Update 9/22/16: This was the episode Tatiana used as her Emmy submission and won with.
So my fave ship from Season 1 is finally reunited. Propane (Rachel x Windows), how I've missed thee. Never part again.
And, of course, if something is given, something has to be taken away, so apparently this is goodbye to my dear Beth. I have to say that this season's Beth arc was easily one of my favorite things that has happened on this show. It gave this show the much needed boost it needed after last season's Castor debacle. Sarah seeing Beth again while on the bridge near the train station broke me. When Beth said "We need you." I almost lost it.
The main two questions I need answered now are: Where the hell is Helena? I can understand why she left, but that doesn't explain why we haven't seen her. The woman is pregnant with twins and I need to know she's okay. And of course, is Delphine alive or not? It's been 7 episodes since she was shot and all we know is that Krystal saw someone pick her up and she was still alive at that time. If she is alive, I bet she shows up in the last seconds of the season finale or Cosima gets some phone call from her at the end of the episode.
This season is jockeying back and forth with Season 1 in the favorite season department. Actually, I think when the season is over, I'm going to watch Season 1 and Season 4 back to back.
No. No. I refuse to believe this.
I'm not crying, not yet. But I have this horrible, cold, twisting sensation in my stomach that usually means I'm nervous. Right now it means that my worst nightmares have come true.
I can't say that I didn't expect Root to die, but I didn't expect it to happen before the series finale, and even then, my silly, naive heart still hoped against all hope that she'd miraculously survive.
Root died protecting Harold, fighting for a cause she believed in. She transcended death and became The Machine's voice. They couldn't have possibly come up with a more fitting end for her character, but that doesn't mean I'm the tiniest bit okay with her dying. I feel sick, to be honest. I can't breathe. I don't know how to process this. Is this what heartbreak feels like? It sucks. It sucks so badly.
It's no secret that I loved Root. I absolutely adored her. She was one of my favorite characters of all time, and her journey from an antagonist to a hero was nothing short of extraordinary. I feel like a part of me died with her, and I don't think I'll ever get it back.
I can't focus because my feelings are overwhelming me. It was a brilliant episode. Great action, great Harold speech in that interrogation room, great Root/Shaw scenes... I need to scream into my pillow. Root just got Shaw back! It's not fair!
How am I supposed to live after this?
Everything hurts, and nothing matters anymore.
I think I need a hug.
Evil Katie Cassidy with black lipstick, dressed in leather? Sign me the hell up! I loved her!
My poor baby Caitlin. I'm glad she's back with the team. She, Barry and Cisco had a really nice moment with the group hug. The original trio of nerds back together, as it should be.
"This is the part where I play stupid and you explain the science."
That's it. That's the show in a nutshell.
A lot of good lines in this episode. Very quotable.
"- I didn't know you cared, Detective.
- Yes, you did."
That was a nice spin on the clichéd "I don't" response. Joe is a gift to this world.
I love how Cisco and Harry are BFFs now. Their relationship is super fun to watch.
Barry and Iris are adorable. I didn't really like the idea of those two together in season 1. I thought that their childhood-friends dynamic with the boy inevitably falling in love with the girl was kind of unoriginal and boring. Now I'm starting to like them. I still wouldn't mind Barry and Caitlin together, though. Grant Gustin is a magical actor who has chemistry with everyone.
I wish I could get my hands on Zoom right now. Damn, leave Barry alone! That puppy of a person has been through enough. He deserves some happiness for once.
If all doppelgangers are mirror reflections of each other, does this mean that 90% of the population on Earth 2 are left-handed?
Okay, so apparently this episode aired a day early in Canada? Thank you, Canada. You rock.
That being said, my mind is filled with incomprehensible yelling, and my hands are shaking, so I'll keep this one brief.
Have we just watched Shaw's Winter Soldier origin story?
Sarah Shahi was on fire, hot damn. What an amazing performance.
I was sure that Shaw's escape wasn't real the moment I saw that random-ass boat. Way too convenient. Then the episode made me doubt a few times whether it was a simulation or reality, but in the end it turned out to be exactly what I'd suspected from the beginning.
I'd been waiting to see my baby Shaw again for so long, but I wasn't prepared for that. God, I can't deal with my emotions. It's too much.
I just really want them to kill Greer, all right? Slowly and painfully. Hell, I'd kill that asshole myself if I could.
If the simulation was in Shaw's head, why wasn't it from her point of view? And have those creeps watched Shoot bang every time they've run it?
