Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: After, Before
July 16, 2020 1:05 AM - Season 7, Episode 8 - Subscribe
With the Zephyr’s time drive malfunctioning, the team is quite literally hurling toward disaster and Yo-Yo may be their only hope. The only problem? To get her powers back, she’ll need to enlist the help of an old adversary and revisit part of her past long hidden away.
It feels like $Coulson is possibly heading somewhere dark, or am I reading too much into it?
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 1:08 PM on July 16, 2020
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 1:08 PM on July 16, 2020
I liked Yo-Yo and May together. They're good partners with good energy and rapport between them. It's a pairing we really haven't seen too much of, so it was nice to get.
Beyond that, however, I was left cold and kind of baffled by this episode. Look, I've been watching sci-fi all my life, and been a comic book reader for the same length of time. I've encountered time jump and wonky time travel shenanigans before, but somehow whatever was happening didn't make any real kind of sense to me. Yes, the time drive was decaying, and the jumps were becoming shorter, but that shouldn't have accounted for the loops and replays, and...you know, at this point I really don't care.
When Yo-You said she didn't have to bounce back and took off to fix the problem, I really thought that was going to be her heroic farewell action, because somehow I got the impression that getting hit with the pulses (or whatever we're calling them) would be deadly. Apparently not.
I know the AV Club review kept calling Cora Jiaying's daughter but that was another impression I didn't get. I just assumed that the relationship was one that developed as Jiaying was caring for the girl as she grew up in Afterlife and grew into her powers. I know she said she still had to find her daughter, but she also talked about protecting her people, so I guess I put Cora in that category. Maybe it's because the show has never (as far as I recall) hinted at Daisy having a half-sister.
I'm sad that we're unlikely to see Enoch keep tempo for the band.
posted by sardonyx at 8:32 PM on July 16, 2020
Beyond that, however, I was left cold and kind of baffled by this episode. Look, I've been watching sci-fi all my life, and been a comic book reader for the same length of time. I've encountered time jump and wonky time travel shenanigans before, but somehow whatever was happening didn't make any real kind of sense to me. Yes, the time drive was decaying, and the jumps were becoming shorter, but that shouldn't have accounted for the loops and replays, and...you know, at this point I really don't care.
When Yo-You said she didn't have to bounce back and took off to fix the problem, I really thought that was going to be her heroic farewell action, because somehow I got the impression that getting hit with the pulses (or whatever we're calling them) would be deadly. Apparently not.
I know the AV Club review kept calling Cora Jiaying's daughter but that was another impression I didn't get. I just assumed that the relationship was one that developed as Jiaying was caring for the girl as she grew up in Afterlife and grew into her powers. I know she said she still had to find her daughter, but she also talked about protecting her people, so I guess I put Cora in that category. Maybe it's because the show has never (as far as I recall) hinted at Daisy having a half-sister.
I'm sad that we're unlikely to see Enoch keep tempo for the band.
posted by sardonyx at 8:32 PM on July 16, 2020
I agree that the show didn’t make it clear that Cora was Jiaying’s biological daughter.
I couldn’t tell if Yo-Yo’s storyline was ham fisted or well done or I guess both. Especially since her story of guilt blocking her power was butting up against Cora being unable to control her power despite her guilt. It’s comic book psychology so I don’t expect consistency but I felt thematically the story was being pulled in two different directions.
I’m glad May is back to her old self and not just woodenly commenting on her new empathic powers. Also I liked that that nimrod Nathaniel has pioneered the Trenchcoat Mafia look 10 years ahead of schedule. What an ass, can’t wait for him to die.
posted by ejs at 6:12 PM on July 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
I couldn’t tell if Yo-Yo’s storyline was ham fisted or well done or I guess both. Especially since her story of guilt blocking her power was butting up against Cora being unable to control her power despite her guilt. It’s comic book psychology so I don’t expect consistency but I felt thematically the story was being pulled in two different directions.
I’m glad May is back to her old self and not just woodenly commenting on her new empathic powers. Also I liked that that nimrod Nathaniel has pioneered the Trenchcoat Mafia look 10 years ahead of schedule. What an ass, can’t wait for him to die.
posted by ejs at 6:12 PM on July 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
hmm. i had a very different viewing experience, it seems. i totally got that Cora was Jiaying's biological daughter, and am curious as to where that is gonna lead. Daisy has a sister now! and she may well be a villain!
i didn't see any looping or replays? i am not sure what you mean by that - there were cutaways as jumps were happening on the ship, to scenes at the retreat - and then returns to the ship events in real time. i thought the editing was good story telling.
