Canada Report:

WHAT!!!! Just WHAT!!! It's been about 2 hours and I'm still freaking out!

Dusk | December 06, 21:40 CET

And how are things in the Frozen North ? Was it that good ?

JDL | December 06, 21:45 CET

It was an good episode with a few funny lines and cool fights but that tag scene...whoo probably the best they've done yet.

Dusk | December 06, 21:46 CET

Better than that dripping Hydra symbol in S1 ?

JDL | December 06, 21:48 CET

I'd say so. Its up there with Ward killing Hand and everything. I was totally caught off guard. There's a bit of a leadup just prior but the implications...this might do more damage to SHIELD then Hydra did if it gets out of control.

Dusk | December 06, 21:50 CET

Wowsers !

JDL | December 06, 21:55 CET

Its still fairly early it looks like but it has a lot of bad potential.

Dusk | December 06, 21:58 CET

Is "winter finales" a thing now?

Also, hey all.

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:00 CET

Sssshhhh!!! I'm trying to watch!

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:01 CET

Talk about blood diamonds! Ouch!

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:02 CET

"I'll show them. I'll show them all."

Doesn't that need to be followed by an evil laugh?

AndrewCrossett | December 06, 22:03 CET

Hahaha. Love Mace's reaction to Ada.

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:05 CET

Were they flirting?

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:07 CET

Fitz has the same fear as Xander.

Dusk | December 06, 22:08 CET

Does Eli know that Robbie is the Ghost Rider?

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:10 CET

Yo-Yo should have been easily able to outrun that explosion. She moves in the space of a heartbeat.

AndrewCrossett | December 06, 22:11 CET

@Dusk if you mean clowns with knives in the dark, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say a lot of people are afraid of that. ;P

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:11 CET

No it all happened while he was in prison.

Dusk | December 06, 22:11 CET

Yeah, they were flirting.

Paul Zbyszewski didn't write for Buffy, but he probably watched it a lot.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:12 CET

Clown with a knife ala Buffy S1 'Nightmares'.

Dusk | December 06, 22:13 CET

The director's interest in the Evil Book of Evil ... "I have a bad feeling about this." (And Chewbacca roars in agreement.)

javelina | December 06, 22:18 CET

You cannot make this stuff up.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:18 CET

So Mace is going to be the Big Bad? Or is Ava going to open all the portals to all the hell dimensions, allowing the Big Bad to step through? Or maybe it will be both.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:23 CET

Why do I get the feeling that somewhere Fury is rolling his eyes so hard.

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:27 CET

Poor Mace the chipper camp counselor trying to reel in a group of rebellious friends.

Dusk | December 06, 22:32 CET

Is Mace pouting?

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:32 CET

Get a girlfriend first! Hahaha!

Dusk | December 06, 22:33 CET

The "We're not a team at ALL" delivery made it feel like a Very Special Episode.

mnspnr | December 06, 22:33 CET

Why did Mac think someone like Yo-Yo would appreciate being told "I'm trying to protect you." She's right... he is treating her like a niña. Probably has something to do with "Hope" and feelings of guilt.

[ edited by AndrewCrossett on 2016-12-07 04:36 ]

AndrewCrossett | December 06, 22:35 CET

That was a nice move by Mace. He just pinned Daisy down. :)

[ edited by JDL on 2016-12-07 04:47 ]

JDL | December 06, 22:47 CET

Well, he definitely took one of her excuses for staying away from her.

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:48 CET

I'm going to be sad after this is over.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:48 CET

Yeah, right. Maybe in the comic book version.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 22:52 CET

She's outted now. Nowhere to go with anonymitty.

JDL | December 06, 22:52 CET

WELL ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME, MACK!

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:53 CET

Oh boo.

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:55 CET

Wha????

mnspnr | December 06, 22:59 CET

There are 2 questions: Does Radcliffe know and is this because of Aida reading the Darkhold?

I think he does and it’s not because ‘May’ was acting differently with Coulson before Aida got near the book. Last week’s tag we saw Aida looking over a brain scan and they would have gotten May’s when curing her of the ghost infection so they must have made the switch then. Therefore Radcliffe probably knows also given his shifty reaction to Mace moving everything to SHIELD. I wonder how they’ll cover up Anderson. ‘May’ going against Coulson’s orders with the book also fits the directive of LMDS saving agents at any cost. The only flaw in it is how easily Aida killed Nathanson unless Radcliffe was just bold-faced lying about her being unable to harm humans which is possible. Or the Darkhold may have changed that part of her programming I suppose.