This episode was unbelievably sad, and I'll probably still be crying about it next week, but Sarah Shahi tearing apart Amy Acker's shirt might just be the greatest thing I've ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Is there any chance we'll get some more of that when Root and Shaw are finally reunited in the real world?
Shaw has chosen to put a bullet in her head 6,741 times instead of killing Root. I'm bawling. Ultimate OTP goals right there.
What an exquisite episode. It struck the perfect balance between heartbreaking and awesome. Easily one of the best they've ever done and definitely in my top 3.
I'll be on the floor sobbing uncontrollably if anyone would like to join me.
I bought that Lincoln wanted to get out of the old SSR base. I bought that he believed in Daisy, and that after seeing Talbot and the way he was being treated by Shield, that he would be more amenable to breaking out and chasing after her. I believed his puppy dog eyes and his anger and his "I was only ever hear for you" routine.
And that's a good thing! Too often, this show's beats, plot developments, and even lines are too predictable. It's pleasant to have a show like AoS be able to successfully misdirect you now and again. Granted, part of that stems from the fact that Lincoln has been written as something of an idiot who would be the exact type of person to get suckered in by a feint from Daisy, but still. That's using the audience's expectations in your favor, and that's a good thing.
The downside is that at the end of the day, I just don't care about Daisy and Lincoln as a couple. Does anyone? There have to be some people out ther who think it's a good idea, right? I just can't get over their lack of chemistry, or the way it feels like the two of them are just going through the motions. This was the most convincing Lincoln has ever been in his affections for Daisy, and it was all, ostensibly, a deception. Now maybe you can handwave it based on the principle that he was using his real emotions about missing Daisy to deceive her, but still, it's tough to center the big twist in an episode on a relationship that the audience has trouble buying into.
What's strange is that the show has done particularly well at setting up other relationships. Fitz and Simmons barely get any time to be romantic with one another in this episode, and yet even Fitz's little comment about whether Simmons is free for an hour is just cute enough, and their chemistry is so perfect, that it's enough to buoy an otherwise tense moment. At the same time, Mack and Elena have probably spent a grand total of about 15 minutes on screen together over the course of three episodes, and yet I'm truly rooting for them.
Part of that is just the alchemy of two actors finding the right vibe together, and you can't coach that or write it or direct it; it just sort of happens. But much of it is in the writing and the performances. We see Mack and Elena coming from different places and having common ground. We see Mack being something approaching a Shield lifer, whereas Elena is just getting started. We see Elena being a woman of supreme faith, with Mack questioning his. Nevertheless, they clearly have empathy and affection for one another despite their differing points of view, and it makes them feel closer and more relatable for it.
Coulson and Talbot, on the other hand, are not especially close. Talbot is finally let into the new Shield HQ without being blindfolded or otherwise hoodwinked on his way, as Coulson let's him see behind the curtain. Talbot, of course, doesn't like what he sees -- a hotheaded Inhuman, a monster kept in a box, and lots of information about Hive and Daisy that Coulson isn't particularly forthright with.
In the wake of all of this, we get a bit of Civil War redux. It's a laudable attempt to meld AoS with its cinematic counterparts, even though the film side of the MCU has little interest in coordinating with the plebs on the boob tube. Again, you have to more or less handwave why The Avengers aren't involved with Hive, but that's firmly within the confines of acceptable willing suspension of disbelief, and having Talbot as the effective representative of the Sokovia Accords is a nice way to, at a minimum, inject some of the ideas and themes of the latest Captain America film into the show.
Talbot, for his part, represents some legitimate concerns. The Inhumans have done some pretty severe damage. Not being able to keep track of powered people means that folks like Daisy can be out there and dangerous with no supervision and limited control, putting everyone, even the highly trained Shield agents, at risk. On the other hand, Coulson's not out of line when he says that he's kept lists like that in the past and he's seen where they lead, and that by the time the government cuts through all the red tape to approve a mission, it may be too late to stop someone like Hive. He even does a good job of trying to distinguish Shield from The Avengers by noting that the more prominent superhero team is a very public group, whereas Shield is, at least nominally, supposed to operate in the shadows.