i did wonder if Yo-Yo might die, but thought it was cool she is nowfree from the requirement to bounce-back. her superpower has evolved! interesting to think of the ramifications: does that, as well as the possibility of suppressing a superpower, mean that other inhumans might do so, as well? is this a subtle result of affecting the timeline via actions in the past, or a singular result from her personal experiences?
all in all, i found this episode to be far better than the previous one.
oh yes, i did really appreciate the therapy those two undertook!
posted by lapolla at 11:40 PM on July 17, 2020
i didn't see any looping or replays? i am not sure what you mean by that - there were cutaways as jumps were happening on the ship, to scenes at the retreat - and then returns to the ship events in real time. i thought the editing was good story telling.
i did wonder if Yo-Yo might die, but thought it was cool she is nowfree from the requirement to bounce-back. her superpower has evolved! interesting to think of the ramifications: does that, as well as the possibility of suppressing a superpower, mean that other inhumans might do so, as well? is this a subtle result of affecting the timeline via actions in the past, or a singular result from her personal experiences?
all in all, i found this episode to be far better than the previous one.
oh yes, i did really appreciate the therapy those two undertook!
posted by lapolla at 11:40 PM on July 17, 2020
but that shouldn't have accounted for the loops and replays
What loops and replays ?
posted by Pendragon at 5:38 AM on July 18, 2020
What loops and replays ?
posted by Pendragon at 5:38 AM on July 18, 2020
There were no loops. The jumps kept getting shorter and when they get to zero seconds apart the ship would explode or whatever, so the jumps were short (less than a minute at the end) but never overlapped.
Kora and Yoyo both had a pretty similar arc, in a way. Yoyo got more powerful because she doesn't feel guilty anymore because the people who she hurt weren't entirely her fault, and Kora got more powerful because she doesn't feel guilty anymore because some dickhead told her that actually hurting people is good.
>Liked the bit of Chinese spoken in that episode. Of course, I have no idea if their accents are any good or not.
Wen was born on November 20, 1963 in Coloane, one of the two main islands of Macau. Her parents moved to Macau in the mid-1960s, from mainland China.
Wen’s parents divorced when she was an infant and she moved with her mother, Lin Chan Wen, to Hong Kong.
posted by fomhar at 7:36 AM on July 18, 2020
Kora and Yoyo both had a pretty similar arc, in a way. Yoyo got more powerful because she doesn't feel guilty anymore because the people who she hurt weren't entirely her fault, and Kora got more powerful because she doesn't feel guilty anymore because some dickhead told her that actually hurting people is good.
>Liked the bit of Chinese spoken in that episode. Of course, I have no idea if their accents are any good or not.
Wen was born on November 20, 1963 in Coloane, one of the two main islands of Macau. Her parents moved to Macau in the mid-1960s, from mainland China.
Wen’s parents divorced when she was an infant and she moved with her mother, Lin Chan Wen, to Hong Kong.
posted by fomhar at 7:36 AM on July 18, 2020
Maybe it was just that the jumps that were getting shorter, but the scenes like (I'm going by memory, so I'm sure I'll get this wrong) Jemma(?) throwing something up in the air (maybe a walkie-talkie but I think that was a different scene) and then not catching it and having Mack(?) catch it felt like replays or loops to me...an action happened, it wasn't completed or was completed unsatisfactorily and was repeated and altered). Maybe it was just the way the thing was edited that gave me the impression of loops and replays. I just know there were a few scenes that had me scratching my head as the action (or the direction of the action in a forward, linear progression of time) seemed really off, and not in the "we've jumped forward in the future way" but more like "glitch in the time stream" way.
posted by sardonyx at 9:21 PM on July 18, 2020
posted by sardonyx at 9:21 PM on July 18, 2020
Jemma throws the walkie-talkie and her frame of reference freezes; then we see the other group experience the time she's skipping. Sousa catches it when the ship's frame of reference is back in sync with the rest of the earth, at the end of the skip.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:50 AM on July 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:50 AM on July 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
OK, waaaaaaaay back in Season Two, when Daisy is having the weird dinner with her parents, they mention what year she was born. At one point Cal and Jaiying have a slight disagreement about what year she was born, and I wondered if there was a sibling there that they'd never mentioned before. I figured they dropped that hint once the Inhuman part of the show died out a bit...
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:53 PM on October 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:53 PM on October 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
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Always nice to see Dichen Lachman. Here's hoping that she and Enver Gokaj get at least one scene together.
Yay, Sousa gets a leg! Funniest thing...I somehow had forgotten or never realized that he lost his leg. I just thought it was a "leg doesn't work right anymore" situation.
I was fully expecting Jemma to vanish and Fitz to appear in her place.
Liked the bit of Chinese spoken in that episode. Of course, I have no idea if their accents are any good or not.
I sense bad things coming...
posted by rednikki at 1:11 AM on July 16, 2020 [1 favorite]