Also are they drugging May or is she still that weak from the ghost infection?

The real shady part is in the comics LMDs might not even know they are LMDs. Fury had a whole workshop of himself but the one he left on Earth legitimately thought he was the real human Fury so I wonder if that’s at play here?

But Aida also cares enough to literally take bullets for the team, part of the con or genuine?

Dusk | December 06, 22:59 CET

So the M in LMD stands for May?

NYPinTA | December 06, 22:59 CET

It had to happen.

JDL | December 06, 23:00 CET

LMD = Life Model Decoy.

So AoS is turning into Westworld.

AndrewCrossett | December 06, 23:01 CET

Oh DAMN. Bring back my May!!

javelina | December 06, 23:01 CET

I knew Aida was going to be the Big Bad.

The "off" May is an LMD. Aida has been plotting some major Ultron-like upheaval for a while.

Hint that she was no good... Simmons knew...

Nebula1400 | December 06, 23:03 CET

So, what was the secret Marvel teaser?

Edit: Ha, never mind. Yay twitter.

[ edited by Grack21 on 2016-12-07 05:04 ]

Grack21 | December 06, 23:03 CET

Six part digital series about Yoyo starting Dec 13th.

Dusk | December 06, 23:04 CET

Grreat episode tonight.Nice wrap to the Ghost Rider story for now.I'm sure he'll be back.

As well bringing Daisy back into the fold fully.

Like the nod to the comics where Daisy did become director.

Great to see Yo Yo and Mack get together too.

And a hell of a start with that tag to the LMD story kicking into gear for the second part of the season.

Buffyfantic | December 06, 23:04 CET

@Dusk, it's possible that Radcliffe doesn't know and his shiftyness about having to move Aida to SHIELD is just him being a control freak and having to do his work under someone else's supervision.

I think they might cover up Anderson by making an Anderson LMD, so then the team will have to wonder just how many other agents are actually LMDs and not human.

It would be a refreshing twist if Aida does all of this, duplicating agents and stuff because there is an even bigger danger that she saw and this was her way of dealing with it, which sucks for Anderson since she just broke his neck, but being an android she doesn't have the same sentiment about life and her greater agenda over rides the programming on an individual basis. But I doubt that's where they're going. :/

NYPinTA | December 06, 23:04 CET

Possible. Though based on the promo, unless its a montage of future episodes, it appears they find out at least part of it soon.

Dusk | December 06, 23:06 CET

Could be where they're going, NYPinTA. We see May all beaten up and replaced, but then Aida is cleaning May's injuries.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 23:12 CET

Really something to look forward to in 7 weeks.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 23:14 CET

I've got my fingers crossed for the curve ball.

NYPinTA | December 06, 23:20 CET

Curve balls are what it's all about. Life Model Curve Ball.

Nebula1400 | December 06, 23:39 CET

Lets see, if we need;

1) Someone to get possessed we go with Mack.
2) Someone to have bad things happen to intimate friends from the opposite sex we go with Coulson or Daisy.
3) Someone to have a copycat made of her we go with May.

Are we now looking forward to another disability for Fitz ? Is Jemma going exploring again ?

[ edited by JDL on 2016-12-07 11:49 ]

JDL | December 07, 01:09 CET

Daisy's going to be the one who can connect with Aida on a personal level, get her to reveal her nefarious scheme, and then make her a kitten bot for SHIELD.

Nebula1400 | December 07, 02:20 CET

Calling it now; Phil and Faux-linda happen. Shortly followed by Coulson seriously considering going gay after he finds out. Also no longer being able to meet May eye to eye for a month or two.

JDL | December 07, 05:52 CET

Great action, a few nice moments here and there and about half good humour/jokes that landed for me and half that were lame or forced. I'm happy to have the Eli Morrow and Ghost Rider story arc behind us, at least for now ?(though the latter was a good addition, I wish his had been a quarter-season arc rather than almost the first half of the season).

