Rewatching Orientation Part One
Tired, battered and pie-deprived, the agents are abducted to a future when Earth has crumbled, what's left of the populace fears Sharknados, tacos don't exist and citrus fruits are a staple of dating culture.
As apocalypses go, this one turned out the weirdest.
Orientation kicks off the grimmest and darkest season of the show and, right off the bat, the team's circumstances are off the scale dire, to a degree they had never been in the previous season openers: forcibly transported to a strange, miserable place barely hours after saving the planet from Aida and her cadre of fascist androids, out of their time, with no resources and - as they will soon learn - the highest stakes to date.
So, naturally, it's hilarious 😂
Behind all the meta jokes and genuine comedy, however, the exhaustion is palpable. Mack's the most vocal - the man's had it and can you blame him*? - but everyone must be soldiering on by sheer stubbornness and survival instinct, because they can't have much else left in their tanks.
Is it any wonder they'll eventually crack?
For now, they crack jokes, and do what they do best, if with an extra measure of snark: work the problem as a team, trusting and relying on each other.
As the second half of the season will illustrate quite harshly, it's not something they should be taking for granted.
*yes, some people can. In fact, I’ve seen him being called whiny and unprofessional, when it’s been merely hours since his daughter vanished in his arms. Idehtw.
Too Legit To Quit:
Not one season has gone by without Mack being taken to a place where he had to re-evaluate his professional choices.
And here he is in the same place again: “I’m not comfortable at the pace at which we face new trials and tribulations” he tells Coulson, and it feels like an understatement because the pace has been nothing but brutal.
Mack had already quit at the end of S2, only to be roped back in by circumstances, and sounded pretty close to do it again after Bobbi and Hunter left.
Each time - and clearly against his better judgement - he decided to stay, for no other reason than he was needed.
In retrospect, it feels like it was the shape of things to come.
Or maybe it's just that being the responsible sort is often a bitch 😁
Take Your Daughter To Work Day:
Coulson has been grooming Daisy for his (then different) job since S1 (1x09) and already wanted to hand her the directorship at the end of S3** - he told her as much in 4x08.
Now that his internal clock is ticking a little faster and louder each day, he doesn't have the luxury to wait for her to get on the same page, or at least in walking distance of the same page - I mean, she had scoffed at the mere allusion in 4x08 - and is only looking for affirmations.
And Daisy, as is often the case, delivers, picking up where she left off last season.
There's this scene where she casually changes Coulson's orders (for the better), finishing with a somewhat sheepish "sir". And Coulson just grins with fatherly pride: there she is, my Team Captain, you can practically hear him.
Yes, there she is, Phil. But you didn't take into account how the knowledge of losing you - and so soon after she's barely started to recover from the whole Hive business and losing Lincoln - would unmoor her.
Nor that your unshakable faith in her isn't something she has for herself. For you, the idea that Daisy could destroy the world is silly. For her, it's a fear manifesting. She's feared her powers before, and she's feared herself, especially so after Hive.
And, of course, you couldn't have anticipated Fitzler, nor that in the aftermath her fellow former Bus Kids would desert her.
**and if directorship candidate at 27, with only months of experience as team leader and less than 3 years as an agent sounds a little premature, remember that her comics counterpart was level 10 at 17. In comparison, live action Daisy is a hopeless underachiever 😂
She's Got The Powers:
Daisy disintegrates a Vrellnexian in much the same way she will the shrikes. It's cool and terrifying, and really makes you wonder how much she must be restraining herself when she's fighting humans or humanoids.
By S7 she'll be comfortable enough to joke about it ("Yeah, yeah, make fun of the person who can literally turn you to dust" 7x11) but the road is still long and treacherous at this point in time.
Meanwhile, Elena has not yet learned how to bullet time, which she will sometime after S5 and gloriously show off in 6x12.
