Agents of SHIELD season 6, episode 6 review: Inescapable

This week’s Agents of SHIELD adventure was “Inescapable.” Our own minds often are.

This week’s Agents of SHIELD adventure was “Inescapable” for longtime fans. Or anyone, really, since you can’t get away from your own personal experiences and memories.

Last week in “The Other Thing,” Sarge (Clark Gregg) had a kidnapped May (Ming-Na Wen) kill off one of the alien bat zombie creatures (called “shrike,” apparently), while they pondered the gaps in his memory.

Dr. Benson (Barry Shabaka Henley) discovered that the crystal-type stuff left from the zombie corpses was similar to the Monoliths and proposed an investigatory trip among Incan ruins to find out more information.

Happily, Daisy “Quake” Johnson (Chloe Bennet), Piper (Briana Venskus) and Davis (Maximilian Osinski) were able to get Zephyr One back to Earth and the Lighthouse, to a happy reunion with Mack (Henry Simmons) and Yo-Yo Rodriguez (Natalia Cordova-Buckley).

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In space, Enoch’s (Joel Stoffer) home planet was annihilated by a plague caused by ripples in the space-time continuum, leading his former boss, Atarra, to threaten to execute Leo Fitz (Iain De Caesticker) unless time travel could be unlocked. So he was teamed up with his wife Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) but, in true FitzSimmons fashion, they’re prisoners now (again) after being essentially kidnapped for yet again (roughly the fifth time off Earth this has happened combined).

Unusual for such an ensemble-based show, this episode’s structure was very single-minded (“Inescapable” in its singular course, you might say) in a way that hasn’t really been seen since the enormously significant “4,722 Hours” (3.05), which told what happened to Simmons on the desert planet of Maveth.

Memory Lane has….personal demons?

Atarra the Chronicon put FitzSimmons into a Cerebral Fusion Machine, which Enoch notes could cause grave problems for humans, as they have emotional problems that are unsolvable by logic and reasoning alone.

So the entire episode took place inside the mind prison, but locales visited as they worked through their shared pains and tribulations included Jemma’s childhood bedroom, Fitz’s university dorm room, the Lighthouse, the containment pod from the Bus, and either the Hub or the Triskelion during their meeting with Coulson (Gregg) when he offered them slots on his team.

They dealt with the trauma of Fitz’s death during the fight with Gravitron (Adrian Pasdar) in “The End” (5.22) and were chased by Dr. Leopold from the Framework and a scary monster form of Simmons’ worst memories that looked like Samara from The Ring. 

After Samara Simmons starts dissecting Fitz and Dr. Leopold puts Simmons into the memory machine, they realize that it’s a dream and they can call their friends to help. So Mack and Daisy save them before they get killed, respectvely.

Once they get chased into the containment pod (which then inevitably fills with water), FitzSimmons argue about their coping strategies of repressing or embracing the darkness before confessing their love for each in the loudest and angriest of tones.

Eventually, Enoch’s conscience won out, and he murdered Atarra and the rest of the Chronicons to save his friends.

Where things currently stand

Well, FitzSimmons are with Enoch, so…. they aren’t in that specific dangerous situation anymore, but they’re likely not safe, either.

Also, as Mack informs Daisy during a catch-up briefing, the shrike and/or Sarge’s crew seem to have caused the destruction of the Chronicons’ planet through volcanoes suddenly emerging.

SHIELD shrapnel

• “Inescapable” was written by DJ Doyle, who was originally hired as a writer’s assistant during the first season, but has graduated over time to a producer. His episodes include “Nothing Personal” (1.20), “The Things We Bury” (2.08), “Melinda” (2.17), “Purpose in the Machine” (3.02), “Many Heads, One Tale” (3.08), “The Team” (3.17), “Deals With Our Devils” (4.07), “What If…” (4.16), “Orientation Part 2” (5.02) and “Past Life” (5.10), some of the most influential episodes of the series.
• 7-year-old Jemma collected butterflies and had a Winnie the Pooh among her stuffed animals, and wanted to be a biologist when she grew up, studying cuttlefish.
• “I’m not afraid. I’m simply observing. From a distance.”
• The picture book she wanted Fitz to read her featured someone very much like the adult Simmons in the illustrations, along with a rabbit that was either supposed to be Daisy or Judy Hopps from Zootopia. It also had the cover of the Darkhold, which as Fitz exclaimed, is a “VERY BAD BOOK!”
• Fitz had a poster of the Da Vinci eight-legged man (of course he would) in his dorm room, and he was a fan of the English Premier League team Manchester United.
• “Oh, I forgot to tell you – you’re also a grandfather.”
• Their aghast reactions to Dr. Leopold and Samara Simmons making out summed up the audience’s feeling, though it was probably a fun moment to write.

Agents of SHIELD season 6 will return with episode seven, titled “Toldja,” next week on Friday, June 28 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. As Sarge and his team are now prisoners in the Lighthouse, based on the trailer during the end credits, we can take it that the prisoners are no longer prisoners, as Coulson once said.