Let’s start with the really fun stuff. Agent Koenig was back in play, played by Patton Oswalt. It was cool to see the writers have some fun with the fact that people couldn’t figure out if they were clones, old LMDs, or something else entirely. The dialogue throughout the episode that dropped hints in various directions was a good bit. Turns out, at least in this episode, that Occam’s Razor is the solution. They’re all humans, part of the same family. Whether they appear in next week’s episode and continue the joke is to be seen, but I doubt it. It appeared to be answered definitively here.
Moving on it was easy to see that Radcliffe was faking his double crossing in the opening of the episode. The idea that Radcliffe would align himself to someone like that, only to be captured, seemed like a move too stupid for him. That said, I’m still not sure where Radcliffe lands on the whole killing versus not killing thing. He seems adverse to violence, yet had Aida punch a hole through man’s chest (a cool moment on her point, I might add). Then at the end of the episode, he totally seems on board with killing Coulson.
It’s because of moment’s like these that I can’t understand his motives yet. He mentions things like “a better world”, but does he mean it? While The Superior was positioned as the interesting villain in the episode, it’s clear that Radcliffe is the “big bad” of this pod. He’s simply using everyone to his advantage in order to get the Darkhold. My only hope is that when his true intentions are revealed, they’re a bit more grand and interesting than what we’ve gotten so far.
Speaking of The Superior, he’s fairly flat as far as villains go. We’ve dealt with the whole “hating Inhumans” thing with plenty of other characters throughout the past season and a half. Nadire pretty much filled that role, so why we needed some huge muscular dude to spout the same rhetoric, I have no idea. It’s possible that he’ll become interesting in the next episode or two, but I’m not holding my breath.
The other half of the episode dealt with the LMDs. May was trying to come to terms with feelings for Coulson while Fitz tried to get inside the programming of the Radcliffe LMD. The Fitz stuff was pretty interesting because we got a bit of backstory about his relationship with his father. The Radcliffe LMD seemed to know a lot of things he shouldn’t and one had to wonder how that is. The Radcliffe LMD was pretty sly one, so it’s hard to believe his explanation about them being classmates.
The more likely explanation is that Fitz is also a LMD. The reason that Radcliffe knew so much about May’s feelings for Coulson, her guilt over killing the Inhuman child, and more, was because he’d mapped her brain and had access to her memories. If the logic follows, it makes sense that he did the same to Fitz at some point. He could then use these secrets he learned as a defense mechanism.
Though, what Fitz’s mission would be, I have no idea. He’s clearly not after the Darkhold like May is and he’s trying to get info on how Radcliffe built the LMDs. So maybe the info is simply for defensive purposes and Fitz is just a human. After all, at some point it becomes ridiculous that everyone has been replaced by Cylons of themselves.
The stuff with May was interesting in its own right. It nice to see her and Coulson finally realize their feelings for one another, but one must wonder how Coulson will react to that once they get the real May back. Is it something that will be put on the backburner? After all, what kind of person will May be now that her memories have been changed? Lots of questions, but only two episodes left in this “pod” to get answers!
Written by Peter Freeman, Animation & TV Writer -- Click to read Peter's posts
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