Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 4, Episode 5 Review

Watching a double-bill of Agents of SHIELD can be a little overwhelming at times, given the show's love for crafting huge almost nonsensical plots over the course of a season and often cramming quite a lot into single episodes. Therefore, taking a look at 'Lockup' with the following episode in perspective is a little odd. It's essentially a build-up episode, getting all of the pieces on place for events to skyrocket towards this "pod"'s conclusion.
Setting 'Lockup' inside a prison makes me think very much of films like 'Dredd' or the 'Batman: Arkham' games, allowing for some concentrated action set-pieces. The big set-piece of this episode saw Daisy going toe-to-toe with a variety of prison inmates, trying to avoid using her superpowers, and proved to be a fantastic sequence - built upon much more firmly later on in the episode when May approaches Daisy about being too cold. The Daisy/May comparisons are obvious, but it does go to show how much Agents of SHIELD has twisted Daisy's character to become like May. It seems like an odd direction to go in, but is one they've been going for since Season 2, so it is understandable.
'Lockup' also gives us some exploration into the dynamic between Mace and Simmons, giving the two an antagonistic relationship based on Mace's whole "trust" scheme backfiring slightly. Clearly the new director of SHIELD has been hiding a few things, and his Inhuman revelation is only the first - but for now the show doesn't want to delve too far into that.
Overall, 'Lockup' is a really strong episode of Agents of SHIELD that gets moving pretty quickly to tell a much more coherent and well-structured story compared with previous installments this season. The prison setting is a nice change of setting, and we do get to see more of Robbie doing his Ghost Rider shtick - which is pretty damn badass.

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