5x12 The Real Deal

HAPPY 100TH EPISODE, EVERYONE!

I just want to say this: I'm so happy, so proud and so, so grateful. I've been in love with this show since I first started watching it 3.5 years ago. The fact that we're here today celebrating this wonderful milestone is a privilege, one that I wasn't sure we'd get this time last year. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has defied the odds time and time again. There has been so much working against it: backlash from hardcore Marvel fans way back when it started; ratings getting lower year after year; ABC itself not giving a shit about it, dumping it first in their worst slot at 10 PM on Tuesdays, and then moving it to Fridays, where most shows go to die; finally, having a completely undeserved reputation of the bastard child of the MCU. Despite all of that, it's still going strong, reaching new creative heights with every season, giving us awesome content, and keeping us on the edge of our seats. Maybe it never quite became the smash hit that Marvel surely expected it to be, but all of us who have stuck with it through thick and thin know just how special it is. "We have a small but active fanbase", indeed.

This episode was beautiful. I don't even know where to start. I think I'll just make a list of everything that stood out to me, it'll help me organize my thoughts a little:

1. Daisy and Coulson's relationship is absolutely incredible. I started crying as soon as Daisy teared up and I didn't really stop until the end of the episode. Chloe Bennet broke my heart. She's come such a long way since the pilot and grown so much as an actress.

2. Fake Deathlok trying to convince Phil that it's all in his head gave me major anxiety, mostly because for one horrifying second I imagined them ending the show like this. Just "psych! It was a fantasy all along!". They wouldn't do that, right? RIGHT???

3. Real Deathlok showed up! Yet another old character to have come back this season!

4. I saw a theory circulating around Tumblr that Deke is a descendant of FitzSimmons. I was sceptical. But guess what, it's true! Which means there are some cute, genius FitzSimmons babies coming! It does raise some questions, though. They'll have to send Deke back to the future eventually, right? Will he even exist if the team saves the world, or will he get erased? As usual with the time traveling stuff, my head hurts.

5. Goddamn. FitzSimmons. Wedding. This was where I went from low-key crying to just straight-up bawling. They couldn't have chosen anything better to celebrate the 100th episode with. It was perfect. The setting, Coulson marrying them, their vows... Jemma looked stunning, Fitz looked so handsome (shame about that kilt though, I think they should've gone for it), Elizabeth and Iain's acting was out of this world, as usual. I'm so happy for those two nerds.

What an emotional rollercoaster. I need to lie down for a bit. Huge, huge congratulations to everyone involved in the show, the whole cast and crew. I hope they know that they've created something extraordinary. And I hope that cake they had in celebration of the 100th episode was delicious.

[7.5/10] 100 episodes is a big deal. It’s not just hitting the magic number for syndication, it’s a sign that whatever your shows faults or missteps, somebody out there likes you enough to take you to a round number. Lord knows that Agents of Shield had plenty of bumps along the road, but it reached this milestone and deserves to be celebrated for it.

But the 100-episode mark is also a time to reflect, something AoS seems inclined to do in “The Real Deal.” It’s an episode of revelations, of heartfelt conversations, of blasts from the pasts, of long-awaited moments generally expected to be far off in the future. Despite a few connections to the ongoing plot, it immediately marks itself as an “event” episode, meant as much to be a chance for the show to catch its breath, focus on character, and tell a more individual story, than continue the somewhat breathless pace the show has maintained for seasons now.

The big reveal comes early, as Coulson finally tells his teammates that he’s dying. It’s a canny move -- one that frustrates me because it means Coulson can’t be a factor in the movie side of the MCU once coordinating between movies and TV shows ceases to be an issue -- but one that makes sense as a way of resetting things to the status quo as they were when the story began.

It was always a little awkward bringing Coulson back from the dead after his death was such a meaningful part of The Avengers (a fact which the episode toys with a little later), and so returning him back to that state, with enough forewarning to let him make peace with his death this time, is a strong move for Agents of Shield to go out with.

That’s the broader theme of this semi-navel-gazing episode. Coulson knows the end is nigh, is satisfied with his having the opportunity to make a difference in some people’s lives (and help save the world a few times), and so is at least a little zen about having had this time and letting go of it now without complaint.

It leads to a couple of overwritten and overwrought moments between him and Daisy and him and May respectively, that are nonetheless sweet and at least a little touching. Coulson tells Daisy how he sees her as the future of Shield, and of this idea he’s tried to keep afloat despite many, many challenges. Daisy tells Coulson how he essentially made her, brought her out of nothing and gave her a purpose, to where she’s worried she’ll be lost without him. It’s a heartfelt conversation, where the emotions don’t land with the force they might, but the show’s heart is in the right place, vindicating one of its foundational relationships.

