TV Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Episode 4

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Episode 4 “Out of the Past”

Director: Gary A. Brown

Starring: Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Jeff Ward, Joel Stoffer

Rating: TV-14

Runtime: 45 minutes

Shield‘s definitely been enjoying the opportunities for stylistic experimentation the season’s time travel plot presents so far but the latest episode goes further than any of the last three in allowing the time period the team is currently in to overtly influence its storytelling.  For the end of the agents’ time in the 50s, the show delivers a full-blown, black and white noir tribute episode, in which almost all of the storytelling and filmmaking choices are geared towards paying homage to the style of the popular, influential movies of the genre.  It’s a bold, somewhat unexpected choice for a show that normally plays everything fairly straight, despite its self-referential humor, but it totally pays off.  It’s an immensely enjoyable episode that makes a fairly standard plot much more engaging and sets up more interesting storylines for the remainder of the season.

After being hit by the EMP last week some of Coulson’s Chronicom hardware is on the fritz, making him unable to see color and causing his thoughts to run through his head as a hard-boiled internal monologue.  It’s a cheesy in-story explanation for the episode’s stylistic choices but that doesn’t really matter because said choices are so much fun.  As Coulson’s narration informs us, Daniel Sousa is set to become Shield’s first fallen agent when he’s mysteriously murdered in a few days.  Taking a winding approach to plotting reminiscent of the detective movies it’s honoring the rest of the episode unveils who is set to kill Sousa and why, while the agents work to save him without causing extensive damage to the timeline.

First Coulson must convince Sousa that he himself isn’t an enemy agent, which he manages thanks to his extensive knowledge of Shield history.  He even manages to talk his way into joining Sousa on a mission to deliver the secret tech to Howard Stark, a mission that would lead Sousa to his death.  However, after they need backup during a fight with Chronicoms, the team comes mostly clean with Sousa, who chalks up their advanced tech to the generally weird type of experience one must get used to when working with Shield.  He shares his theory that Hydra has infiltrated the organization, which the team nonchalantly assures him is completely accurate.  Still, the discussion helps the team unravel the mystery behind Sousa’s fated demise: while the history books suspected the assassin who killed him was a Soviet the agents are now all but certain they were Hydra.  But the group is now faced with the dilemma of what to do with Sousa.  Coulson acknowledges that as tragic as his death is it served as an inspiration for many Shield agents and preventing it would likely drastically alter history.  It’s essentially the opposite of the choice the team faced when dealing with Freddy Malick in the 30s and unsurprisingly they make the opposite decision to the one they did then and commit to saving Sousa.  Because, as Mack says “It’s easier to let a bad man than to let a good man die.”  Regardless, they look for ways to minimize the changes to history and manage to find a loophole, disguising the now much more durable Coulson so he can take the bullet meant for Sousa.  No longer needing air Coulson simply lies sprawled out in a pool long enough to convince the assassin he’s dead.  The team extracts Sousa and finally tells him the whole truth about time travel and informs him of the choice they had to make to remove him from history.  He takes it pretty well and agrees to help the team protect history.  Again, Sousa isn’t the most complex character but Enver Gokaj fits in very well with the Shield cast, and picking someone up from a distant time period is pretty much a requirement of any good time-jumping story.

Meanwhile, Shield’s enemies look to make their own changes to history.  Earlier in the episode Deke had been kidnapped while on a recon mission with Yo-Yo and it was revealed that his captors worked for none other than Freddy/Wilfred Malick (now played by Neal Bledsoe), all grown up and the leader of the local Hydra branch.  Deke manages to talk his way out of it by reminding Freddy that he owes him his life but the Malick patriarch and Hydra are still set to be problems going forward, with lead Chronicom Luke (Tobias Jelinek) arriving to form an alliance.  While both groups still lack compelling figureheads (Bledsoe’s Freddy isn’t nearly as watchable as Darren Barnet’s, possibly because he’s hindered by the character’s comically evil beard) uniting them is still an exciting move as it dramatically ups the threat against Shield and promises greater changes to the timeline going forward.

Again, story-wise this episode mainly exists to move people around so they’re in position for the rest of the season but the noir approach makes it an excellent, unique installment.

Notes:

•  While the last couple of episodes have made a point of highlighting how she’s a capable field agent pairing Yo-Yo and Deke for a mission doesn’t seem like the most strategic move, given the former’s lack of experience in operating without her powers and the latter’s general lack of it.  Narratively the pairing works though, given the characters haven’t spent much one on one time together and they have a few nice scenes in which Deke follows Yo-Yo’s lead and commits to combatting the prejudiced status quos of history, timeline consequences be damned.
•  Before attacking him and Sousa while on a train Luke offers Coulson a deal in which the Chronicoms will spare the agents’ lives if they simply give up and let them conquer the Earth.  Naturally, Coulson refuses, and the whole scene feels pretty pointless.
• A comedic subplot throughout the episode has everyone calling Enoch for help but not having time to pick him up on the Zephyr and relieve him from his bartending duties.
• May’s condition initially stumps Jemma but eventually, they come to the conclusion that while her time in the other dimension left her without emotion it’s also caused her to absorb those of others upon touching them, somewhat similar to Rogue of the X-Men.