Wake Up – When Daisy attends a hearing to sign the Sokovia Accords, Senator Nadeer has very different plans for her and the Shield team. While Agent May tries to break free from her captivity, her decoy’s suspicions grow about her true purpose.
The LMD element of the show is getting better each week but now, having established much over the last 2 weeks is it really flexing its muscles. Firstly, one simple earlier tease from Radcliffe turns the rest of the episode into an engaging affair of suspicion; he nefariously remarks of a second LMD in action. It builds perfectly on the opening recap of Agent May’s capture and decoy creation to imply things are taking place behind the scenes and leave us with many genuine possibilities throughout the episode for a Dollhouse style reveal of no. 2. Although the final act events are clearly meant to imply the reveal, I think that was a robotic red herring, and that there’s still another LMD reveal to come. As for who? My current guess would be Mack. While his backstory explanation to Yo-Yo for his absence felt genuine and endearing, it also feels like an intentional distraction from his absence. That and Yo-Yo making a few playful passing references to knowing what’s inside Mack shortly after their “go-go” session. As for the known decoy, fake May gives us some good shake ups in pace. At first, she’s seemingly in denial over her injuries last week before an outstanding confrontation between monster and mad scientist that sets her up on an inner battle of humanity to fight her programming over the coming weeks, “There’s enough May in me to do what has to be done”. It conjures up great comparisons to Westworld’s Bernard as she learns that self-awareness alone is not enough to save her. Crazy theory time: Could the show be building up (in the finale) to killing off the real Melinda May and having her decoy trying to live on in her memory? There’s certainly some irony in years of joking about May being a robot to having her character permanently becoming one.
As for the real May, this is where director Jesse Bochco does his best work as we enter the May-trix of sedation simulations captive May has been fighting against. They carry some great action and twists of falling deeper into the rabbit hole with a psychological overtone over the idea of tailoring the scenario to May’s personality and the familiar end results. Mallory Jansen has another superb week as AIDA. This time, it’s her fighting that most impresses as she shrugs off blows to face with quick neck rotations. Her composure also makes a remarkable comparison to May. It’s almost to see May as the gritty, aggressive, “whatever it takes” fighter we know her as being matched by an expressionless woman dressed for a quarterly budget review. Yet there’s immense satisfaction in seeing May give her a good circumventing after everything we’ve witnessed AIDA do to May.
Daisy’s Accords hearing allows many characters to good moments in the spotlight. Firstly, Nadeer is further reinforced as a villain as she schemes against Shield, particularly as she beats them at their own game. Yo-Yo gets to go back in the field and building on his terrific character revelations last week Mace and Daisy get some nice tender moments about performing for the public as she continues to be a used as a PR figure. It’s good see that they’ve kept Talbot around to as he and Coulson conflict over the interests of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not to mention that the whole setup is enjoyable tie in to Civil War as we see those events have further implications on their smaller screen counterparts. In case, Daisy’s grilling of accountability speaks well of bureaucratic intervention. They’d rather have her explaining and debating a detail all day than actually doing her job.
For me, the only niggles this week was the Fitz and Simmons story. It didn’t feel like there was any weight in their relationship tension as Simmons was too busy being understanding about everything and although there was some mini-fallout, justifying it mere seconds later renders their earlier scenes rather pointless. What’s more where do they go from here if they want the pair to still have an uneasy relationship? However, if this was just a bluff to move them into a new happy place I could live with that, and in many ways flipping implications of Fitz’s disloyalty (both to Simmons and Shield) is a good play on convention. Plus, Fitz’s final scene was easily the best moment of the episode and an excellent service to his character by making him smart, perceptive and not afraid to think outside the box. I really like idea of Radcliffe’s villainy developing into a battle of minds between himself and Fitz following their initial friendship.
This LMD section continues to head in the right direction as villains start uniting into a common threat and it certainly sounds like next week we’ll be meeting the illusive “Superior”. Right now, everything is character-driven rather than chasing after McGuffins without lacking any purpose and that is doing wonders for the show; it’s worth tuning in each week just see what the next move is.