The exchange between Coulson and May fares a little better on that front. Their relationship is a little drier, if no less warm, and that makes their old spies’ understanding of the situation mute some of the over-the-top qualities of the violin swells that seem to be screaming at the audience to feel something. May is understanding but resistant in the way you’d expect; Coulson talks about his illness as the reason the two of them took a step back, and on the whole, the scene cuts the image of two old friends coming to terms with bad news but being okay, which again, vindicates who these two characters are and have been.

But this is a special episode, so it can’t all be heartfelt expressions of fondness in the face of tragedy. It also has to be some badass action and references to the history of the show. The way “The Real Deal” accomplishes this is by adopting the pretty contrived development of the three monoliths in the basement having combined to form a portal to something Fitz calls a “fear dimension.” I’ve heard of lamer excuses in comic book stories, I suppose.

It means we get to see our heroes taking on Lash, Hive, Life Model Decoys of their friends, crazy bugs, Kree warriors and other sorts of past baddies for some mixup/mashup fun. It’s particularly cool seeing a returning Deathlok/Mike Peterson doing some parkour battling (under the watchful eye of the show’s best director), to defeat and dust these various monsters.

That paves the way for a long-awaited wedding between Fitz and Simmons that is enjoyable enough, but feels crammed in here because it’s Episode 100 than because it’s an organic part of the story. The vows are a little generic, and the wedding is a bit of a cliché, but the moment is nice enough, if a bit paltry for how fraught the road to the end of the aisle as is. Of course, this being Shield, there’s a crazy twist, where Deke (who has slowly but surely become Daisy’s best love interest ever with a sarcastic but fun demeanor) turns out to be FitzSimmons’s offspring (presumably grandson, given the timing?). Dun dun duuuuun!

But that celebration feels like the icing on the cake for the episode. The core of it centers on a conversation between Coulson and an image of Mike Peterson (J. August Richards, owning it as usual), a character introduced in the show’s first episode, now telling Coulson that all of his adventures since that episode are part of a dying dream, that he’s still in surgery on the operating table, and needs to let go.

That idea is ridiculous for a number of reasons. For one thing, while the connections between AoS and the broader cinematic universe have been scant, there’s been enough stuff like the group running into the detritus of Thor’s romp through London, or, you know, Hydra taking over Shield, that it would have to be a massive coincidence for the events of the show to all be in Coulson’s head. (Unless, I suppose, the entire MCU post-Avengers was meant to be in Coulson’s head?) It doesn't really pass the smell test.

But it’s clearly meant as more an emotional point than a genuine plot point, which weakens the force of a little, but gives us time to reflect on Coulson as a character, a benefit of a big episode like this one. It’s a thin excuse, but it’s nice to see Coulson thinking about the ways he’s made a difference, gotten to mentor brilliant people, found the daughter he never had, and saved the world. It’s a roundabout way of saying that Coulson’s ideal life is the one he’s lived for the past five years, and while the setup is weak, the intention is strong.

It’s also derivative. The whole fear illusion thing was a noteworthy early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one of that show’s most noteworthy standalone episodes, “Normal Again”, plays on a similar idea of the events of the series being a delusion and coping mechanism for the main character to cope with trauma. There’s nothing wrong with recycling these ideas, especially as they stay in the Whedon family, but AoS doesn't wring as much juice out of them as its spiritual forebear.

Milestone episodes like “The Real Deal” allow us to take stock of a show, to see how far it’s come and how it’s matured. And the fact that it leans on those same ideas as Buffy is unintentionally revealing. AoS tried to marry Buffy-style storytelling with the new Marvel machine, and the results come off feeling more second-hand and less effective than either. It’s not quite as epic or big time as the Marvel movies, nor as personal and innovative as Buffy was.

And yet it’s a show that’s still constantly reaching. That has established its own major relationships that are enough to keep us invested, its own style and surprises to keep the audience interested and guessing, and its own sense of weightless fun and comic book-y weirdness to make it entertaining even when those attempts at depth feel more contrived than well-founded.

After 100 episodes, we know what Agents of Shield is -- a show that never quite met its expectations as the TV landing spot for the film series that blew the top off the box office, but also a show that is its own, worthwhile set of adventures, a curio that gets wilder and occasionally weirder than its big screen counterpart, and has forged it own identity over the course of five seasons.

AoS is never going to be my favorite show, but it’s earned this achievement, and “The Real Deal” is a fitting celebration of what the series is and how it got here.