Category Archives: Marvel on Disney +

X-Men ’97 S2 E6

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“Danger.exe”

Polaris comes front and center as she was tossed out of X-Factor after a brutal encounter with Stryker. That led her to return to Xavier’s reformed school.

Polaris returned in a dangerous time, as the Danger Room began changing, becoming more inspired to make training all the more difficult.

That led to the creation of Danger. Danger was created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday in the comics and she became big during a Grant Morrison run.

The episode concentrated on Polaris and her acceptance of Magneto as her father. Her connection with him, through Charles Xavier, helped end the threat of Danger in the ruins of Genosha. It was a powerful moment for the character of Polaris. Honestly, I am not as big of a fan of Polaris, but she worked well in this episode.

This episode had a bunch of more in the episode, specifically at the very end. X-Corp is brought into the series with the X-Men behind it, and we get Apocalypse’s Death created for his new Horsemen, and it is Gambit.

I do think that there are some hints of Onslaught dropped in this season. I am not sure if we are going to get Onslaught or not because I think this is one of Beau DeMayo plans before he was let go from the show.

We are two-thirds through the season with just three more to go. Clearly, Apocalypse is our big bad for the remainder of the season. Could Onslaught happen in season three?

The Muppet Show S2 E1, E2, E3

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Guest: Don Knotts

Guest: Zero Mostel

Guest: Milton Berle

Season two of the Muppet Show kicked off with some changes.

The opening theme came closer to what I remembered as the iconic theme. They removed Fozzie’s joke from the opening and added in Statler and Waldorf. However, my memory of Statler and Waldorf was them singing the next verse which started “Why do we always come here…” which was not what was in this season’s beginning. Kermit’s intro of the guest star is now at the very beginning of the song instead of the middle. It ends with Gonzo, no longer with a club, but with a trumpet. The opening had a much bigger feel to it.

It also featured the “cold open” where Scooter sticks his head into the guest star’s dressing room and gives them an update on how long until the show starts. This pre-theme gag would go for the rest of the series, if I remember correctly.

There were some weird things in these episodes as well. In episode one with Don Knotts, the Disney + version of the show was chopped up with things removed. Don Knotts’s finale, which was Knotts playing a bass with the Electric Mayhem on a song called “Lullaby of Birdland” was removed completely. I never figured out the reasoning behind the editing (sounds like it had something to do with copyright). They also chopped up the backstage segments between Fozzie and Floyd where Floyd gave Fozzie some sunglasses and proclaimed him a hip dude.

Episode two featured Zero Mostel, who actually died not too long after the show was recorded. This was a great episode with things such as Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat major as performed by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (I loved Animal screaming “Chopin” as he drummed), “Smoke Gets in your Eyes” by Rowlf and Zoot, and Mostel dressed as Henry the VIII performing “What Do the Simple Folds Do?” It also ended with some Lady Wrestling, as per request from Scooter’s uncle J.P. Grosse. Kermit couldn’t find anyone to participate (the scene where he asked Piggy to do it was hilarious), so he donned a wig and took on Granny the Gouger. Kermit got his butt kicked and tossed into Statler and Waldorf’s box. Miss Piggy did not like that and showed up and did the “hi-yaaaah” to Granny. As a wrestling fan, I remember loving this skit when I was younger.

Episode three featured Milton Berle in several tremendous skits. The standout of the whole episode (and perhaps the season so far) was Milton Berle vs. Statler and Waldorf. I was so impressed with him since he allowed the two old hecklers to get the best of him the entire routine. Uncle Miltie, a literal comedic legend, was willing to play straight man to a couple of Muppets and let them make him look the fool. It was really one of the funniest skits I have seen on the Muppet Show so far. Milton Berle also did a fantastic rendition of “The Entertainer” (which the show strangely followed up with Miss Piggy singing the same song too) and a great comedy-duet with Fozzie called “Top Banana.” Milton Berle worked beautifully with the Muppets here.

There were some classic debuts during these three episodes. This was the first time we have seen Beaker in the Muppet Labs sequence. Beaker would go on to become on of the most iconic Muppets of all time. We saw the first episode of Pigs in Space with Link, Dr. Strangepork and Miss Piggy.

