Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 6, Episode 4 Review

When did Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. become DC's Legends of Tomorrow?

'Code Yellow' starts off with Deke having reinvented himself in 2019 as the head of a tech/games company, with a girlfriend (played by Executive Producer Maurissa Trancheon) and a revolutionary new system called "The Framework". Sound familiar? Oh, and obviously the episode opens with a cheesy action sequence of Deke fighting some aliens in a corridor and then seducing Daisy in a fake-out dream/game sequence so obvious that for me at least, the episode started on the wrong foot.
With this and the previous episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be trying to embrace a more humorous approach, with a style of meta-humour similar to that of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Deke's look towards the camera in the pre-titles sting was a bit too on-the-nose for me, especially given how grounded Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has tried to be for so long. If the show wants to head into a new direction, it can, but this seems like a step too far, and one that doesn't fit within the show we've had up to this point.

It's this awkward element of humour that prevents this episode from feeling entirely satisfactory, with Deke's exploits being of little importance or interest, other than to reintroduce him into the season-long story. This plot-strand also feels tonally contradictory to that of Yo-Yo, who after encountering a mysterious bat-like parasite is forced to kill her new love interest Blandy McBlandFace. Oh, sorry. According to Wikipedia, he's called Keller. A name just as bland and forgettable as his character.
Yo-Yo's romance with Keller is one that I've been critical of since Episode 1, and while I am somewhat relieved that its reached its end only four episodes into the season, I'm still left positively bored by it all. What an absolute waste of screen-time. It's as though the writers wanted Yo-Yo to have a story and just thought "hey, let's give her a love interest, spark a love triangle with Mack and then kill the new guy off". It's so generic, played-out and dull that I don't know why they bothered. It's not as though Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a teen drama - that's supposed to be Runaways, or Cloak and Dagger.

Speaking of wasting time, May has another fight with Sarge's Team and gets captured - just like she almost was in Episode 2. Personally, I'd have just cut-out the middle-man, but at least it might mean that the story-line starts to develop further...right?

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