Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Uprising (4x03)

I'm really excited by a lot of what's going on. It seems like both our smaller character arcs and our bigger world-building arcs are gaining some nice momentum.

Cons:

The basic premise of this episode, which I liked, involved some human extremists using EMPs to fry the electricity in major cities. They then blamed these blackouts on Inhumans, to try and get people to turn against them. I have no problem with this setup, or with most of what our characters did because of it.

With one exception: May. Simmons and Radcliffe spend this episode trying to figure out how to save her. She's going berserk, and based on Simmons' observations of other people who got touched by that creepy ghost thing, May has hours left, at best, before death. So, Radcliffe suggests that they kill her and then restart her heart, like rebooting a computer and getting the crazy parts of her brain to shut off. They do so, and then right before Simmons is about to shock May back to life, the power cuts out. So then Radcliffe uses the battery cell from his still-secret AI, and May comes back, her madness cured. My reasoning for not liking this should be pretty obvious. It was a cheap trick. Nobody really thought that May would die in that moment, did they? And the whole detour of May's madness sort of stalls out. She's been cured so easily! I guess I was just looking for more.

Pros:

That being said, I did like the moment when May woke up, and you just instantly know she's back to her old self. "Where am I? Get this crap off of me!" Simmons gives her a big hug, which seems to freak May out even more than the restraints. I also liked that we checked in with Radcliffe and the AI. Still waiting for that secret to blow up in somebody's face.

Meanwhile, Daisy and Robbie get caught in another one of the blackouts. When Robbie's little brother Gabe is attacked by some troublemakers during the blackout, Robbie and Daisy work together to take the guys out. Daisy uses her powers, which aggravates her weak bones, and her arm breaks. While Robbie is out getting medical supplies for Daisy, Gabe reveals that he knows Daisy is Quake. He promises not to tell anybody, but only if she leaves his brother alone. Gabe thinks Daisy will be a bad influence. He doesn't know that Robbie is Ghost Rider.

I really, really love the chemistry going on between Daisy and Robbie. Not in a romantic sense, just in a cool character dynamic sense. They've both come from a pretty rough situation, and they have this affinity for one another, even though they both have good reason to be wary. Gabe is a delight, too. I like the fact that he feels as protective towards Robbie as Robbie feels towards him. Gabe seems like the kind of character that gets killed off to further somebody else's journey, but I hope I'm wrong about that.

The best plot of the night goes to Yo-Yo, Mack, Fitz, and Coulson. During one of the blackouts, Elena is caught at a bachelorette party. Some members of the Watch Dogs show up and demand that the party-goers turn over the Inhuman in their midst. A party magician is suspected first, but when Elena uses her gift to protect him, everybody finds out the truth. Coulson, Mack, and Fitz, who were sent by Jeffrey to find Elena and try and solve the problem, arrive just in time to save Elena and tie up the bad guys. Fitz then uses some rudimentary technology to triangulate the location of the EMP. The team arrives and shuts it down, saving the day.

Elena is awesome. I loved seeing her out and about in her normal life, since that's pretty much an impossibility for most of our leads. When her friend found out she was Inhuman and therefore rejected her, I felt really bad. Obviously the plight of the Inhumans here is allegorical in many respects to the way politicians can use fear of minorities to garner support. It's tragic to see Elena lose out on her friendships. At the same time, she and Mack are on the outs since Mack is angry at Elena for being in contact with Daisy and not saying anything. I can see both sides of this. Elena knows that Daisy doesn't want to be found, and adversity often leads to solidarity between people who share the same struggles: Daisy and Elena are both Inhumans in a world that is becoming more and more hostile to their kind. However, Mack is also right. If Elena wants to be a part of the team, she can't be keeping secrets. And she knows that Mack, Coulson, and the others all just want to help Daisy out however they can. It's a tricky situation for sure.

Fitz was bad ass this week, in an adorably understated way. He uses his incredible mind to create low-tech compasses in order to find the location of the EMP. "No big deal. Rudimentary science, maybe saving the day." Oh, Fitz. You're adorable. My other favorite Fitz line was when Coulson was talking about how he wished he'd gotten to see the guy with his skull on fire. Mack says, "no, you don't," and Fitz says: "Sir, it was very unsettling." I don't know what it was, but his delivery just cracked me up.

I also want to take a moment to praise the action sequences in this episode. Daisy and Robbie were really cool taking on the ruffians and Yo-Yo's powers are awesome. I loved the slow-mo when she stole four guns from four guards in a split second. It looked really cool.

Hovering over all of this is the presence of Jeffrey and the government at large. Due to this recent disaster, Coulson encourages Jeffrey to accelerate the unveiling of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the public. He does so, making it clear to everybody that Inhumans were not responsible for the attacks. A certain Senator Nadir, a woman whose brother died in the process of transforming into an Inhuman, isn't about to let Jeffrey smooth things over. It looks like she is the one responsible for the blackouts, and her network killed many Inhumans while various cities were in chaos.

I like Jeffrey as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. And by "like," I mean I find him interesting. He's such a stereotype, in some ways. It seems impossible that all could really be as it seems with him, and yet we have no overt evidence that he's deceiving anybody. It's intriguing, to say the least. And this Senator Nadir woman has already caught my special interest, for obvious reasons. The very end of the episode had a great buildup. She is sitting alone in a house, receiving a phone call about the successful killings of Inhumans. She says she's at her brother's house, and then she goes to leave, talking to somebody that we can't see. I was expecting maybe somebody tied up, or something like that. Instead we see the figure of a man encased in stone. Ostensibly, this is her brother, dead. He didn't make it through his transformation, and it seems that his sister hates Inhumans because of it. This is an interesting development. The more traditional revenge route would have Nadir hating Inhumans for killing her brother. Instead, the very fact that he was Inhuman is what killed him.

In all, this episode was successful in almost every way. May's little death fake-out was a bit eye-roll worthy, but even that afforded a good opportunity to focus in on Radcliffe and Simmons. One of the things that is so cool about this show is that I never know what it is exactly that I'm waiting for. I can tell we're leading up to some cool stuff, but what is it? I don't know, and I'm excited to find out.

9/10