kennyab

And with the NCIS franchise waning (seriously, 1.9 in the demo for the flagship -- that's down 0.2 from last week and has to be one of the lowest figures in years), SHIELD holding steady in its ratings is totally fine.

Scars are a sign of healing. It's a comic trope that we don't see scars on characters like Wolverine. Realistically, though, even a person with faster healing would likely have scars, as the composition of the new tissue would still be different from that of the surrounding tissue, leading to different colorations. They are only signs that there was once damage, they aren't themselves damage.

Not necessarily. I tear my house apart every morning looking for my keys. That's just an expression. It was probably after Jiaying left that Cal started becoming more desperate, leading him to experiment on himself, and those turned him into a psycho killer.

During WWII, a young Whitehall captured Jiaying, but she was freed by Peggy Carter and the Howling Commandos, and Whitehall went to prison. She worked with young Inhumans for the next few decades, helping them (including Gordon) learn to use their abilities. This may or may not have been at Afterlife, as we don't know when that particular sanctuary was established. Whitehall was released in the 80's and some of the Hydra forces inside of SHIELD helped him hunt down Jiaying. Presumably some time between 1983 and 1988 she met Cal out in the real world, probably while scouting young potentials, and they fell in love. I'm guessing she decided to retire from the Inhuman business for a time during that period or the village was a pre-Afterlife sanctuary. They had Skye. Whitehall and his HYDRA/SHIELD agents found them and their baby in the village. They destroyed the village, killing almost everyone, kidnapped Jiaying, and I'm sure wanted to take Skye too. But a couple of the agents (I'm assuming non-Hydra who were caught up in this) were horrified by that and escaped with Skye. The official SHIELD report said that monsters attacked the village, but Coulson and May found out that it was actually SHIELD (well, actually SHYDRA) doing the attacking. They knew to classify her as an 084 because they knew about her mother, who they probably thought was an alien. Whitehall does his experiments on Jiaying, Cal finds her and puts her back together, and they go searching for Skye. After a while, Jiaying decides to go to Afterlife to help out (which, if the Chinese village was a sanctuary itself, may have been established at an even more remote, hard-to-get-to location since their existence had been compromised by Whitehall).

Back at the end of the first half of the season, Coulson told one of the Koenigs to activate the Theta Protocol if things went south, so the idea was planted.

So after all of the time of Raina wanting to believe in the Clairvoyant she becomes one. Nicely played.

I don't think he's dead. But the trip was only supposed to be six months or a year, I believe. That had to come up with some reason that he didn't return to Greendale. But I'm sure they'd bring him back in a second of Donald Glover ever decides to return.

The name is from an old Daredevil story in which Matt pretended to be his own twin brother, Mike. Silver Age at its finest. They actually had a better in-story reason for this working than most, though, as Matt used his powers to pass as sighted when pretending to be Mike, so slightly less ridiculous than a bunch of other tales from the time.

I could see some AoS characters working as a cameo on Daredevil. Cal, Raina, Ward, May, even Coulson -- no Fitz or Simmons or Skye, though. It'd be a pretty easy setup, one of the criminal leaders tries to use someone from the Index and SHIELD responds to it. A grimmer version of "Girl in the Flower Dress." I think it'd be really interesting to see some of the characters who have dealt with the dirtier side of SHIELD in this milieu. But I don't think it'd work the other way around, with Matt and Co ending up in SHIELD's world.

The name is from an old story in which he faked being his twin brother, Mike Murdock. It's all very silver-agey, and this is the show's way of giving a fun little nod to a rather ridiculous (yet awesome to some kids of the era) piece of Daredevil lore.

Regarding the amount of time to clean up the city, we're almost to the tenth anniversary of Katrina, and the Lower Ninth Ward still hasn't recovered to what it was. I'm sure Times Square is fine now in MCUNY, but it seems very realistic that non-tourist/financial areas are still rebuilding. ETA: The Battle of New York actually really helps with the setting of Daredevil. The gentrification of Hell's Kitchen is a far cry from the seedy roots of the comic in the 1960's. But after the events of The Avengers, it's a pretty easy sell that the attack stunted the growth in the area and made it easier for the Kingpin and his ilk to move back into the neighborhood. There's now a big line drawn between real NY and MCUNY that gives them some great creative license.

Works for the X-Men movies. The last one had the past X-Men, the DOFP X-Men who kept getting killed, the original trilogy X-Men ... plus the other movies where they're always standing around the school.

One of the things I really liked was Coulson defending Bobbi and Mack to Hunter. It's a nice contrast to his reaction to May last season and a good indicator of growth. It'd be really easy for him to feel betrayed again, but instead he understood that they're good people with legitimate concerns, even if he didn't agree with how things went down. It was also nice that they demonstrated the difference in leadership styles of the two SHIELDS. What Coulson says goes in his version, whereas Gonzales can be outvoted. But there's definitely an anti-powers bias in Pointy!Shield. I'm curious to hear where Weaver falls. But yeah, I think that's really going to end up pushing Bobbi onto Coulson's team, as she doesn't seem ready to automatically treat people as threats.

