This week’s episode of Agents of SHIELD, 4722 Hours, the tale of Jemma’s time “in the monolith” is told and we finally learn why she is so desperate to get back. The whole installment feels a little like “Jemma Crusoe,” trapped on a desolate planet, with no sun and a couple of moons, who finds her “man” Friday and the two of them combine forces to get out of the wormhole destination they have found themselves in.
Although there is more than enough semblance to the classic deserted isle scenario shades of the 2013 film Riddick are also present. In the David Twohy movie, Riddick (Vin Diesel) is stranded on a “deserted” planet and kills, as well as eats, a water “monster” just as Jemma does in 4722 Hours. Granted, Riddick does not giddily call his dinner “biatch.”
Another space film homage is present with the script alluding to the 2000 film Red Planet. As Will and Jemma head to the spot where the portal is due to open next, Daniels tells her: “I’m glad that thing sent you over and not the janitor.” In Red Planet a team land on Mars and all of them die expect for Val Kilmer’s character who is, basically, the spacecraft caretaker, aka the janitor. Daniels’ team, three more astronauts who all self-destruct, except for one who he has to kill, also closely mimics the fate of the Mars landing team in the Antony Hoffman movie.
After a good long amount of hours Simmons is captured by a NASA astronaut named Will Daniels (Dillon Casey). Jemma escapes and the two become allies and then later, lovers. Simmons and Daniels are opposites that compliment each other. She represents hope, he is doom.
The astronaut has been on the planet since 2001 and mapped out the surface. While Daniels is a presence through a large part of this episode, 4722 Hours belongs to Elizabeth Henstridge, full stop.
On the planet giant dust storms come at inopportune times and, according to Daniels, contain something evil. It is, he asserts, attracted to blood. Later, Jemma sees a figure, it is apparently male and wearing a cloak. In all likelihood, it is the man who entered the monolith when it was in Victorian England. If not, it would be a nice touch and not too inconceivable. After all, time apparently moves differently in “monolith world.”
Henstridge does a cracking job playing an educated scientific woman trapped in a place where she is, for quite some time, alone. The actress rocks it in the Simmons, sans Fitz, storyline, although Iain De Caestecker is ever present with Jemma talking to him, or his picture. (She also replays a video he made for her birthday.)
Agents of SHIELD has devoted time to “Fitzsimmons” in the past, but never to such an extent. The isolation of Henstridge’s forced exile to the deserted planet where she eventually teams up with the gloomy NASA survivor, “I had one job to do…” allows her to showcase the size and skill of those impressive acting chops.
Come Emmy time, Elizabeth Henstridge should get some sort of gong for this episode. Even her retelling of her ordeal to Leo, along with his impassive reaction, getting up and with no expression on his face at all, reveals that they will go back for Daniels. When Henstridge’s character gets tearful, our eyes well up in sympathy.
In 4722 Hours, the actress almost effortlessly delivers moments of truth that feel real and plausible, despite the setting being a desert planet on the other end of a wormhole. At the end of the episode Daniels throws away his now useless gun and the sun sets as he desolately walks away.
Despite the homages to other films with a scientific setting, the overall feeling is of a Robinson Crusoe on Mars but with the second banana getting left behind. Jemma is Crusoe and Daniels is Friday; she is the brains and an imaginative thinker, he is the astronaut who was hired to be, essentially, a bodyguard.
Agents of SHIELD, 4722 Hours belonged to Elizabeth Henstridge totally. Her delivery of Jemma Simmons’ time on the mysterious rock was an impressive array of emotions ranging up and down the scale. The series airs Tuesdays on ABC and continues to deliver some high quality entertainment. Tune in and get caught up in the world of small screen Marvel.
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