It was my hope that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Episode 5 would copy the results of last week’s installment. That episode had a good amount of substance, but the real attraction was the style. The film noir style fit well with the 1950s setting. As for this week, we get off to a good start with a very ‘70s intro that I enjoyed.
Following the intro, the episode spends some time focusing on the fashion of the era, which itself is fun. The 1970s has a certain flair to it that the other time periods lacked. However, there is a missed opportunity. Apart from the intro, I didn’t see as many techniques from the era utilized. The show could have gotten really creative, imitating exploitation films with snap zooms and whip pans, but instead it’s shot pretty traditionally.
The hour does sort of make up for this lack of style with some intriguing plot developments. Our heroes find out very quickly that the Chronicoms have been assisting Hydra. In fact, the Chronicoms have been helping Hydra so much that not only have they prevented Wilfred Malick’s (Neal Bledsoe, The Mysteries of Laura) death, they’ve actually sped up Project Insight’s development by decades. In case you didn’t see Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Project Insight was Hydra’s plan to put helicarriers in the sky to target and kill off anyone that stood in their way using an advanced algorithm to identify good guys before they are activated. The biggest difference between these iterations of the project is that this one uses lasers.
While I’m not sure a killer laser from space is any less futuristic than flying aircraft carriers, this is a good way to up the stakes. The stakes are raised even more when the Chronicoms abruptly jump three years in the future to 1976. The Chronicoms certainly are a worthy foe for the agents, though it’s unclear how their foresight works. If they could predict everything, the good guys wouldn’t have a chance. But they still pose a grave threat when it’s revealed they’re holding Mack’s (Henry Simmons, Shark) parents hostage.
It’s somewhat of a letdown that Mack is not forced to a make a true choice, as he’s still able to take out the Project Insight rocket before it reaches orbit, though that would mean he’d disappear from existence or Project Insight would succeed, and if the latter were the case, it would be all over. Supposedly, the Zephyr gives up its position by taking out the rocket, whatever that means.
Overall, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Episode 5 is not as good as last week’s, but it’s still better than the first few. It hints that the Chronicoms have more control than our heroes realize, so that’s promising.
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