Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 5 review: A Trout in the Milk

“A Trout in the Milk” means an early-70s adventure for everyone in Agents of SHIELD season 7’s latest outing.

Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 5, “A Trout in the Milk,” saw the Zephyr land in the early 1970s.

But how did they get there, and how did they add to their team?

So after learning how this time-traveling works in 1931 New York City in “The New Deal” and “Know Your Onions,” they fast-forwarded into 1955 with a visit to Area 51 in “Alien Commies from the Future” and Los Angeles in “Out of the Past.”

While in Los Angeles they made a major wave in the timeline, substituting the Coulson LMD (Clark Gregg) for SHIELD LA branch chief Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) during an assassination attempt, thus ensuring that Sousa’s legacy as the first fallen member of the agency will remain secure while keeping him technically-alive-but-nonexistent as he joined the team.

Roller skates and bell bottoms

Things are different in 1973 – bell bottoms are a thing now, and so are plaid pantsuits (unfortunately). Technology has made leaps and bounds, however – computers can be used, and record players are a thing, as is what’s now considered classic rock.

But the Sousa swap (and the Chronicom Luke’s meeting/alliance with Freddy Malick’s HYDRA) has created some serious issues with the timeline. For one thing, Freddy is still alive three years after he was supposed to die. For another, his son Nathaniel is also still alive. And for another, Project Insight (the preventative laser strike of future targets from Captain America: The Winter Soldier) has arrived forty years early.

Skipping rocks and rocky shipping

Yet another problem is Zephyr One jumping through time without warning, even though Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) is supposed to have a rough idea of when those jumps will occur. This jump was a small one, leaping from fall 1973 to the Bicentennial, Fourth of July 1976, when the Insight rocket is supposed to launch from the Lighthouse near River’s End in upstate New York, near Lake Ontario.

One of the major problems in this episode came from trying to “ship” characters too hard, most blatantly with the Coulson LMD and May (Ming-Na Wen). He’s dead now and a robot, and she’s trying to deal with a form of telepathy that’s got her all messed up…Philinda was never a good romantic pairing, and this feels forced and all wrong.

Deke (Jeff Ward) badgers his grandmother about the necessity of his needing to exist and the various events that need to happen leading up to that, starting with knowing where the heck Fitz (Iain De Caesticker) is, and that’s somehow even more awkward than it sounds on paper.

Also, part of Mack’s (Henry Simmons) motivation for investigating the Lighthouse (before they discovered the new plan) was for some time with Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley), which feels out of character for the couple, especially given her recent confidence issues while healing.

And that’s not even counting the pairing of Daisy (Chloe Bennet) and Sousa as constant mission partners, which while hilarious for banter purposes, doesn’t bode well for his future.

KABOOM

Spoiler alert, the rocket launches despite the team’s best efforts (which involve knocking out SHIELD Director Rick Stoner), though it’s not all smooth sailing. (But it’s SHIELD, and paraphrasing Firefly, if things ever ran smoothly, then they’d really be in trouble.)

Nathaniel captures and kidnaps Daisy and Sousa, Deke fatally shoots Freddy out of the blue (45 years late, perhaps?) in a very Ward-like manner, and Mack’s decision to nuke the rocket came because his parents are prisoners inside the Lighthouse.

Summary

Agents of SHIELD season 7 episode 5, “A Trout in the Milk,” scored high on clever quips and Easter Eggs. It sagged in the middle and ended rather abruptly without much resolution, counting as the first real filler episode of the season.

The blandness of the Chronicom Hunters, in addition to their shapeshifting abilities, make them rather dull adversaries onscreen, though they’re certainly terrifying enough off of it.

But, there are a lot of unanswered questions – why did Enoch (Joel Stoffer) leave his post at the bar a year earlier? Is this a Simmons LMD, and if so, where is the real Simmons?! And in the tag, what will happen with Nathaniel’s phone call asking for information from Daniel Whitehall?

SHIELD shrapnel

• The Streets of San Francisco, a crime drama series that was airing at the time, also had an episode titled “A Trout in the Milk” (1.14).
• The opening credits were outstanding, in the style of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman  series with the MASH font for the lettering and a dramatic voiceover announcing each actor.
• Classic Nick Fury jumpsuits and a HYDRA-green bathrobe were solid costuming touches, and Daisy’s disguise looked straight out of Charlie’s Angels. 
• In the original timeline, Gideon Malick murdered his brother Nathaniel during a Hive-summoning ceremony shortly after their father passed away.
• “It’s…not really a super serum kind of thing,” Daisy shrugs off Sousa’s questioning of her Inhuman abilities. Also, pranking him with the wonders of smartphones was hilarious.
• Some part of the Coulson LMD is 30,000 years old.
• Bruce Banner and Victoria Hand were spotted on the list of Insight targets (Thanks to former Bam Smack Pow Co-Expert Erik Swann for the assistance in finding names.)
• “Come with me if you want to continue to exist!” This may be Enoch’s greatest line yet, which is saying something.
•  Other great lines: Sousa calling bell bottoms “elephant pants,” asking Coulson if “off the radar” was still a phrase people used, Yo-Yo referencing James Bond movies while talking to Mack, and Coulson talking about what he knew of this new, far-too-early Project Insight: “Stoner told me it had something to do with satellites and lasers, which sounded really cool right up until I started explaining it…now it doesn’t sound cool at all.”

Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 6, “Adapt or Die,” will air on ABC on Wednesday, July 1 at 10 p.m. ET.