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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I'm just annoyed they did the same plot three times in a row and expected us not to notice.
"Hunter/May/Coulson's significant other is tortured/killed/whatever by Ward, causing them to become obsessed with vengeance and do reckless/unsanctioned/rogue actions to take him down while everyone else tries to convince them that they're letting their emotions control them."
Until he tortures/kills/whatevers someone else's significant other, causing them to abruptly drop it so the focus character can change.
At least given the circumstances we shouldn't see that a fourth time. Unless they want to dig up a significant other for Mack or something.
edited 2nd Feb '16 10:14:43 AM by KnownUnknown
The main point is that Hunters search for revenge ends when Bobbi tells him that he should stop - not because of Andrew, not because she wants to hunt Ward herself, but because she is afraid of what they will become if they allow themselves to go to the dark side in their desire for revenge.
Ironically we see at the midseason final how dire the consequences are when you abandon your principles when another character is not as perspective as Bobbi is.
I really enjoy the relationship between Hunter and Bobbi. Especially the fact that she is so much bigger than him. True, the show runner usually try to hide the fact, but the combination of a bigger woman with a smaller man is so rare in TV that I enjoy it playing out between them. That Bobbi is the more competent one on nearly every level is just the icing of the cake.
"Hunter/May/Coulson's significant other is tortured/killed/whatever by Ward, causing them to become obsessed with vengeance and do reckless/unsanctioned/rogue actions to take him down while everyone else tries to convince them that they're letting their emotions control them."
Until he tortures/kills/whatevers someone else's significant other, causing them to abruptly drop it so the focus character can change.
A testament to how played out Ward was as an antagonist.
Yes, because he intersected Bobbi's own stupid plotline. Coulson's hand gets cut off, permanently disabling him, and he's fine by next episode with his shnazzy robot hand. Bobbi blocks a bullet with her shoulder to protect Hunter and has to spend half a season overcoming her traumatized fear of violence and learning to be brave in the field again.
Ward damsel'd Bobbi and, as a result, Bobbi got reduced to a whimpering, traumatized mess at the same time Hunter turned into a man-raging psychopath. Because god knows an agent as prolific and long-standing as Bobbi has never been shot before.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Except Coulson didn't get over it - as he said in the first episode, he still misses his hand. And Bobbi does get back out into the field - she doesn't stay in the lab. So all your complaints are stuff that is addressed and then changed.
The only thing I would give you is that Rosalind Price is fridged and Coulson does go after Ward for payback, but it's shown that this spectacularly backfired. Every instance of that trope on the show, actually, seems to be subvert it in some way.
She spends her time rehabbing and working in the lab as an alternative to field work. Then she does go back into the field, screws up a diplomacy attempt, and gets chastised by May for newfound cowardice. It's only late in the season that she finds her nerve and gets to be awesome again, which is painfully demonstrated through the aforementioned Special Effects Failure.
Yes, it's an arc, but the fact that her arc is that being shot made her timid and cowardly is the problem in and of itself. It doesn't matter that it was resolved, it never should have existed in the first place. The same is true for Hunter's berserker man-rage arc. This was a poor directional choice for these two characters that catered heavily to harmful stereotypes and made them both weaker.
edited 2nd Feb '16 10:28:06 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.In fact, you seem to be leaving out a lot of the parts where the trope is used, but then deliberately subverted.
edited 2nd Feb '16 10:29:26 AM by alliterator
Bobbi's problem is not that she got shot. Her problem is that she got tortured, her kneecap got smashed and she was used in a trap to kill Hunter. That is way more traumatic than loosing a hand and needs way more recovery time. She is still wearing a brace at the start of the season for a reason, even though it is half a year later. The whole point is that she does recover and comes out of the experience even stronger. They spend nearly a whole episode it, and pairing her with May for that was a stroke of genius.
Coulson "just" lost a hand - and no, he is not fine with it, he is still fumbling around with it.
Not to mention that last season was all about Fitz recovery. This whole show is about making characters suffer and them overcoming the trauma they received. The only one who usually bounces back pretty fast is Daisy because it is part of her established character to do so.
edited 2nd Feb '16 10:31:38 AM by Swanpride
I'll say this about Ward—the fact that the show's kind of looked at him and went "well, he's a main character, of course we're still gonna use him" is kind of hysterical to me. He continues to exist by sheer force of status quo, at this point.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Not sure it's about liking the actor so much as contracting the actor.
Brett Dalton signed a contract like everyone else did when he came onboard for season one. That contract would have been for a certain number of seasons, which means they need to keep giving him things to do each season. Whether it's for the big screen or the small one, everyone signs a contract and that makes it difficult to just kill off or write out a character on a whim.
But, as noted, this was the best thing they could do with him: killing off Ward and giving Brett Dalton a compelling new character to play, allowing Dalton to remain even after Ward is gone.
edited 2nd Feb '16 11:20:32 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To clarify, I'm not talking about the fact that the show can't seem to shake Dalton—that's not what I find amusing. It's the way the show, for a while, didn't really seem interested in pitting him against SHIELD as much, and so there's several episodes where it seems like we're just kinda checking in on Ward the way we would Skye, or Coulson, or Simmons, except he just happens to be doin' evil stuff. The show still treats him like a lead protagonist even though that hasn't been his role for well over a year. The way the show is assembled, on an aesthetic level, doesn't quite seem to get that this isn't season-one Ward anymore.
edited 2nd Feb '16 12:22:16 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

I think I remarked on this at the time, but like three days before Coulson's love interest took a bullet and fueled Coulson's own women-in-refrigerators roaring-rampage-of-revenge moment, Doctor Who gave us Clara choosing circumstances in which her death is possible, accepting that death with grace, and basically bullying the Doctor into not going for all that stupid macho bullshit.
It was an incredible contrast.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.