I usually don't do the grammar correction thing, and I certainly don't want you to think that I'm picking on you, Sakura12, because this is a mistake I see happen quite a bit (heck, I've seen it made in published materials that should have been better edited). But since this latest episode is about Melinda May and how she got her nickname, and I'm guessing we're going to see the word used quite a bit throughout this thread, I want to go ahead and tackle it. Calvary is the hill upon which Jesus was crucified. Cavalry, in the modern sense, refers to soldiers in armored vehicles (originally, French soldiers on horseback), and this is May's nickname. Again, no offense intended, and I hope I'm not being too pedantic. Like I said, "Calvary" is used for "cavalry" all the time, but these words are a bit more culturally significant than they're/their/there (and goodness knows I make those mistakes all the time and have to shake my head at myself and hit the edit button). And I'm also very excited about this one! I'm hoping May's defining moment is a real butt-clencher.

Everything on TV is falling. A 1.4 was still enough for it to win its timeslot, and even NCIS is super-low compared to its normal performance. Warmer weather/longer days/spring break/etc.

Gonzalez wore a suit as well. And of all of the women on the show, and there have been many (including Agent Hand, who wore pant suits and sensible shoes), Agent Weaver's the only one I can think of who has worn a skirt suit. When it's only one out of a bunch, it seems to be a choice for that specific character instead of a trope. ETA: Once Gonzalez's crew stopped the takeover of the academy, I'm sure Agent Weaver would have put together a suitcase to take back onto the carrier once she decided to join them. I didn't get the impression that they simply air-lifted her out, but they actually took back the academy.

Hah. I guess "Level 1" is a euphemism for scrubbing the toilets.

Even if she received the order from Maria Hill under the guise of Fury's final commands before he died (or he contacted Bobbi before his death saying that if "x" happens in the next couple of days, then take out the carrier), I don't think Bobbi would worry about explaining the exact method by which she received the order in the heat of the moment. To her, she got an order from Fury, and that's the germane information at the moment. She's administration, she dresses in business formal just like Gonzales and Coulson. And like many women, she must prefer skirt suits as opposed to pants suits. She's not in the field day-to-day, and Coulson's team was subdued with gas by the time they entered the Playground, so it doesn't really matter.

You have to put this in context, though. It was tied for the highest rating in its time slot and 3rd for the evening. Everything is reaching lows, even NCIS (2.1 is low for that). Warm weather and DST means fewer people are watching live TV.

What else is he supposed to do? She doesn't mean to be, but Skye's a threat to everyone and could bring the whole base down in her sleep. Putting her at a hidden location that only a couple of other people know is sadly one of his few options.

Coulson went to Simmons because it's continuing from the previous episode before where he asks her not to reveal what she's learned about Skye with anyone else. While Fitz knows some of the changes Skye's gone through, being involved in his project would require him to know the whole thing, and Coulson's trying to keep it as far under wraps as possible. It has nothing to do with not trusting Fitz's abilities (I mean, he had enough confidence in Fitz to put him back in the field in Puerto Rico when even Fitz wasn't sure he was ready), it's about containing information. I mean, I don't even think May fully knows what's going on at this point.

I think they started at the same time Coulson's team did, with Gonzalez and Hartley, who were together when HYDRA made itself known, joining up with Agent Weaver and a few others very quickly in the aftermath. They're getting things going, then at some point Coulson tries to recruit Hartley. I imagine this is when her SHIELD found out about Coulson's SHIELD, and rather than filling him in on the other group, she decides to hold back that information and see what he's doing, whether his SHIELD is on the up-and-up or it needs to be taken care of. Since Hartley's group knows about Coulson's and doesn't reciprocate that info, it's easy enough for Gonzales to go more covert and keep a lower profile with his faction to stay under Coulson's radar. Since they had Hartley, Mack, and Bobbi embedded, they'd be able to get a heads-up about our SHIELD's activities and stay clear. At this point, I think their goal is to get the gadget containing all of Fury's secrets and shut Coulson down as cleanly as possible. They don't want to hurt anyone, but they see Coulson as erratic and don't trust him, even though they probably want to recruit most everyone else. But Hunter's escape has forced their hand, and they're about to raid the compound before Coulson has a chance to get a defense together.

He also took the time to make Simmons dinner and check on her well-being, not just get briefed, when she was undercover at HYDRA. Yes, he is closer to May and Skye than the other people on the team. I'm OK with that, as it happens in real life. SHIELD-wise, Fitz and Simmons were fairly well fully formed when they joined the team, having gone through the traditional SHIELD ranks. Skye was different and depended a bit more on Coulson than the others did. And he is noticing that things aren't kosher with Mack and Bobbi. He didn't seem too surprised when May said she didn't buy Mack's story, so I think he's had some doubts for a while now. But I don't blame him for not knowing about the other SHIELD, as Gonzalez has been actively working to stay off of his radar. It's hard to win a game of hide and seek when you don't even know it's going on.

If you have Netflix, it's there. Otherwise, pester your local library to get it.