Agents of SHIELD - 'Uprising'

"This is Douchey McPR. He's either a red herring or a mole."

The world gets a little darker and scarier, as mysterious forces take action against the Sokovia Accords.

As SHIELD mobilises its scientific minds to save May before her (possibly Darkforce related?) hallucinations scare her to death, the world suffers a series of city-wide blackouts, followed by a broadcast demand from 'the Inhuman Resistance' that registration be ended and the Inhumans allowed to live in peace. The team heads to Miami, one of the first targets, where Elena is attending a hen do which is interrupted by a group of armed men who announce that they are there to protect the people by finding an Inhuman. Elena is forced to reveal herself to protect a close-up magician accused of being the Inhuman, but Coulson, Fitz and Mack turn up in the nick of time to help her subdue the posse, who are wearing Watchdog tattoos and carrying a copy of the registration list.

Personally, I'm calling douchey PR guy Douchey McPR for the mole, but the Watchdogs are also shown to have other backers.

"What? No. It was a good press conference. No, you're jealous. Shut up."

With the EMP generated by a sophisticated, continual device, Fitz is forced to go old-school, using compasses and draftsman's tools to triangulate the location of the Watchdog base, as the President considers drastic action and Radcliffe struggles to resuscitate May - having allowed her to die to initiate a 'reboot' of her brain - using Ada's(1) shielded battery as a power source. Elena gets to be full on awesome and the team saves the day, revealing that the 'Inhuman Resistance' was a Watchdog front intended to foster mistrust and fear of Inhumans and justify a purge. To counter the fear, the Director - whose full name is Jeffrey Mace - goes public and announces the reformation of SHIELD, to the anger of a senator whose brother is trapped in a Terigen cocoon and who is backing the Watchdogs' campaign.

Elsewhere, Daisy learns that Robbie has an uncle, now in prison, who worked at the place with the experiments and the magic and whatever. They get into a fight with looters and Robbie's brother Gabe, realising that Daisy is the vigilante Quake, tells her to stay away from his brother, because he needs good people around him. The mutual protectiveness of the Reyes brothers - Robbie is physically protective, and shields Gabe from any knowledge of his 'night job', while Gabe sees himself as defending Robbie from bad influences - lifts this section from pure B-reel fodder or Daisy puff material.

All-in-all, another solid episode, not least because it has plenty of Yo-Yo. I like Yo-Yo; I like her spiky-flirty relationship with Mack and the specific limits of her speedster awesomeness; I like that she stands up to Mack when he learns she has been helping Daisy. I am deeply, deeply concerned that she is going to end up getting fridged saving Daisy's precious butt, but I can still hope that I'm wrong. I also like the tension between Mace and Coulson, who is obviously regretting some of what he gave up with the big chair. The Ada subplot isn't really clicking with the rest yet, but it's early days and the season isn't looking too bad. On the other hand, it hasn't been steamrollered by the cinematic releases yet.

(1) Okay, she might be AIDA - Artificially Intelligent Data Analyser - but until I have confirmation, I maintain that 'Ada' is the spelling that makes sense from a compsci history perspective.