s’ plans; she’s even hanging out in the QC offices like Slade did back in the day (although the set looked different). Slade’s motivations were literally insane and they still made more sense than Emiko’s; they were also the same, wanting to destroy the city because it’s important to Oliver and he should see everything he loves taken away from him. Also, Darhk was trying to destroy the world, let’s not forget that; sure didn’t give much of a damn about Oliver personally, but his plan was worse.
I still don’t really think I understand what the goals here were, what the various players wanted (aside from Emiko wanting revenge on someone who has already lost the family fortune and resources) or why it needed to take all season to gather the components for this scheme. And while I may have said it as a joke, the absence of Thea is a huge problem; and yeah clearly WH is out of the show, but acknowledging her absence would actually have helped the story they had. It was not a good story to tell in parallel to the exploration of public vigilante officers. And I suspect it’s even worse if you watch other shows in this universe; not because I think they’re better (if I did I’d still be watching them) but because there’s no way the policies we’re expected to be on board with here are having any impact elsewhere.
The public enemy aspect of this plot was way too easily resolved. Yes they weren’t guilty of the attack on the police station (cop buddy being conveniently unconscious, then conveniently conscious when needed) but part of the problem was the reveal of what happened to the transport workers, and that’s never resolved. This story just doesn’t work on any level.
As for the future plot...on its own I suppose it’s fine. There are a lot of conveniences, from Zoey showing up at just the right moment at the beginning to the wall being rigged to explode that easily. I’m pretty sure this is the final nail in question of if there was any reason to make Conner not JJ, and I don’t see one; so see me expecting CoIE to restore Sara in JJ’s place and allow them to keep Conner. Though I do suppose that it works to show that this also isn’t the future we saw in Legends, since Oliver was around for that.
I also think it’s further showing how the Emiko plot was waste of time and space, it was resolved with a lot of episode to go, while splitting time with a pretty sizable future plot for this episode. The future plot doesn’t make a ton of sense either, but I kind of liked it better at times, and that’s practically a condemnation of the main plot. Also, is it ever daylight in the future? I can’t remember a time it was.
But...I continue to think this story is just filler and setup for future things. I don’t think it really matters. I don’t buy this as an endpoint for the series; everything they do was for nothing, their kids doomed to continue the unwinnable fight, not a single person gets a happy ending. Yeah, somehow Arrow became the whipping boy of its own universe, and the oversight team doesn’t particularly care about showing them in a great light (ironic that I think they’re the most compelling and least terrible members of the verse), but that doesn’t justify leading to and leaving with a grim dark future.
I do think it’s going to matter in CoIE, that characters introduced from the future (here and on Flash, maybe even Legends) will come into play there. Considering what this episode set up, I think Mia has a big part to play in that. But that’s setup for the next big event, not the arc of this show; and sacrificing most of this season of the show only thinking of where to be as setup for CoIE just proves my point about the oversight team not caring about this show.
I still don’t really understand the deal Oliver made with the Monitor, but I’m not surprised that the cost was something like this. At least he said he thought he would have more time, if he thought it was more a Sword of Damocles rather than a ticking clock it’s a little more forgivable that he didn’t say anything. Still probably should told Felicity and made preparations for when the time came, but a little less damning that he didn’t do it, it’s not like they don’t have a number of Swords hanging over them most of the time anyway.
But the closing scenes were the only ones that got any emotional reaction from me. Oliver’s departure (as much as I don’t see this mattering in the long run) and Felicity’s (much as I don’t really believe this as a choice she would make at that point) at least had some emotional punch to them that nothing else in the episode pulled off. But we’ll have to see how long any of this matters.
It was also a weird combination of rushing to draw connections to the future storyline and utterly failing to do anything that bridged the gap. Had to rush the decision to go into hiding while trying to pretend it makes any sense not to tell people about the baby. Had to hurry up and get everyone tattoos, but only for the people we already said had them, Curtis couldn’t stick around another 30 seconds or we’d have to explain why he didn’t get one. But vigilantes are still cool in Star City (it seems) rather than explaining why things are the way they are down the road. I guess if next season doesn’t have a big reset button it can start explaining how we get there, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have a good explanation in mind yet.
This season...was not good. I’m not sure it’s as angering as s5 was, but it was aggressively meh. It was bland and by the end clearly filler and that’s not a feeling I appreciate being left with. It might depend on what else I’m watching next fall, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this at least gets downgraded to streak-watching rather than worrying about it week to week. I’m not quite ready to be done with this show, especially since they’re going to get a chance to end it next season and I would like to stick it out to the end, but I can’t shake the feeling it’s going to limp across the finish line unless they have a really good plan for what to do for the close.