I loved in episode one where Rowlf sings “What a Wonderful World” to a real living puppy. I love the Louis Armstrong song and Rowlf does it very well.

The second and third episodes of this season have to be considered some of the best of the series and it was a shame that the Don Knotts episode got as chopped up as it did, because it had the potential to be just as great.

The Muppet Show S1 E20, E21, E22, E23, E24

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Guest: Valerie Harper

Guest: Twiggy

Guest: Ethel Merman

Guest: Kaye Ballard

Guest: The Mummenschanz

I finished the first season of The Muppet Show with the final five episodes. It was an interesting group of guest stars including Valerie Harper, Twiggy, Kay Ballard, The Mummenschanz and EYG Hall of Famer Ethel Merman.

There was an extra guest star on the Ethel Merman episode. Richard Bradshaw, who did not appear on the actual show, was a puppeteer who worked with shadows. That was fun as it was kind of Muppet-ish.

My memory was that the Phantom of the Muppet Show came with Alice Cooper, but that was not the case. He was on the Twiggy episode. By the way, the Twiggy episode had a classic moment with the AA Milne poem “The King’s Breakfast” where the king just wanted some butter for his bread. It also had Twiggy singing a Beatles song. Really? She sang “My Life” which filled me with surprise and hatred at the same time.

Another classic was “Tit-willow” from the Gilbert and Sullivan’s show The Mikado, as done by Rowlf and Sam the Eagle (who did the “tit-willow” line). It’s another example of how the show took non-kids songs and such and made them for the Muppet Show. The show did Broadway show songs such as “Broadway Baby” done by Valerie Harper and a medley of Ethel Merman’s songs such as “Friendship,” “Anything You Can Do,” and “You’re the Top”, all with other Muppets.

The Kaye Ballard episode was fun as Floyd Pepper and the rest of the band wanted to quit because they were tired of playing the theme song (BLASPHEMY!). It was such a running gag that at the end of the episode, only Rowlf was playing the theme on the piano. How awesome that gag was.

Another running joke that was a hoot was Statler wanting to meet Valerie Harper, and brought her a special plant that, when watered, grew uncontrollably. Obviously that happened.

Gonzo the Great tried to get it on with Miss Piggy. That was kind of weird, and Kermit’s non-reaction was quite funny.

The Mummenschanz were awesome too as they have a lot in common with the Muppets. They way this group of theater performers who perform in a surreal mask- and prop-oriented style. I remember them clearly from the first time I saw them on the show. They were so memorable even though I do not think I have seen them in anything since.

The first season is now down and I will be heading to season two soon. I think that it is in season two when the opening theme song changed a bit. I think it was when Fozzie was removed and they went to Statler and Waldorf.

X-Men ’97 S2 E5

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“Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs”

What do you get when you blend the movie Alien/Aliens with The Thing…. X-Men ’97?

Episode 5, “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” jumps into horror as we get a Wolverine-centric episode with the space alien The Brood.

The Brood was always one of my favorite story arc from the comics even if they seem to be an Aliens rip off. Having them show up was a cool nod to the characters.

I really liked the way they set this up. Wolverine brought Morph, Sabretooth, Maverick, Garrison Kane, and Lady Deathstrike along as his “team”- the team he referenced last episode with Captain America. However, Wolverine brought this team along under false pretenses. Wolverine said that Weapon X was back doing their experiments again, knowing that that piece of info would inspire these characters, but Wolverine’s main motivation was to get his adamantium back after Magneto ripped it from his body last season.

So I did love how they did not just play Logan as a straight up good guy. His lies led to the death of two of these characters (Kane and Maverick… though both could be brought back easily) and how it deals with the way that Logan sees himself in the grand scheme, which is as an animal that is only brought together inside by the adamantium.

The lies with Morph will affect this relationship down the road, at the very least, tainting the friendship. Morph was referred to by Lady Deathstrike as Tomo, which is a Japanese word meaning “friend” or “companion.” She used it as a sleight to Morph to say he is just a mindless follower, a sidekick, to Wolverine and that he can not see the reality of the situation. With the ending, Morph seems to realize that she was right.

