Agents of SHIELD S07E04 Review: Continuity Recap

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 4: Out of the Past

This one was pretty neat! I keep complaining in the past three episodes of this season that there's simply kind of not a lot of content to carry the whole episode, essentially relying on the gimmick of 'hey, look, it's an Area 51 episode' or 'hey, look, 1931 gangsters'. But "Out of the Past" actually goes full in with the film noir parody by filming almost the entire thing in black and white, and even having Coulson go on internal monologues throughout the episode... that is how you do a throwback homage. The past couple of episodes just have something missing because, well, without a particularly inventive episodic plot and without interesting villains (the Chromicoms are terribly one-note), you really need the strength of your homages to carry the episode. Hell, the show even gives us a cheeky explanation, that this is LMD Coulson recapping the story to himself as he is repaired from the damage from last episode's EMP blast, with 'internal monologue' even spoken verbatim as a symptom.

And this one not only has a fantastic film noir homage, it also utilizes Daniel Sousa in a far, far better way than the previous episode did. We actually fully commit into more than just the black and white imagery, but even the story itself feels like something out of film noir with the mysterious MacGuffin package and corpses floating in pools and a long monologue telling us 'how we got there'. It's far from being perfect, but it's so much more enjoyable than the past couple of episodes that I was extremely hooked.

Even moreso, the episode is a far, far more poignant storyline than episode two's "should we kill Freddy Malick even though he hasn't done anything?" dilemma. With Freddy Malick in 1931, he's a (mostly) innocent man who's a low-level Hydra goon at worst, and the crime deserving death is something that is going to be tossed to his descendants. Meanwhile, by doing nothing and preserving history this time around, they'll let Daniel Sousa -- a somewhat bumbling but ultimately good man -- die. As the characters point out, it's a completely different feeling when you're not considering whether to kill an evil man, but whether to stand around and let a good man die.

The mission is relatively simple. They're going to deliver a package to Howard Stark, and Coulson manages to sweet-talk Sousa into thinking that they're part of the CIA or something. But Coulson and the rest of SHIELD are operating under the knowledge that this is the day that Daniel Sousa dies, becoming not only the first SHIELD martyr, but also someone that inspired many other SHIELD agents, Coulson himself included. Not telling them the Hydra conspiracy is one thing. Letting Sousa get shot and killed like a bitch? That's a whole different thing. You could make a long ethical argument, but ultimately Mack and Coulson decide that they are going to 'bend' history a bit in a way that doesn't send ripples through time. They switched Sousa with Coulson, who can take getting shot and floating in a pool since he's an LMD, and later took Sousa out of time and plonked him in the Zephyr, a man truly removed from time. Turns out we're getting a new crew member for this ride, then!

It's not super-duper huge of a twist, but, again, the execution and the commitment to a lot of noir tropes work very well, even the twist showcasing the revelation of Coulson and Mack's trick to fake Sousa's death. And Sousa later learning about Hydra's infiltration of everything, and his utter bafflement and his attempt to take time-traveling SHIELD agents from the future in stride, is pretty neat. I do like that the show does acknowledge that Sousa's at least familiar with the concept of wacky sci-fi from his own tenure in Agent Carter, so there's that.

Unlike the previous episodes, too, this episode had a lot of great B-plots. May fritzes out again, but she, Simmons and Elena figure out what's wrong, exactly, with May. Turns out that as a side-effect of her resurrection, May doesn't have emotions... but will get overwhelmed with the emotions of humans when she touches them. Which is why she got overloaded with fear while evacuating Area 51's staff last episode, but has no problem punching Chromicoms. I'm not entirely sure where we're going here, but it's a neatly explored scene, at least. Deke also finds himself in a B-plot where he's captured by Freddy Malick's people when investigating a house, and ends up sweet-talking himself out of Malick's grasp. It's... it's interesting? I guess he gets to see the face of the now criminal boss of the young man he spared in 1931? It's a neat one, but this is mostly just setup for Freddy Malick making allies with one of the evil Chromicoms.

Speaking of emotionless people... poor, poor Enoch! He has been spending the past 20 years being a bartender in Koenig's bar in a tacky hawaiian shirt. Sure, he doesn't outwardly show emotions, but he's clearly elated to see his friends return... except it's a running gag throughout the episode that all the SHIELD guys ever call him for is to make use of his period-appropriate 'connect me to the Zephyr' machine. It's funny the first one or two times, but then you start to hear the sadness and even desperation in Enoch's voice as he eventually laments that he is "alone in this world, as (he) has always been". No one even offers to pick him up, and he gets left behind by SHIELD as they time-jump again with a dismissive 'he's a robot, he'll be fine'. Poor Enoch!

Ultimately, easily the strongest episode in this final season of Agents of SHIELD so far. Not that the past couple of episodes have been terrible, they've just been... kind of there!

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Howard Stark, himself also a major character in Agent Carter, gets mentioned and is part of the delivery mission Sousa and Coulson find themselves in. 
• The Wall of Valor in the SHIELD base is seen here, and apparently Daniel Sousa (...not Captain America?) was the first name on it.