I feel like they could've done better, overall, with this, but...I'm not exactly sure what I want from the show that I didn't get from this first half. I want it to be as good as the second half (or last quarter?) of Season 1, the majority of Season 2, and I want it to transcend itself more often like the moment in mid-Season-2 when Skye went through terrigenesis and Trip died...or the Simmons episode on Mavis...or Lincoln and Hive's final moments in Season 3's finale. I'm sure there've been more highlight moments/reasons to recommend the series than that, but those are off the top of my head.

Aida is great (well-cast, too) and I'm optimistic about the rest of the season. Anyone else a little tired of Inhumans being the focus, though ? I know the show can't put the genie back in the bottle and just suddenly ignore them, but we've gotta get better adversaries than the Watchdogs and politicians with a chip on their shoulder. How about bringing back some dangling plot threads like Quinn or that scientist who was pulled into the gravitonium back in Season 1 and reinventing them for the more structured arcs of the past couple seasons ?

I just finished Daredevil Season 2 a couple weeks ago and Jessica Jones back in the summer (four episodes into Luke Cage as well) and between those and Buffy and a few other superhero or superheroish series and films over the years, I've come to expect more from my comic book shows. AoS has just sorta been chugging along, for the most part, this season. I still love the characters.

Kris | December 07, 13:13 CET

No real Dr. Strange tie-in, in the end. Maybe the book, the Darkhold, is something he's dealt with in the comics ? Plus there was another dimension in this series and another dimension in the film (or many dimensions, if some of the visions The Ancient One showed Strange besides The Dark Dimension were also intended to represent others and not just trippy out-of-body-experience visuals).

But Eli Morrow's powers and the "ghosts" were explained away with technobabble sci-fi (drawing matter from other dimensions -- so there wasn't actually any magic going on, nothing was created out of thin air). The possessive Ghost Rider spirit or demon or whatever it's supposed to be (a demon in the comics, I believe) is the only element of this arc left unexplored and unexplained. People thought we were getting Mephisto (thankfully not).

Wondering if the Darkhold will end up being magic, or a high tech Kree relic maybe. A telepathic tablet on paper somehow ?

Kris | December 07, 14:23 CET

(Spoiler for Dr. Strange) The current speculation is that the Darkhold is the missing book in Dr. Strange. In any case it is a well established item in the comics.

JDL | December 07, 16:26 CET

Now that would be one heck of a cameo, if Benedict Cumberbatch made an appearance on SHIELD in order to retrieve the book... (I can dream.)

NYPinTA | December 08, 19:49 CET

In the comics, the Darkhold is a book of evil magic created by the Elder God Chthon. (It's basically a takeoff on Cthulhu and the Necronomicon from H.P. Lovecraft's stories.) In the MCU, however, all magic is really just highly advanced tech, so I assume that origin story will be changed. I hope it's something weirder than just another piece of Kree or Asgardian tech, though. I really wish they'd just go for it and have it be magic.

AndrewCrossett | December 09, 09:26 CET

What I liked about this episode, and this part of the season in general:
- the interactions between Mace and the rest of the team are interesting, and the show subverted the expectations by not making him either a villain or a buffoon
- Eli's speech finally gave him some depth, before that he seemed to be a one-dimensional villain

What I did not like in this part of the season:
- predictable villains, most of them one-dimensional and dull (the Watchdogs are metaphorically and, due to their masks literally faceless villains)
- I'm going to come out and say it: in spite of Gabriel Luna's excellent acting and presence and the good CGI, the use of Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider has been pretty unexciting and disappointing (to me, anyway), apart from his early introduction and early interactions with Daisy. You'd think that a vigilante serial murderer who has made 'a deal with the devil' and literally has a force from hell inside him would garner a lot of conflict and interesting moral conundrums with our protagonists, wouldn't you? Instead, he's just been an honorary team member helping them defeat bad guys, except for Mace's occasional remark that everyone ignores nobody seems to have much of a problem with his methods and just accepts him as a cool ally, and his characterization has pretty much just been that of a classic brooding, grumpy male antihero who just wants to protect someone he loves (his little bro) and kill bad people, which is portrayed as OK because he's killing bad people (cool motive, murder OK).

I hope antagonists get more interesting in the rest of the season. Aida going evil is one of the most predictable twists ever, but at least the doppelganger May and the possibility of other people being LMDs (?) may bring some internal strife.

