What I love about this show is it continues to reinvent itself in new and creative ways, and they've done it every season, right back to the first season when it started slow and every proclaimed it to be DOA, and then with one twist the show became a different thing. Every year they've done it and managed to bring in new and intriguing and complex villains from ADA to Hive.
For some reason it took me a couple of minutes to kind of stop being confused at the start because such a long period of time had passed since last season, and I'm old damnit. But once it started rolling there was next to no pre-amble, it was just dive in at a fast jam packed pace.
What I liked about this episode is that they just jumped into it, there was no recap or remember when moments, we basically start with the Chronicoms stealing cops faces in 1931 and then leap to where last year ended with the activation of the Coulson LMD who when he wakes up nearly has a breakdown as he tries to assimilate 2 years of memories that he didn't live and weren't his. It was a bit heartbreaking to see, and its something that we're going to probably revist this season as this isn't Coulson, though it was good to have the wisecracking, bad joke Coulson back.
The concept that Shield was chasing the Chronicoms through time to prevent them from killing FDR who started up Shield was a great piece of simple writing that put the Shield team in 1931, where we got a rudimentary lesson on time line mechanics from Deke, where he explains that time travelers are like sticks in a stream and they can't disrupt the time line unless you put too many sticks in the stream and it creates a damn that redirects the time line.
I also love that Deke was already thinking of cons and was crowing about loving the time they were in because he bought all of their clothes for 13 buck.
At this point the cast slide nicely back into the roles and we got the first LOL moment as they went to the crime scene of the dead cops and introduced themselves as members of the RCMP and that faceless killing crimes happen all the time in Canada.
As we move on, we get to see an action scene that involved Daisy punching a Chronicrom into orbit (Well not really). At the same time Coulson and Macked headed to what they thought was a SSRS safehouse that was run by Ernest Koening who is basically a rum running gangster, so I assume we're going to eventually find out a key answer to the origins of the Koenings in the future.
Skipping forward Simmons brutally interrogates the captured Chronicom and you realize that she is completely different then the Simmons of previous seasons, she's gotten a cynical hard edge to her now that's a bit sad to see.
Anyways she wrangles out that the Chronicoms are not after FDR, but Freddy the bartender, it turns out that he is the father of Gideon Malak the head of Hydra. So by killing him they kill Hydra which means Shield will never be born.
So now we have the brutal realization that for Shield to exist they have to help the rise of their evil rival, those Chronicom's and their sense of whimsy.
The episode does end with May escaping from her healing capsule and she's hanging over Enoch's head. Is May still effected by Izel?
Quick thoughts
1) Some great lines in this one from Enoch lamenting after losing May "Enoch you had one job". To Daisy swinging a pipe at a Chronicom while saying "1931 Baseball reference" made me laugh, and of course Deke printing out those terrible fake badges and Coulson passing them off as RCMP officers.
2) Yo-Yo is such an emotional lightning rod. Form her reaction when she finds out that she's basically cured of the Shrike material, to her touching her face with her new hands were nice moments.
3) Coulson becoming almost a terminator was kind of awesome.
4) They did a great job of Mack being paranoid and on edge about 1931 racists sentiments, though it was a bit heavy handed.
5) What's in the vials, is it liquefied Terrigen? Is Hydra planning to perfect humanity?
Great start to the season.