Speaking of Morph, he throws me off all the time. In the battle with the Brood, there suddenly in Puck, member of Alpha Flight, involved with the fight and I literally said his name out loud. I thought for a second that Puck was involved in this story too. Of course, a second later, there was Ben Grimm, the Thing and I realized it was Morph. It was the same thing last week with Thor. Morph’s shape shifting never seems to catch me off guard. This week we saw his shift into Sasquatch, Spider-Man, Cyclops and Jean.

It was a bloody episode- although they made the blood green for the Brood’s blood. It was very violent and had several surprises (Omega Red, anyone?). I liked this self-contained episode very much and this is really one of the only Wolverine focused episode of the entire X-Men ’97 series.

The Muppet Show S1 E19

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Guest: Vincent Price

This was a bizarre episode of the Muppet Show. It featured the guest star Vincent Price and a whole bunch of the Muppet Monsters.

We also got the Muppet debut of Uncle Deadly, a blue creature who was used as Vincent Price’s sidekick. Uncle Deadly would have a long run with the Muppets, including the Phantom of the Muppet Show in a future season.

This episode also featured a bunch of Muppet Monsters eating other Muppets. It happened multiple times through the episode as it seemed like the main joke that the show had.

There were some cool ghost Muppets too that really looked great. I’m not sure how they did the effects on it, but it was well done.

There was a three-headed monster trying to audition for Kermit, which was the running backstage segment of the episode.

Interestingly enough, the show did not have Miss Piggy, though Fozzie Bear was front and center.

They final number had Vincent Price “singing” the song “You’ve Got A Friend.” There were several other monsters, including Uncle Deadly, singing with him. Vincent Price was not much of a singer, but he gave it his all.

Agents of Shield S7 E10, E11, E12, E13

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“Stolen”

“Brand New Day”

“The End is at Hand”

“What We’re Fighting For”

The Agents of Shield completed their final mission together and I wrapped up the rewatch of the Marvel show this afternoon. Agents of Shield was my favorite TV show for quite a few years after LOST left the air and I was always mad that they were so disrespected among the MCU. Agents of Shield was a consistently entertaining and exciting hour of TV with some of the best characters you would find.

The whole timeline mess was handled very smoothly with the use of the Quantum Realm to travel between the timelines. Fitz’s return to the show in episode 12 was amazing and gave us that one thing that was missing in this season, which was otherwise near perfect.

The Daisy and Sousa relationship developed beautifully and made sense for both characters. Coulson’s LMD questions about himself led to his own path at the end. May becoming one with her own empathy, and then making that be the weapon that brings the conflict with the Chronicoms to a close, was a great arc for this character and she still gets to deliver the bad ass line, “The Calvary” in response to Sibyl’s question, “What comes next?” May crashing in through a glass ceiling was epic.

It was great that the finale was able to see all of the team working together to accomplish their plan.

I do love that the team ended up, supposedly, in the timeline of the 616 universe. They all could be brought back to the MCU if they wanted. Quake, Yo Yo, Coulson, May all could have roles in a new MCU.

It was also nice to see that the show did not just forget Piper and Flint. In fact, they placed them in an important moment in the finale.

The whole time travel element of this show was done extremely well, and Fitz explained it perfectly. The TVA’s absence was a thing (of course, the TVA does not get introduced until many years later), but one could imaging that time is at any point.

Bringing Kora to Daisy, as sisters, did not seem like it was going to work out, but, in the end, she was a nice addition to the team. Deke finally wound up with the respect that he deserved and, apparently, the new director of Shield in the timeline where he stayed to save the others.

I had forgotten about Fitz and Simmons little daughter and it was a fun surprise when we were introduced to the daughter, Alya.

The use of a young John Garrett was clever too, and the bullet to his head immediately after teleporting the team out of the Lighthouse was both funny and appropriate. James Paxton did an excellent job playing this unhinged version of John Garrett, who was originally played during season one & two by his father, Bill Paxton.

Watching Coulson fly away in Lola at the end of the final episode was both thrilling and perfectly designed as a conclusion.

This was such a fabulous series that does not get the appreciation that it deserved. The chemistry among the stars was one of the key components of the success and why this show worked. In seven seasons, the show went against Hydra, went to another planet, into the future, into the past, prevented an alien invasion, went into a fake world, met up with Asgardians, a Ghost Rider, and a bunch of Kree. Agents of Shield is one of my favorite shows of all time.