Home Is Not A Bunker:
By Thor, do I hate the Lighthouse, the dingy, underground bucket of misery 😡
The Playground had texture, (some) color, homeyness: a kitchen, the lounge with a comfy sofa to play games. What little we saw of the rooms, they felt more like college dorms than military bunks. The director's office had clutter. It all felt liveable and lived in.
The Lighthouse is just grey everywhere and all we see, once it's the present again, is empty hallways, utilitarian rooms and the occasional, impersonal bunk.
Appropriate for the overall mood of this season, and cheap for the slashed production budget, I bet, but I really wish the place had blown up, never to be seen again. Or that they had at least set some scenes in the above ground part, which looks like it could be pretty cozy.
The hangar entrance is insanely cool, though, no complaints there.
When Life Gives You Lemons...
(Fun fact: one Italian slang word for "making out" is "limonare", which can be literally translated as "lemoning" or "to lemon")
(Fun fact #2: cats detest citruses)
Mr. Lemons floated on-screen dressed like a second-hand Starlord and I should have known right there that we weren't meant to be 🤭
The self-serving scoundrel shtick of his early interactions with the team made up some for that poor first impression - I do enjoy the archetype - but things soon took a turn for the worst and then went downhill faster than an alpine skiing olympic medal, what with his admiration for amateur surgery, a knack for annoying my favorite character, incel-like gaming fantasies, and increasingly near-Gary Stu energy.
Look, Deke, it's you - it's definitely you - but it's also me. So, I will make an effort to at least take you seriously during this rewatch, and see if I can make lemonade.
Stuff:
Hey, Enoch. I had almost forgotten how creepy you came across in your debut. Nice pool.
Virgil, eh? Like the ancient Roman Poet who chaperones Dante in his travels through hell? AoS already referenced the Divine Comedy in S2, so I’m guessing the name was chosen on purpose. And take this part of the incipit: I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost (it sounds far cooler in Italian, I have to say). Fits the team’s circumstances here and even more so their desperate scrambling in the second half of the season, don’t you think?
I'd like to know, if you don't mind, what is happening here, please. Coulson is very polite for someone who was just kidnapped to Space Station Apocalypse.
Oh, my bad. I see a dirty-looking dude hovering over you with a crazy-looking gun. I acted on impulse. Only a few minutes in the future and Mack is already and completely Done™ 😂
I don't have many details, but I do know we're in space -- Yeah, that makes sense. That's the one thing we haven't done yet. 😂😂
Several dead bodies litter the place. Simmons: oh, goodie, a puzzle! Elena: 🤨😬
Coulson's 99 % sure we're in space -- Not again. Cheer up, Jemma. At least you're not alone this time, even if the place is severely lacking in brooding marooned astronauts.
How were we supposed to prepare for this, Mack? -- I don't know. I mean, we got to be prepared for everything, apparently. Look, not a day ago, I was trapped inside a computer-generated mind prison, and now... you know what? You know what, Coulson? I'm out. I'm out. We get through this, I am packing it in. Listen to you. Seriously thinking that you can quit... oh, man, are you in for a disappointment 😂
So, wait, S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have a space division called S.P.E.A.R. or something? No, but it might have had a division or a sister agency called S.W.O.R.D., if Marvel Studios had let you use the name.
I always thought you guys had people hiding on the moon. Actually, it's you and Daisy who had people hiding on the moon. We just don't talk about it because their show was a bust 😁
Geez, Mack, how hard did you hit him? -- What do you mean? As hard as I possibly could. Look, I don't half-hit people. It's a punch. That's why it's called a punch.🤣🤣
[Virgil] said that we were coming here to serve a purpose -- As food? 🤣
Who doesn't check the other side of a postcard? You know, the part that may have words on it?
So, it is a human outpost -- Yeah, and, of course, it's being overrun by creatures that suck out your innards. I should've been a fireman. 🤣🤣🤣
Don't be crazy. You're not here to save me -- who then? -- Humanity. Gotta love the guy who says "don't be crazy", before saying something crazy.
