Hot Potato Soup – When Billy Koeing is kidnapped for the location of the Darkhold, his brother Sam and the Shield team must rescue him before it’s too late while Fitz tries to extract information out of LMD Radcliffe.
So Patton Oswalt and the Koenig brothers are back. If that doesn’t make you happy, then you deserve to have your puppy taken away. Right from their exponentially geeky entrance of Star Wars quoting while riding hoverboards, they’re just as fun as we remember. I really love the way the show still manages to make us question whether there’s more to them with subtle hints of cloning or even LMD style duplicates before dismissing them as mere comedy. It’s almost reached the state of Marvel trolling itself. We could still do with more distinctive characteristics between Sam and Billy but other areas make up for us well. That said, we do get to shake the Koenig family tree for some juicy rewards.
The reveal of the much talked about Superior (head of The Watchdogs and funding Senator Nadeer) is largely positive. They have a clear presence, always welcome in a villain. The motives are strong too in their old school ideals of attaining strength and power through struggle and adversity. In their eyes, Inhumans did not work for or earn their power and thus upset that natural order and must be destroyed. While some would argue about the suffering part, there’s clear reason to the madness giving them a twisted but self-righteous agenda. Yet at the same time, the subtle persona seems a bit underwhelming. This is one time I’d really like to have seen Agents of Shield go full comic book for greater theatricality even if their identity was not of comics origin (which at this point seems to be the case). Bonus points for giving the bad guys their own submarine though; 60s Penguin approves.
A surprising recurring theme of the episode turns out to be artificial creations accessing their own existence in continuation of the LMD story; further enhancing the idea brain mapping to the state of human equivalency. Compliments to John Hannah as he does an excellent job of humanising his LMD counterpart, showing it to have its own motives while giving as good as it gets on arguments of spirituality and the like. In great exchange, he points out to Mack that since a soul is neither flesh & blood nor mechanics, it’s just as possible for him to have one as any human. It’s very enjoyable to see not-Radcliffe pulling on the threads of different characters without ever coming across as threatening, like he’s following the Zemo method of making his enemies collapse from within. The character teases we get concerning Fitz’s past were interesting but feel like we should have got something more out of them. Instead it seems like mere setup for a, “Remember this?.... I ‘member” story in a few weeks time.
However, I have one big Vista level gripe with the LMD elements this week. This is pulling the trigger on fake Agent May’s reveal far too early. Don’t get me wrong, this creates some great moments in the final act (“So May’s a freakin’ robot!”) as her embedded programming takes over and there’s some good psychology in seeing her react to no longer having a purpose or showing genuine guilt and remorse towards her actions. Yet this is still all happening too soon. The whole reluctant sleeper agent routine was really getting good following her confrontation with Radcliffe and especially with finally pulling the trigger on a Coulson/May romance. Giving that at least another episode to build would have put far more weight onto the reveal and betrayal. However, the writers may well redeem themselves in the aftermath by showing that LMD May will still be a feature going forward as she’s deliberately not destroyed along with LMD Radcliffe. Could we even see LMD May on a mission to find her real self?
Overall, it’s a fun and enjoyable episode. It might not make the best over every plot opportunity but it puts a face to an ominous villain and sets out a clear and, continuity-wise, downright logical vendetta going forwards. If this follows, the same pattern for the Ghost Rider episodes, then this marks the halfway point for the LMD pod and in that respect, it does what any mid-point episode do; convince us that the show is taking it up a notch going into the second half.