The Muppet Show S1 E15, E16, E17, E18

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Guest: Candice Bergen

Guest: Avery Schreiber

Guest: Ben Vereen

Guest: Phyllis Diller

Another strong run of four episodes of the Muppet Show consistently amaze me. I mentioned this earlier, but the material on the Muppet Show is so far advanced for a kids program that it goes to show you that you do not have to play down to kids.

In these four episodes, we got a song from Ben Vereen, Mister Cellophane, out of the Broadway play Chicago. Rowlf played a classical piano piece by Beethoven called Für Elise. The classic song Tenderly was performed in a distinctly rock format by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Crazy Harry was all over these episodes. He was the running gag in the Ben Vereen episode, constantly blowing things up when someone made a comment connected to explosions.

Veterinarian’s Hospital was on all these episodes. This is a classic bit that the Muppet Show made famous with Rowlf, Miss Piggy and Janice. They told some terrible jokes and laughed at them all.

The Candice Bergen episode featured some of the songs I remember on here including “Put Another Log on the Fire” and Piggy’s “What Now My Love.” Candice Bergen was not singing, and I was thinking, “Oh so she is not a singer so they are not making her sing” and then she did “You’ve Got to Have Friends.”

Piggy tried to make Kermit jealous by pretending to have a relationship with Avery Schreiber, which seemed to work until Scooter let the cat out of the bag. During this, we learn Miss Piggy’s true name, Pigathias- which means “River of Passion.” Other running jokes included Fozzie trapped in a box, Fozzie doing the “I’ve got a ____ for Kermit the Frog” bit, and Hilda worried about her age and appearance.

Sweetums made several appearances in this block of episodes including where he ate Candice Bergen’s camera and had an insult-off with Sir Avery (Schreiber).

Agents of Shield S7 E9

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“As I Have Always Been”

Phlebotinum!

Absolute genius of an episode.

I wanted to give this episode its own post since my memory of it was that it was a great episode. I am underestimating it, because this is, by far, my favorite episode of Agents of Shield from the entire seven season run.

Season seven has been using some overall themes for the previous episodes. Their first trip into the past was played like an old school b-movie type sci-fi. We got the black and white noir episode. There was the 1970s action show (which had to have an influence on WandaVision) and the 1980s sci-fi type film including max Headroom (which Coulson hilariously namedrops in this episode).

This one was Groundhogs Day mixed with Doctor Who. The thing was, it was so much more than just re-using the trope of repeating the day over and again.

It took the situation and gave us remarkable humor, much of it coming from the exquisite Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, the LMD. It gave us a fantastic mystery about who was preventing the implant from being removed from Jemma Simmons’s head. It forwards the relationship between Daisy and Sousa. And it provided the most selfless self-sacrifice I have seen in ages with Enoch’s removal of a part from his own Chronicom body, leading to his death.

The episode is featured around Daisy, who was inside a healing pod at the beginning. She goes about the process of discovering that the Zephyr was trapped in a timestorm and was in danger of being wiped out of existence. The episode was wild, and then took another major step when she went to activate Couslon, who was recharging. He filled her in that this was not the first time that she had come to activate him and that she had died.

The frustration and annoyance of Coulson was extremely funny and delivered so perfectly by Gregg. It played right into the feelings that Coulson was having last episode where his predicament as an LMD was starting to get to him. The show added the character growth of Coulson into a list of amazing stuff this episode addressed.

Enoch was another standout of the episode. We discovered that he was the one killing the crew members to prevent the implant from being removed from Simmons’s head, and there were some of the best scenes of the episode as the team confronted Enoch and he fought back in the most amazing and hilarious ways. We did not see much, if any, of the actual fight, just the aftermath with the team scattered across the floor. They added the line “Deke’s dead” in one of them and it was such a gas.

Each time loop brought the Zephyr closer to the center of the timestorm, providing real jeopardy for the team and not just the trial and error until they figured it out. They did not have unlimited time. Time was ticking away.