Right? Ok, first, you can't make me wait almost twenty minutes (!) into the season premiere for my girl to appear and leave me in the dark to where the hell she's been and what her first take of the future was. We're really starting on the wrong foot, here, S5. And second, Daisy saving everybody by disintegrating the ugly monster and then asking for confirmation just in case she blew up somebody's pet is delightful. So, okay, we're still pals for now, S5, but the ice you're walking on is already thinning.
Ming-Na Wen had some kind of leg injury, so May gets one too, which sadly prevents her from trashing Mr. Lemons as he would have richly deserved, for being a jerk to her just now and for all his future transgressions. The first of many disappointments 🤭
So, is there anything you want to fill us in on, Coulson? 'Cause now's the time. As usual, my dear, you're onto something, and, as usual, it's worse than what you're imagining.
Maybe someone put us back in the Framework and this is a simulation. Believe me when I say, we're all gonna wish this was still the Framework.
Oh, please. We just got zapped through space by Stonehenge, and we're trying to rule out the involvement of a flame-headed demon from east L.A.? Science my ass. Careful, there. Dr. Dr. Simmons may take it personally.
Speaking of Simmons, who has managed for almost half an hour to not mention Fitz - and honestly, that is very impressive 🤭 - she becomes super defensive about her missing half, mistaking Daisy's concern for suspicion of his possible involvement in their predicament. Whatever reservations she may be harbouring about him in the Framework's aftermath, however, they'll disappear the moment they reunite.
We should split up -- Oh, hell, no [...] Haven't you ever seen an alien movie? -- Mack, it's the best way to cover the most ground. -- Okay, you see, you see, that's exactly what they say before they get picked off one by one, and you know who the first one will be. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 This will get a call back in 5x13, when once again Coulson will suggest splitting up and Daisy will agree, but only to troll Mack.
This has to be the coolest we've ever looked. Not exactly. But it's probably the most hilarious, although there's a scene in 7x09 that gives this one a run for its money. Unsurprisingly, I'm a big fan of Daisy's epic eye roll that you can miss in the dark, if you're not looking for it (spoiler: I'm always looking for it): my dad is a dork. Yes, and you love it 😁
"Water reclamation". You were right, Jemma -- I figured it out using magic. Told you she'd take it personally 😂
And here comes the Kree, who we had first met in S1 (the dead body harvested for the GH 325), then S2 (Vin-Tak, who wanted to eradicate "Skye") and S3 (the Reapers, who also wanted to eradicate Inhumans). Still waiting for a decent, non-genocidal, non-slaver, non-a*hole, live Kree to show up somewhere.
May's resigned "copy that" at the news they are, in fact, in space, is her version of Mack's long-winded distress earlier. Naturally, May's version is just two words.
You got a name? -- Deke. First time I thought he had said "Dick". Missed opportunity for a nomen omen situation there 😈🤭
No, no, wait. You stay here. I've got two good fighters down there once I get the restraints off. I'll be fine. We can't lose our leader again. We need answers [...] find out where the hell and what the hell... sir. This is the scene I was talking about a gazillion words above. I really love the delivery of the "where the hell and what the hell" bit. Equally notable but for different reasons the "we can't lose our leader again". Daisy's not prepared for the truth of it but, also, as is often the case in these matters, I believe she is quite correct: Coulson's impending death will do a number on everybody, contributing to the team's loss of cohesion.
May gets to check "piloting a spaceship" off her bucket list (something suggested all the way back in 1x08). Given how her day started and how it is proceeding, it's nothing to sneeze at.
I was starting to picture myself with two hooks. Since I had read the comics, I was extremely uncomfortable during Yo-Yo's torture when this aired, but I relaxed when it was over, thinking they had made their nod to her comics' story and that was it. Yes, I'm a fool.
No reason to send a message back to Earth. We're already here. Well, at least it's convenient, no?