Episode 102 - S05E11 - All the Comforts of Home Project T.A.H.I.T.I.

S5:E11 - Jess and Jared recap and discuss “All the Comforts of Home."
In our first episode of the season back in the present we meet our "favorite character," Ruby, and we begin by reexamining some of our initial reactions and feelings about the character and what she represents. With the benefit of time and consideration Jess repositions Ruby's writing, and sees how it was more thoughtfully, and well written character than we had originally understood her to be, and that there is a meta commentary there, about how adolescent women are demonized and demeaned across all areas of our culture.
We open on Ruby, a "stereotypical" teenage girl in a stereotypical teenager's room, covered in posters, listening to pop music with headphones on her bed laying the wrong way on her bed with her feet in the air. We soon meet her mom, who Ruby quickly confronts, demanding to know if she's a good guy, or a bad guy, and saying that since they're going after S.H.‪‪I.E.L.D. that she wonders if they're not the bad guys. Her mom, General Hale, tells her that she just follows her orders, and that everything she does is for Ruby, though Ruby incorrectly predicted she'd say everything she did was for the greater good. Here is where we learn about their weird mother-daughter relationship, and that Ruby is obsessed with Daisy Johnson AKA Quake. But more importantly, the team! Our favorite S.H.‪‪I.E.L.D. Agents have returned from the future to the present day Lighthouse. They show up disoriented in different waves and gather together and Fitz confirms that despite their familiar location, they had made it back to their home time period. ‪‪A hologram of an old school S.H.‪‪I.E.L.D. Director, Rick Stoner, played perfectly by Patrick Warburton, appears to give the rundown to the team via an outdated pre-recorded message. The base was top-secret base designed for a post-apocalyptic situation to help repopulate the Earth, so, exactly what it ended up being used for in the future. Coulson mentioned how injured Mack had gotten, and Yo-Yo turns it back on him and he brushes his injuries off, but she knows what Coulson isn't telling the rest of the team about his own dark, crazy future sci-fi poison-filled wound. Yo-Yo, Mack and Jemma leave to get Mack medical attention and Coulson sends May to take the tour with hologram Rick Stoner, and she drags Fitz along. Daisy comes to furious with Coulson for using an Icer and taking her back to the past against her consent, and though she doesn't forgive him exactly, she understands his decision. Fitz and May are going through a storeroom and find all three monoliths, and a douche-bro Chronicom who was in the AWFUL Paris Hilton vehicle "The Hottie & the Nottie," Noah. Noah is the anti-Enoch, and is a dismissive, self-important robo-twit. He tells them that everyone with knowledge of the bunker is inside the bunker, and assures them that they're safe. May has a very cheesy "small but active fan base" line that is super meta, and made us chuckle.
Jess noted that a lot of aspects of this season make us sure that they'd intended, or rather believed, it would be the final season of the show.‪ In the Lighthouse's monitor room they note "potential alien contact," that will lead to the end of the world, and there's a pretty by the numbers UFO-looking flying saucer in space on its way. They need to go check it out in St. Louis, and are still wanted for the crimes that AIDA and Ivanov framed them for. They show that they're outside this small town of River's End in the Lighthouse. When the team leaves the Lighthouse and has to steal a van Mack ‪‪is mortified, and May, and even Yo-Yo, are a bit annoyed with how strait-laced he is, though Jemma finds it wonderful. Daisy gets more comfortable with the computer room in the Lighthouse than Noah seems to appreciate, getting under the Chronicom's skin. Noah ‪‪is a dick, and he's ineffective, but he's not actually against the team, he's just really bad at he