Sometimes that type of operation leads to taking steps that the higher ups in the government wouldn't appreciate, like sending one monster to take out another. The whole Lash thing has been pretty hit or miss in my book. I love the dichotomy of Andrew Garner having to balance his real persona with this force within him, and yet having a roided up Sonic the Hedgehog roaming around with his chintzy forehead prosthetics didn't do much for me. The idea that every Inhuman has a destiny and a purpose and that Lash's was to save Daisy makes me wonder why he had to kill all of those other Inhumans to achieve that goal. It also makes me wonder why he didn't make more of an effort to kill the guy who was making more Inhumans before he went all Florence Nightingale on Miss Johnson.
But that, I suppose, would have deprived us of two more episodes where we get to see the Shield team do battle with Hive and take on his "primitive Inhumans" who seemed like mild versions of the Putties the Power Rangers used to fight. It would also deprive us of a brief but emotional scene of May mourning the man she loves, and of Shield getting its protagonist back on the side of the good guys where the big villain (not to mention his Gambit-inspired henchman) are still out there to fight.
But that's the other side of the twist. Surprises are nice, but if you look back at them and discover that the narrative loop-de-loops were just a means to move the pieces around the board so that they're ready for the next big event, the twist still seems cool, but also a bit hollow. It's nice to see some growth from Lincoln, that he can be a team player even when it involves his girlfriend and he's smart enough not to trust someone under Hive's "sway" no matter how much he might want to. It's nice to see Talbott at least halfway understand Coulson's position and give him enough leash to do what he needs to do. It's nice to see Elena hand Mack the infamous necklace (in what's probably a fake out) that seems to spell doom.
At the end of the day, however, this all has to amount to something. Too often, Agents of Shield is just a series of semi-cool moments and action movie trailer one-liners, without enough connective tissue or narrative momentum to hold them together. I enjoyed those moments for the most part in this episode, but I'm still waiting to see if they'll add up to something greater.
Another great episode. Probably one of my favourites of the entire show, to be honest.
I couldn't stop cracking up for the first 5 minutes. The scene with The Machine experiencing a facial recognition error was shown at New York Comic Con last October. I watched it on YouTube months ago, and I thought it was pure gold, but I was sure it was just a fun, little bonus. I never expected it to be an actual scene from an actual episode, but I'm so glad it is. The cast's impressions of each other were hilarious. Amy Acker's Reese and Finch were particularly on point. We also got Root in bunny slippers and her and Finch redecorating the subway. It was nice to have some happy stuff before things got serious again.
The Machine going crazy was really sad for me, especially when Harold realised that she was suffering, reliving her deaths over and over. His speech about things not being black and white and about people doing their best really touched me. Harold was a different man when he created The Machine, and since then he's had to learn that good and bad aren't always mutually exclusive, which is exactly what The Machine needed to understand in this episode. I love how they draw parallels between The Machine and her human agents.
How great is the relationship between Root and Harold? They've come so far. She kidnapped him when they first met, and now they're working together, fighting against Samaritan together, living together, and he's willing to sacrifice The Machine if he has to choose between her and Root? I'm in tears. And Bear likes Root too!
Of course that random guy we saw in the middle of the episode wasn't random. I really should've seen it coming.
The ending was amazing as well. Team Machine on a picnic? That's some fanfiction shit right there, and I love it. I know it won't last, but they deserve some peace and quiet every once in a while.
W..T..F. just happened. Did they just kill #&$%@? First Carter and now #$&%@. I still love the series, its one of the best action series but they are pushing it. This aint the Walking Dead.
(via TV Blaze for WP)
I have been a fan of the mentalist from day 1. And I have always loved this show deeply. What I never understood was why they would go through when the "red line" of the show has ended. To me the strong episodes were mostly the Red John episodes the ones where you could really see Patrick Jane as a normal human being. I was very disappointed when they revealed Red John always felt like it was supposed to be some else entirely. (Still think it should've been Bret Styles!) I would have been ok with this ending right after the revealing of the Red John episode. But no they had to put 1,5 season more into it. Which I don't understand. Season 7, although the ending is the ending this show truly deserves!, has no added value to the whole series. I was hoping that they would reveal that they didn't catch Red John but it was never about that anymore, that storyline was over. And to have us like Vega and Wylie and then kill Vega off just doesn't do this show justice as we have seen many amazing episodes in the past. If you watch the 1st episode of the Mentalist you know you don't have to be a psychic to see that Lisbon and Jane are meant for each other. The nice things about a well planned finale is having old faces come back again. I really didn't like the departure of van Pelt and Rigsby and was really happy to see that they returned for the final 2 episodes of this show. Also the final 3 episodes were finally up to the high mentalist standard that we've grown to love over the years.
