7x09 As I Have Always Been

Where do I even start? First of all, congrats to Elizabeth Henstridge on directing the best episode of a spectacular season (and one of the best episodes of the show)! I love it when actors get to branch out on their shows and try new things. She did a terrific job.

This episode was all around perfect. It was a total nail-biter, you could really feel the urgency of trying to find the solution the whole way through, but there was also plenty of humor (Coulson explaining everything to Daisy, Daisy and Jemma's made-up word bit, Enoch repeatedly kicking everyone's ass) and good old-fashioned Feelz with a capital F. I'm glad it was a Daisy-centric episode as she didn't appear at all in episode 7 and only had a couple scenes last week. Chloe Bennet was fantastic. She had to carry this entire episode on her shoulders (the runtime was 42 minutes and she was literally on screen for like 40 of them, I can't imagine how many hours of filming that translates to) and she made it look easy. You can really see how much she's grown as an actress since season 1. She's always had talent and charisma, but over the years she's had the chance to polish those raw qualities and she's really become one of the best actors on the show.

I'm very sad to see Enoch go. He's been with us for a while now and I've grown attached to him. But at least he wasn't alone and he sacrificed himself for his friends. And his death scene was SO beautiful and moving. Did he foreshadow the season finale when he said the team would fall apart? That's definitely something I could see them doing, leaving SHIELD just to finally have a life.

Man, Chloe and Enver have brilliant chemistry together. Daisy taking an entire loop just to have a conversation with him and then going in for that kiss was lovely. It's a shame he won't remember any of it. And I guess he's gonna die now, just like every single one of Daisy's love interests. Although I don't think they would kill an important character two weeks in a row, Enver is still only listed on IMDb through episode 10, so I guess we'll see what happens next week. I would really like to see them end up together though.

11/10 overall. I'm so glad this final season is so good. Imagine if it had turned out to be as meh as season 6. That would've been a huge bummer. This is the send-off that my team deserves.

Only three spots left on this list, here we go!
5x14 "The Devil Complex"
Just like Elizabeth got her chance to really shine back in season 3's bottle episode, this was Iain's tour de force. That episode really stabbed me right in the heart when that twist was revealed. That was the episode Fitz became a morally ambiguous character for me. I understood the reasoning behind everything he did, but hurting Daisy the way he did made me feel kind of :grimacing: about him (and yes that emoji encapsulates my feelings better than any words could because that's the exact face I make when I think about him in that episode). I still don't like the fact that the writers just straight-up killed him at the end of the season instead of actually making an effort to fix things between him and Daisy. It felt like such a cop-out. But this episode was amazing and intense and I loved it but also kind of hated it? You get it. Either way, Iain was on fire and the writing was brilliant.

[9.7/10] “As I Have Always Been” is a creative episode, using the Groundhog Day conceit for all it’s worth. It is a well-built episode, taking that premise and constructing a series of logical and exciting plot obstacles within it. But it is also an emotional episode, one that utilizes the time loop concept for something more than just thrilling sci-fi shenanigans, but to illustrate notions of mortality, of love, and of sacrifices that blend the two.

It is a tour de force, possibly the best thing Agents of Shield has ever done, and more proof that the show is finishing its run at the height of its power. While this is not the first show, even the first sci-fi show, to embrace the Bill Murray classic, this is one of its best renditions and quite possibly the series’s finest hour.

What’s most impressive about the construction of the episode is how, despite the time loop setup, there’s a clear progression to the problem solving. You start with trying to figure out how to stop the time skips, which requires fixing the time machine. How do we do that? Well, it requires removing Simmons’ implant. Done -- oh wait! Now it’s a murder mystery, and we have to figure out whodunnit! Turns out it’s Enoch, and he doesn’t even know it! Now we have to stop Enoch, which is hard because he’s an impossibly strong Chronicom! So we have to remove the implant as fast as possible, ideally before he can stop us. So we do that, only to get the benefit of Jemma’s unfettered mind and learn that fixing the time machine will require...sacrificing Enoch.

Putting a pin in the emotional component of that, it’s just some damn good storytelling. Each solution the team arrives at feeds nicely into the next problem. Having our heroes think and fight and plan their way out of each one requires lateral thinking and different combinations of brains and brawn, which keeps things interesting. Even better, the show creates a sense of urgency within the “time storm”, having the team move closer and closer to destruction within it despite the repetition of events within a particular loop, creating a ticking clock despite the cycle.

It also allows the show to have a lot of fun with it. For one thing, there’s a lot of smash cut humor from the misfires. Seeing the escalating, but no more successful attempts to subdue Enoch, quickly go poorly was an especially good gag. There’s also lots of great humor that’s mined from Coulson and Daisy’s frustration at having to redo everything, and/or attempts to prove to others that what they’re saying is true. (Phlebotomy!)

