Agents of SHIELD - 'Afterlife' and 'Melinda'

"So, you can teleport and read minds?"
"No, they cancelled that series. I do electrokinesis."

Skye wakes up in a remote mountain village, being cared for by 'transitioner' Lincoln (yesterday's Tomorrow Person Luke Mitchell, clearly getting into a groove as supernatural mentor.) She learns that this is 'Afterlife', a safe place for Inhumans and their kin, with Gordon's teleportation the only way in or out. She also learns that Raina and her father are there, but kept from her at first, and meets Jiaying, her mentor (and also, although unbeknownst to her at this point, her mother.)

Coulson and Hunter steal a car and head to the refuge. After learning what happened with Skye they set a trap and try to steal a Quinjet, with the aid of Mike Petersen, who has apparently been working with Coulson for some time. They then set off to recruit Grant Ward (yay*.)

When the hard approach fails, Gonzales is persuaded by the Board to offer May a place among them, as Coulson's advocate when he comes in, if that is her choice. He also shows her evidence that Coulson was working on something called 'Theta Protocol', behind even her back. Simmons signs on to help open the Toolbox, but Fitz leaves in a huff, and a big reveal shows that Simmons has made a copy of the Toolbox, swapped them and sent Fitz off with the real deal and a mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich.

In 'Melinda', the focus is on May, via flashbacks to the incident which made her 'the Cavalry' and her struggle to come to terms with Coulson's new layer of secrets. The flashbacks take Coulson and May to Bahrain to confront a woman with enhanced strength, Eva Belyakov. When negotiations fail, Belyakov and a group of dissidents take cover with a young hostage, and an entire SHIELD team is taken out trying to breach. May goes in and learns that the truth of the matter is not so simple.

In Afterlife, Skye realises that Jiaying is her mother, but is told to keep it secret so as to preserve Jiaying's apparent neutrality. To explain why someone who was not prepared for Terrigenesis is mistrusted, Jiaying tells the story of Eva Belyakov, who overruled the Council to put her daughter through the process, as the flashbacks reveal that the supposed hostage, Eva's daughter, became a voracious psychic parasite, controlling others and feeding on their pain until May shot her, breaking her own heart in the process.

Meanwhile, Fitz opens the Toolbox and contacts Coulson, who lets Hunter give him pointers on shaking a RealSHIELD tail using a hand dryer.

As well as expanding a certain amount of backstory, these two episodes have a fair amount of set up, and work hard to give a balanced view of the two new organisations. RealSHIELD starts to lose a little gloss as Morse begins to realise how quick her colleagues are to write off Skye as a Thing to be hunted and destroyed. It is increasingly apparent that, for all their increased openness, RealSHIELD is an organisation dominated by fear, in particular fear of betrayal. Meanwhile, the Inhumans have a pretty sweet set up, but Gordon's role as absolute gatekeeper is a little creepy, and there is clearly a lot of politics in paradise. It's a bold step to have such a clear demarcation between those with physical mutations - Raina and Gordon - and those without, with Gordon being more obviously against Cal and Skye, and Lincoln being less immediately sympathetic with Raina.

The reveal of what May's deal is is handled well. It's a story that has been a long time in coming, and encompasses and expands on everything we knew without being trite or overblown. All in all, these are a couple of surprisingly strong episodes, and if it weren't for Ward coming back, I'd be very positive about the prospects for the rest of the season.

* This is sarcasm.