There were two outstanding monologues during the episode. The first was Daniel Sousa’s explanation of why he stayed with Daisy as she slept. His explanation of wanting to be near “…people like Diasy” was such an awesome character moment and made allusions back to his time with Agent Carter, who he was clearly referencing. The second monologue was Enoch’s dying words, spoken to Coulson and Daisy, after he had pulled his electrochron displacement mechanism from out of his chest. I had tears during this moment. Who knew that I would have become so connected to this robot who was introduced in season five as a Chronicom sent to retrieve the team? Watching Enoch slowly succumb was heartbreaking and painful, while providing important healing for Coulson and Daisy. Joel Stoffer brought his amazing character to life here and you couldn’t have asked for a better heroic send off for Enoch than what he got.

Elizabeth Henstridge, who played Simmons, was the first time director of this episode, which was just a remarkable feat. She provided an exciting and energetic show despite many scenes needing to be repetitive because of the episode’s hook. Every time we got a repeat scene, something new was added. I have to shout out the entire cast as well as they had to repeat lines and adjust to the situation and they all did it wonderfully well.

I love this episode and I would put it at the top of the MCU TV show episodes along with Agatha All Along’s “Death’s Hand in Mine,” Moon Knight’s “Asylum,” WandaVision’s “We Interrupt This Program” and “Previously On,” and Loki’s “Journey Into Mystery” and “Glorious Purpose.”

Agents of Shield S7 E8

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“After, Before”

Episode eight of the final season of the Agents of Shield finds the team in major trouble aboard the Zephyr-1 as the time drive was not working properly. It was making jumps in time at a quicker and quicker intervals, leading to the potential of collapsing on them.

Yo Yo’s power becomes a key to fixing the time drive, so Yo Yo and May go on a trip of discovery to try and get Yo Yo’s Inhuman powers back… which meant going to Afterlife to ask for help from Daisy’s mom, Jiaying.

This episode becomes an internal story of Yo Yo, her doubts, her guilt and how she had been holding herself back. The episode uses both Yo Yo and May in a great interaction, but only the way that they could do it.

As Yo Yo was discovering her inner truth, other problems and tidbits popped up for the show.

  • Simmons provided Sousa with a new prosthetic leg.
  • Coulson was becoming somewhat down on his LMD-ness.
  • We find out that Enoch can keep the tempo on drums.
  • Daisy is slowly healing from her traumatic situation at Nathaniel’s hands.
  • Nathaniel arrived at Afterlife, coming to recruit Kora to his side.
  • Kora asked how Nathaniel knew about her and Nathaniel told her it was his new friend, Sibyl.
  • Nathaniel and Kora have the Inhumans at Afterlife captive.
  • Simmons sends a emotional message to Fitz.
  • Yo Yo’s efforts with the time drive did not work and the Zephyr jumped again at the end of the episode.

I chose to only do this one episode for a couple of reasons. The first one was the time available was short, but the main reason was that, in my memory, episode nine of this season may be my favorite episode of the entire seven years, and I wanted to make sure to give that episode its flowers. And since I went ahead and watched “The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D” with episodes 4,5 & 6, instead of pairing it with this one, that meant I needed to do one by itself.

With Nathaniel and Kora setting themselves up as some “big-bads” for the last few episodes, this was an important episode to connect the series to where it was going.

X-Men ’97 S2 E4

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“Rise of Apocalypse, Part 2”

The origin of Apocalypse is revealed as Apocalypse gains his form and all kinds of bad things are underway.

The death of Magneto in this episode was dramatic, although I never buy the death of him. Is he coming back as a Horseman?

We see Kang as he is while Rama Tut was fleeing the scene. He also mentioned his names “Richard, Victor and Kang.”

This episode showed a Celestial too, making everything a real cosmic encounter.

This showed a lot about Magneto and his arrogance. Magnus believed that he could make things better, and he forced the X-Men to follow. He also forced the X-Men back to the 1990s when they were ready to fight Apocalypse.

The animation was beautiful as well.

I can’t wait to see where this goes from here. The post credit scene at the end with Captain America, Black Widow and Wolverine was fun and will surely lead to Logan reclaiming his adamantium.

Agents of Shield S7 E4, E5, E6, E7

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“Out of the Past”

“A Trout in the Milk”

“Adapt or Die”

“The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D”

This continues to be my favorite season so far, and the show has been taking some gigantic swings.