At the same time, the concept allows the show to spotlight the trial and error that goes into each bit of problem-solving, finding fun detours and cul de sacs that allow us to see our heroes’s theories and mental processes at work in a way that’s tougher when time only moves one way.

Despite all that clockwork entertainment, this isn’t just a flight of fancy. The episode features some of the show’s best personal and philosophical material. Taking time out for those character moments amid the temporal maelstrom gives this struggle meaning apart from just the (frankly not terribly convincing) threat that this could be the end for them.

That starts with Coulson and Daisy who, after seven years, have become such a natural and almost peerless pairing on the show. I’ll cop to being tired of the show reviving Coulson after so many false deaths, but I like that they use that as a bridge to exploring the emotional turmoil it would cause. The script connects his difficulty with having to see his friends die over and over again in the time loop with his realization that, having been made an android without his consent, he’s going to have to watch everyone he cares grow old and die eventually.

It’s a bracing thought. Coulson seems to have disdain for himself as a “thing” and what it means for his future. The prospect of everyone you care about perishing while you live on is a terrifying and dispiriting one. The show does a good job of using the time loop as a microcosm of that for Coulson, while at the same time not skimping on how hard it must be for Daisy and others to see Coulson himself die and come back so many times.

But Daisy’s making other attachments. I have to admit, I am not on board with Daisy/Sousa. I wasn’t on Team Sousa back in the Agent Carter days, and I’m frankly kind of tired of Agents of Shield feeling the need to pair Daisy off. They’ve known each other for maybe a week, which feeds into my preexisting tiredness of instalove on television.

Still, the show does as good a job as possible under the circumstances here. It lauds Sousa as someone who helps people without asking, simply because help is needed. It draws a not so subtle line between Daisy and Peggy as two people who both “run through brick walls” to solve problems and save lives, which feeds nicely into the current moment. I don’t buy the two of them falling in love so quickly, but the show buttresses their concordance as best as could be expected, and at least highlights what the pair would admire about one another.

That comes down, in large part, a willingness to set aside your own well being to protect the people you care about, who need support, and that dovetails wonderfully and tragically with Enoch’s end here. There was no moment more affecting for me in this one than the good guys all debating whether or not it would be ethical or right to have Enoch sacrifice his life to fix the time machine, only for Enoch to short-circuit the whole thing by simply reaching into his own chest and making the decision for everyone.

I am going to miss the character tremendously, someone whose emotional connections somehow resonate all the more underneath his robotic monotone. Still, he gets an incredibly poignant and meaningful death, one where he’s choosing to save his friends due to the bond he’s formed with them, a bond unique across all his eons of journeys and interactions.

With that idea, the episode vindicates the human condition and the act of death and sacrifice. It is a lonely act, one that no one can follow you through, but also one where surviving is its own form of pain. That is the irony, that both passing on and staying behind carry their own distinct forms of hurt. And yet, Enoch finds comfort in the naturalness of it, the inevitable joining together and falling apart of life in this universe, to be part of a cycle that not even LMD Coulson will be exempt from. There is a comfort to that, for Coulson, and for us.
That moral ties into the time loop premise in a clever, recursive way, while at the same time creating real consequences for this story and thereby ensuring the genuine stakes in the episode. Like the team members themselves, every part of this episode works together, gaining strength from the plotting, humor, character, and emotion that feed one another from beginning to end. The repeating stretch of time is a well-worn concept by now, but with such a fantastic rendition of it, Agents of Shield breathes new life into it, even as it embraces the end, of the series and of all things.

At first I was like oh no, a happy death day loop situation, but yes this was the best episode of the season so far (it dethroned the mack and deke one for me)
I started watching the show mainly because of Coulson-Avengers but also for Chloe, because she seemed like a very charismatic and fresh actress, tho I have to confess that I didn’t connect with Skye/Daisy/Quake and I even disliked her character at times but obviously Daisy has come a long way and I’m glad she had this episode focused on her cause it serves as a goodbye but also to show how much Daisy has come as a character and how much Chloe has come as an actress.
It feels like this season wasn’t that much about a plot but about giving closure to the characters and showing their growth, and that’s why we’ve had episodes centered in Mack and Deke, May and Elena, and now Daisy and Coulson; I hope we get an episode focused on Jemma and Fitz, hopefully one where they are happy and safe! But nevertheless these are filler episodes that don’t contribute much to the plot.
And I’m gonna miss Enoch, I wished he had been able to be with them at the end, cause he deserves all the praise, even tho they really mistreated him, especially Fitz (last season), I think I cried more with his death than with any of Coulson’s deaths. And even tho Enoch was a robot or whatever he made his own choices out of the programming, while Coulson is just memories put into a carcass so yeah that’s not Coulson that’s like a flash drive.