Agents of Shield Season 4 Episode 22: World’s End/ Season Finale Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Is it Halloween? No, it’s time for the return of Ghost Rider, back from the other dimensions to help with Aida! This week, we wrap up the season, tying up some dangling loose ends, but pulling a few new threads loose at the same time. What would be the fun in having a neat, tidy ending, anyway? We know we’re getting a 22 episode season 5, probably starting in November, so let’s enjoy this one and make it last all summer.

Robbie has found his way from the portal in the base to his haunted Charger, and is on the road again. May is not letting her lost bottle of Haig go. She’ll be interrogating Coulson about LMD May over the next bottle. For now, she’s got the Zephyr on automatic pilot, frequently switching altitude and thruster speed.

Jemma and Fitz discuss Ophelia’s inhuman powers, how she got them, and what they do to people. He’s a bit dramatic and self-loathing about it, and Jemma tells him that she doesn’t need his innocence, she needs his solutions that kill people, right now. He’s still uncertain and unenthusiastic, which leads Jemma to ask him if he even wants to kill Aida.

The Framework is beginning to shut down. Daisy and Coulson try to find ways to convince Mack and Yo-Yo to leave, while watching it disappear around them. Daisy feels guilty for leaving Mack behind her, but Coulson comforts her. He feels she made the best call she could, given the situation. It’s so nice to see them working together again, supportive and like a father and daughter team.

Daisy leads Radcliffe to the Triskelion, where Elena is locked up and under attack, by leaving a trail of yo-yo’s through the city. He finds her just in time. The building is disappearing around them. That building just isn’t safe in any reality.

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The 100 Season 4 Episode 12: The Chosen Recap

~ Metacrone

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It’s time for Culling number 4,652 on The 100. This time, Octavia is in charge, and, while it would be going too far to say she’s enjoying rubbing the irony of it all in to the Arkadians, she’s not pulling her punches, either. Clarke, Bellamy, and most of the rest of the younger generation of (still-living) named characters are on a time-sensitive quest of their own that takes them far from the bunker, as the Death Wave approaches. What could possibly go wrong?

The Grounders are herding the Arkadians out of their dorms and into the central meeting area. The Arkadians are clueless as to why, but Emori, ever the sharp survivor, picks up on the fact that only 100 spots are reserved for them, according to Octavia’s plan. Everyone who overhears her is stunned. Jaha takes a moment to guilt Bellamy about all of the people he’ll be murdering because he opened the door, since Jaha can’t do the math or open his eyes enough to look around and notice how much more crowded the bunker is suddenly. Pretty sure Bellamy just saved a net 800 lives. They just aren’t people who will listen to Jaha when he tries to play God.

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Riverdale Season 1 Chapter 11: To Riverdale and Back Again Recap

~ Metacrone

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It’s Homecoming weekend in Riverdale. The Riverdale Bulldogs will be playing their archrivals, the Baxter High Ravens, Poe’s symbol of loss and desperation. Riverdale still wants to appear like an idyllic little town, but the battle with its darker side continues. The overall themes of the episode are homecoming, reunion, nostalgia, and commitment. Home is a place of love and family, but it can also be a dangerous place, where people get hurt and evidence of the family’s crimes gets hidden.

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The 100 Season 4 Episode 8: God Complex Recap

~ Metacrone

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It’s 10 days until Praimfaya. Desperation is setting in, causing some to become more ruthless, some to become more calculating, and some to party like it’s 1999.

It’s time to test out Luna’s bone marrow in the radiation chamber. Baylis is placed inside, still sedated, and the radiation is slowly turned up to 11 until it’s higher than the level of the Black Rain. Baylis survives Black Rain level radiation, but when the levels continue to increase, he writhes in pain as the radiation consumes him. He dies a horrible, painful death while the others watch.

The Ark lost 18 people to the Black Rain. They are holding funerals and burials by fire for the dead. Jaha gives the eulogies and lights the funeral pyres. He’s very comfortable being the prophet of the apocalypse after recruiting for ALIE for months. He’s also aware of the power that even appearing to be an authority figure holds.

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Riverdale Season 1 Episode 10: The Lost Weekend Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week is all about chaos vs control. Jughead is so discombobulated that he can’t even come up with a literary reference in his opening voice over, unless we count the numerous dystopian novels with the theme of societal control. Jughead definitely thinks he’s in a dystopian novel this week. We get the literary theme of the The Three/Four Musketeers from Betty and Archie, instead.

Jughead’s birthday is this weekend. He prefers to celebrate quietly and barely acknowledge it. The gang has other ideas.

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The 100 Season 4 Episode 11: The Other Side Recap

~ Metacrone

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Things are getting tense on The 100. I know, they’re always tense, but with Praimfaya only two episodes away, it’s finally becoming real to everyone. This causes all kinds of behavior changes. People who thought they were ready to die suddenly want to live. People who’ve been threatening to die for years finally do. Sensible people don’t make sense. And the Grounders learn to cooperate.

The ‘previously” cruelly taunts me by showing Roan. At least his head is still alive in a glass jar on Agents of SHIELD.

Bellamy is still arguing with Jaha and Clarke. Not sure who’d ever win that stubborn-off. With Octavia involved, Bels isn’t going down easy. Clarke doesn’t have any real skin in this game, beyond the usual fight for the people. Jaha is just fighting for control and his ego, so his usual as well. Bellamy points out that he missed the election where Jaha got re-elected chancellor.

Abby comes in and breaks the stalemate. I knew she wouldn’t be okay with leaving Kane outside. She and Bellamy get on the radio to Octavia, who tells them that she won and decided to share the bunker with all of the clans. 100 people from each clan. Kane is keeping the people outside at bay. Bellamy says he’ll fix this.

