Week 41: Frenemy of My Enemy, The Dirty Half Dozen

Frenemy of My Enemy: Does anybody else wonder if May is playing double agent, pretending to doubt Coulson even to other Coulson-allied people in order to preserve her cover and buy him time in the field? Perhaps not; the show rarely trusts its audience that much without tipping its hand to them. I'm enjoying the intrigue and double-crossing; like I wrote before, all this show needs to get good is for all of the agents to become paranoid once in a while and turn on each other, quite literally in the Mexican standoff aboard the plane. Most of this episode, even Zabo's clumsy attempts to connect with Skye, was fun if a bit far-fetched. (7/10)

The Dirty Half Dozen: I assume it was the detonation of the "bus" that earned this episode an Emmy nomination for best visual effects, the second of the series' two nominations ever. But that scene isn't as neat as Skye's oner, which really was done by Chloe Bennet in a single take and earned her a broken elbow. That's one highlight of a pretty fun episode, with the reunion of the original six cast members being another. Ward accepting that he cannot redeem himself is the right call for the series (it would have been wrong to try to force a permanent reconciliation), and this would be a great place to write out the character for good if the writers were so inclined. I also appreciated Deathlok and Lincoln's cells being a callback to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

What irks me about this episode is the strangely low energy. Zabo raves in public about Jiaying being Skye's mother, something that was a big secret last episode, and nobody seems to care. Gonzales reveals that he intends to experiment on imprisoned superhumans, the very thing they all oppose, and Morse lets it slide. Simmons tries to kill Ward and succeeds at killing his servant, and he just scolds her and walks away. Raina openly suggests overthrowing Jiaying as leader and gets no comeuppance. Why bother introducing this stuff if there's no dramatic impact? I'm glad that the show isn't overdoing the drama, but there's such a thing as undergoing it. I'm sure that the show will follow up on some of these plot points soon, but does anybody else find this hour to be strangely low-key? (6/10)