Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Emancipation Recap

Synopsis of 3×20: S.H.I.E.L.D. feel like they must be open about their involvement with Inhumans; as the stakes rise, the team is tested in unanticipated ways.

I don’t often lose patience with a television show. But, boy, oh boy, did Agents of SHIELD really turn me into a nasty beast this week. It’s hard to keep up with a show that is the physical representation of a juggler with ten too many balls. I am frequently afraid that I’m giving this show too much flack, but this episode has painfully proven me wrong.

In the vast array of storylines they’ve decided to start this season the Watchdogs arc and the Lash arc are easily the weakest plot lines in the show. The Watchdogs had a single episode of development, with a purpose that had a lot of potential for growth in time. However, it’s been weeks since they’ve been around, it means almost nothing that they were unceremoniously given Daisy and Hive’s DNA which apparently has the power to turn plastic into flesh and melt it to someone’s face. I’m no sure when this show decided to just forget that they wanted to have a scientific approach to anything, but it’s happened now.

Adding to the train of “let’s forget that we once tried to play the science angle of this subplot” is the fact that Lash was apparently created only to save Daisy. I wish I could dial down my pure vitriol for this  development, but how can I? This show is telling me that Lash, this great inhuman that has killed so many other inhumans — many of them guilty of simply existing — was supposed to be created to serve the biological purpose of saving one person?

It’d be nice if somehow Agents of SHIELD could decide between one mythos or the other. Are they inhumans because of biology and science and alien testing? Or are they inhumans because of fate and destiny and the ability to jump through loopholes when it suits them?

And that’s my main gripe with this show. It struggles in trying to be inventive without any stalwart courage. It charges forward with new ideas, but instead of having faith in them, it throws all its ideas into the air and hopes that it can juggle them correctly. We see this perfectly with Daisy and Lash. They were charging forward with Lash’s introduction in the beginning of the season, painting him as some kind of monster without much of a purpose. They never went into specifics and chose ever to delve deeper into the plot of this character. His only purpose was to become an unexplained loophole in which Daisy is cleared of Hive’s parasites and is able to join her team again.

I’ve said before that I think Lash and Hive should have had a face off at the very end. The two characters have a duality that could potentially be explored. But instead of focusing in on one thing, and delving deeper into it, we are thrown a deus ex machina and told to accept it.

As the story plummets to new depths in quality, it’s a real wonder to me where we’ll see these characters by the end of the season. Clearly many of the inhumans are going to have to register with the government, despite the fact that that is definitely not what the Sokovia Accords are about. As far as tie-ins go, this one was one of the worst, but I guess since no one has really acknowledged the events of Agents of SHIELD within the grander MCU, the show can really interpret the Accords however they want, since it may as well be a parallel universe.