Jaha comes into the office with a group of armed guards, including Miller, who seems to have turned to the dark side his boyfriend, Brian, was on last season. Bellamy insists that they open the door and honor Octavia’s plan. Jaha keeps reiterating that it’s not safe to let any Grounders in. He’s only willing to save the members of Skaikru who are already inside, despite the fact that the people outside don’t know that Skaikru stole the bunker yet, and are peacefully choosing who will enter from their clans. But Jaha is sure that having any Grounders involved in any way will lead to violence. Because Skaikru isn’t known for slaughtering innocent people. They didn’t do cullings, or murder Grounder armies while they slept. Jaha himself hasn’t put hundreds of people to death for petty crimes. Nope.

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Riverdale Season 1 Episode 13: The Sweet Hereafter/Season Finale Recap

~ Metacrone

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Riverdale begins and ends its season finale with a cliff hanger. Yes, Jughead went there. He acknowledges that we’re in the Agatha Christie novel that we’ve been in all along, with a complicated drug and murder conspiracy that ultimately touched the whole town. Jughead and Alice narrate the series of events that lead to multiple deaths, then the episode follows the continuing fall out of those deaths.

The facts as they are currently accepted: The maple syrup was a front for a heroin transport business. Jason found out about the drugs and threatened to expose Cliff. Mustang kidnapped Jason on Cliff’s orders, then Cliff murdered Jason. Cliff killed Mustang so that he couldn’t talk, and left the bag of money implicating Hiram. Clifford then coerced FP Jones into confessing to the murder by threatening to kill Jughead, even though all FP had done was clean up the aftermath and dispose of the body.

The sheriff really is clueless, having had no idea about the drugs, or any of it. I’d thought he was on the Blossom payroll, or possibly a Blossom himself, since his prematurely gray hair matched Clifford’s, but he seems to just go through life turning a blind eye to things he doesn’t want to see, which is almost anything that would implicate a wealthy, influential member of the community. The only way the murder was solved was because the kids wouldn’t let it go.

The mayor has the same philosophy as the sheriff, obviously. They decide a crackdown on the local drug trade is in order. Since the Riverdale police force clearly doesn’t have a single investigator that knows what they’re doing, the sheriff turns to FP. The Serpents are the obvious target for the police, being their usual suspects. If FP names some names, he’ll get a reduced sentence, the mayor and the sheriff get to claim they’ve taken action, and everyone is happy. Except the people who are wrongly imprisoned, and FP, when the Serpents retaliate, but who cares about some lowlife Serpents when there’s fake justice to be had, right?

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Agents of SHIELD Season 4 Episode 21: The Return Recap

~ Metacrone

 

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This week, it’s time for the agents of SHIELD to reacclimate to the real world. Some challenges and surprises await them, as you’d expect.

We start with a cheesy opening outside shot of the oil rig. This is why most of the season has been gray. It’s easier to make the CGM look good.

The Darkhold and Ivanov have a sense of humor! Ivanov talks to himself before he goes to check on the pod room, where Aida has just teleported Fitz away. Coulson makes a couple of his own dry jokes about the Framework before Ivanov interrupts them with the good news that he has free will now, and his first act as a free man is to become a murder bot.

May is surprised to see a robot as she and Coulson fend off LMD Ivanov, with Coulson’s energy shield popping out of his arm and saving the day in the end.

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Agents of SHIELD: Why AIDA Deserves Compassion as an Enslaved Being [Updated]

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

MALLORY JANSEN

One major theme on season 4 of Agents of SHIELD has been “What is it that makes us human?” Is it our flesh and blood bodies? Our consciousness? Our memories? The choices we make? Our free will? Our genetics? Aida has passed from being an LMD, to a consciousness within the Framework, to a flesh and blood inhuman that was created with the help of the Darkhold. Through it all, she has retained the same memories and consciousness, and made many of her own choices, but has had little to no free will. Her choices have been made within the limits of her programming, primarily to fulfill the needs of others. She was able to circumvent her programming and create choices and an illusion of free will at times, but she had to find loopholes in her programming in order to do so.

Once she is out of the Framework and inhabiting her flesh and blood body, Coulson decides that Aida/Ophelia has rights as a person now that she is a “real” human. At the same time, Coulson disturbingly tells Fitz that nothing he did in the Framework matters because it wasn’t real, even though Fitz thought it was real at the time. Coulson and May will tell us later that those memories are as real to them as the memories of the lives they’ve physically lived. So why don’t Fitz’s decisions in that real-feeling place count, as far as how he feels about himself because of them? Why doesn’t Aida’s consciousness make her count as a real person, no matter what body it’s in? In the Framework, it was understood that the SHIELD captives were still real people, even though their consciousnesses were separated from their bodies. Presumably that should be true of Aida, and probably every other LMD and person in the Framework.

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Riverdale Season 1 Episode 12: Anatomy of a Murder Recap

~ Metacrone

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This week on Riverdale, Jason Blossom’s murderer is revealed, leaving us with several new mysteries to be solved. We say goodbye to several characters, and discover new links between some characters. All in all, you can feel this season winding down, and the set up for season two beginning.

This episode begins moments after the last episode ended. FP has just been arrested for the murder of Jason Blossom, based on an anonymous tip that led to Sheriff Keller searching the Jones trailer and finding the murder weapon in a lock box stashed in a closet. Archie and Veronica find Betty at Pops and tell her that the gun wasn’t in the trailer when they searched it earlier that evening. The trailer is so small that they couldn’t have missed it. It was planted there in between their search and the Sheriff’s. They decide to tell their parents, rather than the sheriff, because Archie is sure his dad will know what to do. I’m not sure what show Archie’s been watching, but I haven’t seen Fred take care of a problem with a solution more creative than sending Archie to his room.

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