Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 4, Episode 14 Review

"The Man Behind the Shield" is an episode of Agents of SHIELD that I wish was made earlier in the show's run, or perhaps at a later date when the producers decide to lighten the hell up already. The fourteenth episode of this season shows a younger Coulson and May on-mission together, setting up romantic tension between the two long before Agent May's experiences shortly before the start of the series, but also serving as the Superior's back-story. Regrettably the former aspect doesn't work too well, and comes across as weak to say the least. It's probably best summed-up by Coulson's "cool origin story bro" comment. The Superior is such a flat villain though that having a flat origin story almost makes sense, but the series is almost aware at how bland an antagonist he is, with characters joking about how he's a typical Bond villain with laser sharks and death-traps. If the characters can't take him seriously, why should we?
The way the episode built-up to a twist reveal that Coulson, Mack, Daisy and Mace were LMDs was rather poorly-handled, as was the LMD May reveal. There was little in-episode build-up to this, and I thought they were going to turn around and say they'd all been caught in the Framework, but apparently not. I guess its not so much a weak twist as much as it is not particularly well-handled. Apparently next episode is the end of the LMD arc, but to be honest this arc felt like it was reaching its end several episodes ago. I can't quite understand why the writers are throwing so much out there now for one episode of conclusion, but perhaps the whole LMD thing will last longer, into the whole Framework 'pod' that ends this season.
I'd also like to mention the cinematography of Agents of SHIELD. Often I have to watched the show in rather poor quality (for reasons that I don't understand nor shall I get into here), so getting to watch it in HD this week was interesting. I have to admit though that the series looks incredibly de-saturated. Now, I've thought this for some time but I did wonder if it was the quality making it look worse than it actually was, but no. Agents of SHIELD has a horrible grey-brown filter applied to every scene, making it look awful. Not just bland, but boring. It's flat with no vibrant colours or anything to appeal to the eye, making it really stand out in the broader MCU. Despite being much "darker", the Netflix shows have better colour grading than this! While we're on the subject of production quality though, I must add that Bear McCreary's score is consistently strong as always - and I hope to see a full soundtrack release at some point.
Overall, "The Man Behind the Shield" is a good episode of Agents of SHIELD. It accomplishes little and the reveals it toys with aren't well-handled, but there's some nice character beats in there - even if the Mace torture sequences look surprisingly fake.