How about a whole black and white, noir episode? Coulson with the monologue over the scenes (which is an internal monologue), the cool mystery and the saving of Sousa, sort of.

Daniel Sousa was supposed to die in 1955 after he delivered an object to Howard Stark. Coulson said that he was a hero and that he was taught in SHIELD history. The team decided to save Sousa, fake his death (by using Coulson) and bring him with them in the Zephyr.

All in black and white.

Turned out, the black and white came from a malfunction of the Coulson LMD.

The next episode was into the 1970s and the show had a seventies style opening theme, with voice over introducing the cast.

It was clear that the writers had a freedom to come up with remarkable situations over the time stream and that they were having a hoot. There is drama, comedic moments and some great action.

Mack goes through a lot as his parents are killed and replaced by Chronicoms. He gets left behind with Deke in 1982. He spends a year mourning in isolation as Deke tries unsuccessfully to help him. Deke created a cover band…as a cover. The Deke Squad was his covert Shield group filled with weirdos and losers. Deke shows some real character development during these episodes and Jeff Ward is just remarkably funny. His dialogue is some of the series’ best.

Coulson destroyed his body in an explosion that killed the Chronicoms. Coulson wound up a Max Headroom-type character in 1983 with Deke.

Sousa and Daisy are growing closer as Daisy was getting tortured and experimented on by Nathanial Malick, who wanted Daisy’s powers transferred to him. He was able to do it, but he could not handle the new power.

It was awesome to have General Rick Stoner, played by Patrick Warburton, in his real body in the 1970s. Warburton played Stoner as a hologram when the Lighthouse closed up a few seasons ago. That hologram was based on a past Shield executive, and now we got to meet him.

Again though, Shield and the Chronicoms were playing havoc with the Sacred Timeline and I wonder what the TVA was doing.

The Muppet Show S1 E12, E13, E14

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Guest: Peter Ustinov

Guest: Bruce Forsythe

Guest: Sandy Duncan

Three more Muppet Show episodes and three guest stars. Looking at the three guest stars, Peter Ustinov would not be a guest star that you would expect on the Muppet Show. He was a two time Academy Award winner and had that high brow feel to him. However, he seemed to be fully engaged and willing to put himself out there. He was clearly having a good time with whatever silliness he was put in. Bruce Forsythe and Sandy Duncan make a much more understandable guest for the Muppets, but Ustinov was great.

It was on the Peter Ustinov episode where Kermit sang his iconic Sesame Street song, “(It’s Not Easy) Bein’ Green.” This was the song most connected to Kermit until the Rainbow Connection came along in the Muppet Movie.

The running storyline of the Peter Ustinov episode was that Kermit was feeling jealous of Ustinov, especially how everyone was fawning over him. We come to find out at the end that Peter Ustinov was jealous of Kermit because he always wanted to be a frog. Silly, but fun.

Bruce Forsythe helped Fozzie finish off Statler and Waldorf and their heckling. Forsythe was great because he was a comedian, a singer, a dancer, piano player and he showed all of these off during the show.

The Sandy Duncan episode found Fozzie at the heart of the backstage storyline as he was telling people that his writer was the legendary Gags Beasley. Fozzie then said he was going to do the famous Banana Sketch, which EVERYONE except Kermit knew. Kermit was getting frustrated when everyone would laugh about the Banana Sketch and would look down on Kermit when they discovered that Kermit was unaware about it. Even Sandy Duncan got into the act, barely able to contain her laughter with Fozzie when thinking about the Banana Sketch. There was no real pay off to this, outside of Kermit driving himself crazy. The bouquets of bananas her had Fozzie give Sandy Duncan at the end was a nice little punctuation to the storyline.

Of the most memorable moments for me on these three episodes, (outside of Bein’ Green) I would say that it was the song “Never Smile at a Crocodile” which was a fun respite. I did not remember hearing “I’m My Own Grandpa” on the Muppet Show before, but it was there. I am most familiar with Ray Stevens’ version of the song.

Agents of Shield S7 E1, E2, E3

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“The New Deal”

“Know Your Onions”

“Alien Commies from the Future”

I kicked off season seven of Agents of Shield today with episodes 1-3. I think it might have been my favorite season of the show because of the wild time travel aspects that they have, plus the addition of Daniel Sousa, from the Agent Carter series.

