X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

Let’s all have a moment of silence for the sandwich.

The latest episode of AOS is called “The Hub” because the team goes to The Hub which is a central location for S.H.I.E.L.D. ops. We also meet Victoria Hand from the comics and Agent Sitwell from the Item 47 short film. We get to see an ops room, some hallways… but that’s it. There is talk of a lot of cool things, places like tech/research levels, etc, but all we get to see is basic white walls. Other than the fact that the team gets their next mission while being at the The Hub and Skye uses the visit as a chance to find out about her parents… it’s pretty much just background noise for what, essentially, is a trust exercise.

Victoria sends Ward and Fitz on a mission with no extraction plan because they didn’t have the resources… even though the rest of the team is doing nothing, at all. Then they are able to extract Ward and Fitz fairly easily with very little notice (and apparently that plane is super fast). The whole situation makes no sense unless Victoria was specifically trying to see what Coulson and/or his team would do. Coulson trusted ‘the system’, Skye didn’t (surprise?). Then the whole anti-trust/hacking-into-the-system discussion is just dropped, sorta, the episode ends without letting us know if Victoria was really testing them (her smile suggests it but that is all). It’s one of those storylines that needs a payoff or else it’ll become a glaring plot hole to nitpick at later.

Speaking of pay-off, we continue to get trolled about Coulson. It seems ‘it’s a magical place’ is some kind of hypnotic response to the mention of Tahiti. Apparently he’s also not allowed to look at his own health records. I have a feeling we’ll get the pay off on this one at the mid-season break, it was something they likely planned in case they didn’t get their back nine. Okay, that’s how I would have played it.

The episodes are picking up, Skye is given the B-plots now and we’re seeing more of the other characters… but it almost seems formulaic. Last episode was Simmons. This one was Fitz. Next looks to be Ward. If the one after that is May then it literally is count-by-numbers character development. And while the plots have been used for character development, this episode was pretty much the ‘anti-cliche’. It felt like every time a situation came up they would automatically choose the exact opposite of the stereotype, which, is kinda just as bad because it doesn’t allow for the anti-symmetry of life. Sometimes we are the cliche, sometimes we surprise you… they tried to do this here but it just kinda came off as very safe.

But all in all, it’s still a good episode, they are working towards finding their niche… and unfortunately destroying awesome sounding sandwiches.