Agents of SHIELD season 5, episode 3 review: A Life Spent

Reviewing the third episode of season 5 for Agents of SHIELD.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has built its fan base with a combination of smart, twisting writing and a willingness to incorporate the lesser known properties under the Marvel umbrella. The new season sees this formula taking on the classic concept of the drab, futuristic dystopia, and going once again to the seemingly inexhaustible well of Marvel’s impressive catalogue of alien races, bringing back the ever-popular Kree–those legendary opponents of the Krull, and the driving force that has shaped much of the show’s Inhuman mythology.

This week’s episode opens after the daring reveal that was the series premiere: the team, minus Fitz, has been hurled into the future by the power of another monolith–a future where the Earth has been destroyed, seemingly by Daisy herself. Or rather by Quake, her rebellious alter-ego.

The story pushes forward with three main plot lines.

Jemma, now a slave and living trophy to the season’s most despicable new character, the heartless, soul-pruning Kasius, continues to make her way through a strange (suddenly muted) new reality, but encounters a bit of the familiarity in Abby, an Inhuman with the ability to alter her molecular density–similar to The Vision and Apocalypse, though at nothing approaching the competence of those two comic titans.

Abby is slated to perform in some sort of ceremony for the Lady Basha (whom we are led to believe is someone of great importance by the way she blows off Kasius, causing the blue overseer to double down on the pensiveness when speaking of her), and it is made clear that a poor performance would be bad for everyone involved.

It becomes Jemma’s job to tutor the young Inhuman girl in the use of her gifts, as Kasius has yet to find much progress with a teaching method that seems to be entirely composed of the tried-and-true method of staring creepily followed by random temper tantrums and smashing stuff. One has to wonder when Kree workplace sensitivity courses were abandoned.

Jemma, armed with both compassion and experience with Inhumans, is able to mentor the girl through an exercise where she shatters a glass vase by phasing her hand through it, Shadowcat-style. Which is good, because it turns out the ceremony Abby will participate in is less Cirque-du-Soleil and more Beyond Thunderdome, as she is forced to fight Lady Basha’s brutal champion, who looks a bit like a mix between a red-eyed vampire from Supernatural and an extra from Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

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After a somewhat disturbing sequence where the young girl is abused and beaten around the ring in a manner that seems a little too close to domestic violence for comfort, Abby finally remembers Jemma’s advice and uses her powers to ignore Bruce Lee’s suggestion to be like water, and instead becomes harder than steel, causing not-Spartacus to shatter his arm during an ill-advised punch. A moment later she pulls the phase trick again, only this time she puts her arm through the gladiator’s chest–resulting in his death and her being covered in a sleeve of gore.

Jemma and Abby are shocked afterward by her capacity for violence, and everyone involved misses a perfect opportunity to slip in a “are you not entertained” reference. Shame on you Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. writers.

In the aftermath, Lady Basha, impressed by the girl’s performance, buys her from Kasius for what we later learn is a better price than he expected, and the two head away from the Lighthouse. All thanks to Jemma and her compassion.

I can’t help but suspect that Abby and her amazing powers will return later in the season, however. Cool abilities are like bad pennies; they just keep showing up.

Meanwhile, Agent Coulson, May, Yo-Yo, and Mack learn that the future is a little lax in its labor laws as they toil under the endless selfishness of junkyard boss Grill. The surly, surprisingly portly man (who must have caught a lot of chow over the years from the Kree’s generous dog food dispensers that we saw during the “renewal”) is neither hard nor fair, but instead some space version of everyone’s least favorite Amazon warehouse boss, as he seems as perpetually unsatisfied as he is confusingly loyal to his all-powerful overlords.

It’s not all shipping and receiving for our hapless band, however, as they soon pick up the trail of a secret message being broadcast specifically about them, calling them “the delegation.”

A brief space trip on the Trawler with Grill’s right-hand thug, Zev, reveals that the message is coming from the surface of the planet, an inhospitable no-man’s-land. A fact that is driven home later in the episode when–after a brief scuffle on the ship and some pithy rejoinders–Yo-Yo and our intrepid heroes decide to frame the villain of the week, by planting a firearm on Zev thanks to Yo-Yo’s stash-and-dash powers.

This intended act of kindness doesn’t quite pan out, though, as the punishment for carrying a gun is exile on the hellscape formerly called Earth, which is, as we see during Zev’s final moments, now an exclusive hangout for despair and the nasty future space wolves the survivors call “roaches.” It’s a bit like the Liam Neeson movie Grey if Mr. Neeson had, in fact, never developed a particular set of skills and was just really good at being eaten.

That trip to find the origin of the secret message suddenly seems less Marvel/National Lampoon’s Really Brave Christmas Vacation and more a short-straw suicide mission.