The time travel of this show is different than the greater MCU, which, I choose to believe, is where the Agents of Shield show went off the wire for the MCU. Up until a certain point, it maintained continuity with the movies, but that clearly changed. It might have been when the agents came back from the future, but there is no doubt that with the whole crew back in the past, they would have been creating branch timelines all over the place.

The TVA must have been extremely busy cleaning up the sacred timeline here.

First, we landed in 1931 and we got involved in an attempted assassination of FDR… or so we thought. Instead, the Chronicons were after Freddy Malick, who we know would become the father of future Hydra leader Gideon Malick.

We also met the first of the Koenig family involved, Ernest “Hazard” Koenig. He learned a bunch about the Shield group, which probably is what started his family’s involvement down the line. Enoch got left in the past as the Zephyr time jumped on its own. I remember the first time that I saw this episode being so sad about Enoch being left behind. He had become one of my favorites, and this rewatch has only helped solidify him as a personal favorite secondary character.

In 1955, they have Simmons pretend to be Peggy Carter, which was both inspired and crazy, to infiltrate Shield base at Area 51. Coincidentally, Peggy’s old partner Daniel Sousa showed up for the testing as well. I was not a big fan of Sousa on Peggy Carter, but when he came to jo0in Agents of Shield, I found him to be an exceptional addition.

Both May and Yo Yo are having problems. May was lacking emotions, even more than before, and Yo Yo has not been able to use her Inhuman power since the alien parasite had infected her.

The show continued to have that great action mixed with laugh out loud moments and created a different brand of sci-fi genre than it had had before.

Simpsley

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Disney + has a special episode of The Simpsons drop on the streamer, and it was tremendous.

It has been a long time since I have watched anything with the Simpsons in it, so when I saw this parody of a film noir called Simpsley, I was intrigued. I am a fan of noir.

The black and white aesthetic worked well for this stand alone episode that exists outside of the Simpsons’ typical continuity. In fact, this was a total switch for the characters.

According to IMDB, “When penniless con artist Marge Bouvier is sent to Italy to convince wealthy sap Seymour Skinner to come home, she’s tempted by the trappings of his affluent lifestyle. But there’s a big fat fly in the ointment: Skinner’s clingy, dim-witted mooch of a houseguest, Homer Simpsley. Lies, lust, and Italian lira abound in this Disney+ exclusive Simpsons noir.”

I loved how these characters were put into different roles, yet showed some of their own normal traits. I also loved the way that the episode place Homer and Marge into a situation where they are clearly the bad guys, despite being the show’s protagonists.

I have to say that the cameo from Bart was shocking and brilliant.

The show had its share of shocks moving through it as it embraced the style of noir well and gave us a satisfying episode contained within.

This is a parody of The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Agents of Shield S6 E11, E12, E13

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Spoilers

“From the Ashes”

“The Sign”

“New Life”

The shorter season six finished off with some awesome action and a bunch of subverting of expectations.

The main expectation that is subverted is something that they teased throughout the season. The fact that Sarge was created as part of Coulson made everyone think that he would turn out to be saved by the team and we would get Coulson back yet again.

However, he turned out to be the villain after all.

I talked about Deke’s hero moment in the last block of episodes, and he has one here as well. He does disappoint his grandparents (Fitz & Simmons) with some of his motives, or at least they way the way they saw it. I loved how Mack appreciated him, he thanked Agent Shaw, for the sort of rescue. Deke is a great character with a lot of contradiction within him. He is one to show silliness on the outside, only to hide the pain inside.

The end episode sets up season 7 big time, including the time travel aspect, the Hunters chasing them, and LMD Coulson. It was an intriguing choice to do it this way and not just use Sarge, which would have been an easy choice. I like how they kept the character of Sarge in the manner in which he was.

Thinking back, whatever happened to Flint? They created him with the Monoliths and then had Piper take him to get help for his broken leg, but we never see him again and they head back into the past right away. We also never see them rescue Benson from the pod that he was dropped in. I do not recall if these are threads that are picked up again in season seven or if these are just dangling threads never to be considered again.

I do think this was a strong season, but the final few episodes felt a little messy. There were still solid results from them and I love the set up for season 7.