Agents of SHIELD - 'S.O.S.' (Parts 1 and 2)

"Help my people or get a shot at a regular slot... What to
do...?"

With the death of Gonzales, SHIELD falls back to assess, but Jiaying is already moving up her plan to turn her people's outrage into war (a plan born when her rebirth after her vivisection basically resulted in a complete loss of empathy for ordinary humans.) In another twist, Raina threatens to expose her and is murdered, but this tips off Sky and turns her against her mother less than an episode after she chose the Inhumans over SHIELD. On the base, Cal's supersoldier experiments finally transform him into his brutal Mr Hyde form to wreak havoc in the Playground, while the Inhumans launch an attack on the aircraft carrier, intent on releasing the Terrigen mists throughout the ship and catching both the crew and the first responders.

While Coulson musters a response and Mack and Sky Die Hard (or should it be Under Siege?) their way around the lower decks, May and Hunter move to rescue Morse from Ward, in what is easily the most tedious part of the two hours.

No saucy comments about self-replicating redheads; I'm just going to point out
that a lot of trouble could have been avoided if someone had just suckerpunched
the middle one while she was doing her special effect sequence.

As things look at their worst, Coulson has a heart to heart with Cal and convinces him to join the good guys for Sky's sake by showing him that he can't be the monster Jiaying wants him to be and a man Sky could ever love and respect; he has to chose. Speaking of choosing, on the boat, Lincoln does an utterly unsurprising face turn (despite being beaned on the head by Mack while trying to do the right thing.) He later sums up the plot claiming that the Inhumans are 'not bad, just misled.'

There's a flashy attempt to do justice to Sky fighting the self-replicating 'Ginger Ninja', but the action highlight is probably Mack, Coulson and Fitz ('Science, beeatch!") versus teleporting Gordon, who is sadly completely on board with the boss's mass murder plans, and thus has to die.

Morse takes a bullet for Hunter and May manoeuvres Ward into taking out Kara by tricking her into reactivating her May disguise (one of the few genuinely clever moves by the good guys this season,) but alas, Ward gets away to become a recurring villain and apparently the first head of NuHYDRA. Yay. He is also bent on revenge, because he loved Kara so (and not Sky after all, or something.)

But the big bad of the next season is yet to be revealed, as we see a lost case or Terrigen crystals being passed up the food chain to become...

Dun-DUN-DUH!

!!!!!!

The second half of Season 2 has suffered from overstretching tension and consequently rushing character growth. It took so long for the Real SHIELD to come out of the woodwork that May's feelings of betrayal hit too fast, while similarly it took so long for Sky to contact the Inhumans that the relationship between her and her parents had to do all its heavy lifting over about four episodes instead of half a season. It has also suffered from its continuing insistence that Ward is at all interesting (let alone the relationship with Kara, which again seems to have gone from blatant manipulation to twu love in a handful of episodes.)

Agents of SHIELD continues then to be a deeply troubled show, failing to be either inept enough to enjoy ironically or good enough in general to overlook its specific flaws. Next season offers Secret Warriors vs. the Omega 3, and I guess I'll be around to see what happens.