BTW, the show continues to drop random references in dialogue to past characters and events, which they've done a lot this season, but the Agent Koenig reference was odd and made me think: "Which one?" Where are the two surviving Koenig brothers, anyway? They haven't been seen in a long while. (BTW, it's funny that fans used to speculate they were LMDs.) Erik Koenig, aka the guy Ward murdered in season 1, was the one who was giving everyone lanyards and security clearings, which is why it would made most sense if it was a reference to him, but then it would be weird that Daisy had no reaction to it whatsoever. (I'd think if you're dropping references to the past, you'd also make sure to use them for emotional resonance.) And it would be odd if Simmons was saying "too bad Agent Koenig isn't here" when there are two living Agent Koenigs. Or are they still alive? We certainly haven't heard of them dying or quitting SHIELD, for that matter.

[ edited by TimeTravellingBunny on 2016-12-11 21:23 ]

[ edited by TimeTravellingBunny on 2016-12-11 21:23 ]

TimeTravellingBunny | December 09, 20:28 CET

@NYPinTA: Winter finales have always been a thing with AoS. Although they used to be episode 10 rather than episode 8.

@Kris: There's never been a real and substantial AoS tie-in with the movies other than CA: The Winter Soldier.

I agree with so much of what you said. AoS is a show that seems unsure whether it just wants to be a simple comic book show about heroes fighting villains, or it wants to be something more, and it has a lot of those moments where it transcends that and unexpectedly introduces some emotional and moral complexity, but it's as if it's always afraid to go all in with it, and instead does it sheepishly and cautiously, like a child worried of being caught with a hand in the jar.

This season, in particular, while it's been fun, has been pretty light on character development.

And yeah, they really should bring back Ian Quinn and Graviton/Hall. Some of the cast members and producers were saying before the start of the season that they had wrapped up "all the storylines" from the first 3 seasons - they obviously forgot they have a dangling plot thread back from season 1. It's funny that all the characters, including Daisy, seemed to totally forget about Quinn. Remember that he was the one that shot her on Garrett's orders and almost killed her? And sure, they don't know that he has gravitonium, but he's still a dangerous, rich and technologically savvy criminal/international terrorist on the loose. I understand that they don't obsess over him the way they did over Ward because Quinn was never someone they were close to and there's no "love turned to hate" element, but come on, it doesn't make sense not to ever even try to find him and bring him to justice.

I'd also really love to have Mike Peterson back and learn what he's doing, because he's always been one of my favorites and he's had so many terrible things happen to him.

@JDL: "Terrible things happen to/with intimate friends of the opposite sex" also applies to May. Poor Andrew.

Things are certainly going to get weird with Coulson and Fauxlinda (poor Philinda shippers, the show dangles their ship becoming canon in front of them and it's just to do this), but wouldn't Coulson be able to tell a human from an android if things ever get physical? He saw the difference between Agent 33/fake May and real May pretty easily based on their behavior, and Kara was at least human (though, on the other hand, she did not have May's brain waves copied into her brain, or whatever it is Aida has done?).

[ edited by TimeTravellingBunny on 2016-12-10 02:50 ]

[ edited by TimeTravellingBunny on 2016-12-11 21:24 ]

TimeTravellingBunny | December 09, 20:49 CET

Yeah, the way Season 1 left his arc, it seemed like there was more to come with Quinn. It'll be mildly annoying if the series finishes without bringing him back at least one more time (or throw us a bone and name drop him and his current status). The actor, David Conrad (was big on Ghost Whisperer, which I never watched), doesn't seem to be up to much film-and-TV-wise, if his IMDb is at all accurate.

Have wanted Mike/Deathlok back for a while too, but have stopped bothering to ask or gripe about it. So many times in Season 3 that it would've made sense to bring him in to help. Feel like the writers have just forgotten about him.

Would be cool if they brought back all these dangling plot threads and long-missing characters for the second half of this season (especially Mike, since we ARE doing robots right now), or at least for whichever season ends up being the final year for the show.

Kris | December 11, 10:06 CET

I'm miffed that the character's name is spelled "Aida" (apparently officially--see IMDB for example), when her name could have been a shout-out, in a very fitting way, to Ada Lovelace.

In fact I suspect that the character was really conceived that way and that the misspelling is Some Gigantic Mistake that the show is now too embarrassed to admit.

mozzarellademon | December 13, 08:57 CET

@mozzarellademon: IMDB is not an official source, there's incorrect information appearing on it all the time.

TimeTravellingBunny | December 13, 12:42 CET