Agents of SHIELD: Alien Commies from the Future! review S7 E3

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 Jeffrey Lyles 0 Comments Agents of SHIELD, Chloe Bennet, Clark Gregg, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons, Jeff Ward, Ming-Na Wen, Natalia Cordova-Buckley

I’m thinking at this point it makes more sense to treat Season 7 as a bonus epilogue to the “official” end of AOS back with Season 5. Last season was good enough although it’s another case of killing off a major character too soon and then doing some fuzzy logistics to keep them around in not one, but two supplemental seasons. Alien Commies from the Future! certainly had the flair of an old 50s era Marvel comic yet this season’s arc still hasn’t piqued my interest.

SHIELD travels to 1955 in search of the next potential Chronicoms attack. Part of my lack of investment this season is because they’re such a boring group of villains that can only really be taken care of by Daisy, enhanced May and LMD Coulson. I am digging these cool title treatments.

The gang finds a SHIELD outpost, coincidentally at Area 51, where The Chronicoms are searching for a Helius device that once triggered would wipe out a core contingent of SHIELD’s brain trust. This time traveling storyline is starting to get confusing in the same sense that most time traveling epics go. The Chronicoms plan to wipe out SHIELD in the past, but these don’t seem like the most effective points to destroy them. Why not focus on Coulson’s crew right after Hydra made their big move? Coulson and his team were basically all that was left and it certainly seems easier than these convoluted, time-consuming plots.

Coulson and Gemma go undercover as Agent Sharpe and Peggy Carter. The obvious flaw in this plan is assuming no one on the base knows what Peggy or Sharpe actually look like. This pays off as Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) from Agent Carter arrives and quickly confronts Fake Peggy. Sousa needed to arrive as Gemma and Coulson’s plan to ferret out The Chronicom by interrogating various SHIELD agents hoping to make them emotionally crack. The scene was played for laughs but wasn’t funny at all.

Sousa did come off somewhat foolish as trusted Daisy, who arrived posing as a CIA agent. You’d think he’d be suspicious of any new arrivals. Especially since he reveals he’s already hip that there’s sleeper agents in SHIELD.

Mack and Elena have the real Sharpe in holding to get some intel on the Helius. Sharpe is a perfect reflection of his time and is super racist. I appreciate AOS not trying to sugarcoat this time period or shy away from what should be very uncomfortable interactions.

I like Deke a lot, but it feels at times that he’s got a larger role because Fitz isn’t around. Why do so many seasons start off with Fitz on the bench? Deke does get some good moments here as he actually confronts Daisy about her ordering him to kill Freddy Malick. The best was when he was so shocked that Sharpe would respond to him because he was white. “Stupid white privilege” was a pretty good line.

So far both May and Elena have been underutilized and both are in the midst of somewhat similar storylines. May is rattled and having panic attacks while Elena still isn’t confident enough to use her powers. Sidelining them so much hasn’t benefited this early season either.

SHIELD stops The Chronicoms as they run off to another time period. I’m still not understanding why The Chronicoms are taking this approach. It’s not like SHIELD could stop them if they attacked one of these time missions in full force.

Probably the most satisfying moments this episode was Mack punching out Sharpe and then playing up the whole alien invasion when letting him free.