I’ll concede to your greater knowledge in this area, although the set and stock footage they used did have an authentic Arab city feel to it - if not Gulf Arab.
Well, we actually know what’s going to happen to Raina: all her other dreams were about being caught in a thorny trap while being hunted down. Whatever use she makes of her power, it’s not looking like it’ll end well for her.
Maybe. But I got the feeling that was covered by her admitting she didn’t know when her birthday was. For some reason, they seemed to be making a point that she did know what her age was and that her parents got it wrong.
I thought she found it funny that she was older than she thought she was.
Looked more N African or Levantine rather than Gulf, which is quite different.
I loved the episode, and the explanation of May’s breakdown. But I have two problems with the way Shangri-La is run.
First, I agree that the reason for keeping the mom thing secret is lame, as is the way they go about (not) keeping the secret.
Second, they really are treating Raina crappily. “We’re a whole community of people just like you. We want to help you, to aid you in becoming comfortable with your new self and exploring all the wonderful things you have to offer. But you can’t leave, or even go outside in case anyone might see you.”
Yeah I’m glad Hunter is a good guy and I’m digging him and Coulson doing the buddy bonding thing. They’re a good team.
Great stuff. He’s really enjoying the role and playing the heck out of it. Cal’s done some bad things, but I’m hoping he ends up saving the day or something.
Yeah, that could be. I still think Raina is evil and she’s going to play a part in disrupting the way of life of this particular group of Inhumans and eventually she’s going to pay for it.
Well, she is a murderer, and when Gordon talks about not letting her in public I think he’s talking about the outside world. She doesn’t get to walk around Shangri La either, but didn’t she say she hates the light of day or something? She’s a mess, and not really ready to join the world in her current state, Inhuman or outside world. I suspect as Raina gets more comfortable with her new self, she’s going to develop an attitude about having to hide, and she’s going to start some sort of mutant liberation front, so to speak.
I also agree they’ve done a great job of making me understand Gonzales’ point of view, and he’s not completely wrong in suspecting Coulson’s intentions. Of course Olmos wouldn’t take a role if he couldn’t make it deep and nuanced.
I liked the couple of call backs with Skye - earlier in the series -
Coulson, on Skye’s childhood - “We don’t know much about her, but whereever she went, death followed”
this episode -
Skye’s Mom - “After Cal pieced me backtogether, we went on a rampage looking for you”
I was thoroughly disappointed with the Bahrain/Calvary story.
I get they were going with a motherhood theme with the episode but it felt a little misogynistic to make May’s trauma come from a motherhood issue. I’d rather Bahrain have just been a brutal bloody fight with massive casualties and May’s pullback was more PTSD.
In the comics the Inhumans are known for having strict to draconian laws so the mom wanting to keep Sky’s parentage a secret makes sense even if it is a poorly kept one. I hope the ‘twist’ in the relationship is that mom and the other Inhumans are supremacists who just naturally put less importance on regular human life.
I think it’s been mentioned before but Skye talks about growing up in St. Agnes orphanage. That’s also the orphanage mentioned in Daredevil.
Agnes gets around.
Jiaying called Daisy Skye and Cal didn’t freak. Not sure if there’s any significance. Maybe Cal was too deep in his fantasy to notice.
ETA: Oh yeah: Whedons. There’s some significance. 
It was classic PTSD. One of the condition’s earliest evidence that it wasn’t caused by cowardice was when experienced soldiers, even OFFICERS who should be better than that, suffered from shell shock after one alarming incident after years in the trenches.
I really liked the acting in May’s story. I bought her portrayal of a shattered soul after killing the child.
As for Coulson–I think his secret will become a part of the Civil War storyline in Cap 3. He’ll be on Cap’s side, while Adama and Mockingbird–and maybe the resurrected Xena-bot-- join Iron Man.
Agreed, I thought it was lazy, bad writing. Oh, the badass woman killer wants to be a mommy? Let’s have her kill a random kid and break down over it. Cliched and sexist all in one. I was really disappointed.
Yeah, maybe that’s what bugged me about the story line. I mean, just 5 minutes before she snapped a guy’s neck without a hint of a problem. She stabbed the Russian woman (who, granted, she was in the middle of a nasty fight with) in the stomach and watches her bleed out. But an insane 10 year old (?) girl turns her into quivering jello because she wants a baby?
I can recognize the point of view of everyone disappointed that May’s trauma was latched onto a mothering instinct but there had to be something unique that would make a particular mission traumatic for someone with her skills and professional history.
I agree that a bloody battle that was particularly bloody could maybe have been it, but no matter how bloody they could have made it (while keeping it T.V.-friendly), I’m sure we’d all be saying “What? She was traumatized because it was a really bloody battle? C’mon! She’s Agent May! She has seen all kinds of terrible shit …and the battle they showed wasn’t that bloody, why would that have been such a trauma?”
Add to that, didn’t they say when the Cavalry backstory had been hinted at before that May succeeded in saving all of the SHIELD agents (as was shown to be the case in this episode)? Once they laid out that fact, they lost the option to show that she was traumatized in a battle because she was unable to save SHIELD agents. A particularly bloody battle during which she had to watch good agents die was not an option for filling in this particular backstory.
So, the trauma had to come from a unique situation, not a particularly intense situation.
(It could have come from a particularly intense situation, but, again, I don’t think they could have presented it in a way that we’d believe it).
I’d say “had to kill a kid” is as good a way as any to go about it. Especially since they wanted to tie it in with the breakup of her marriage. Even if it was male character, if the story needed “Traumatic Battle Experience” + “Breakup of Marriage”, I can see myself inclined to write it as a “had to kill a kid” trauma.
Overall, I’d just chalk this up as another example of “Demystification is a Bad Thing”. The mystery of how May became The Cavalry was always going to be better than anything they could have shown us.
For me, the difficulty in suspension of disbelief comes as a rejection of the idea that anyone could even attempt married/family life while working as a SHIELD agent.
Just to add to what I said above, at the very least I really did quite enjoy Ming-Na Wen’s acting in this episode.
It was great seeing her play other shades of the character. It was particularly great to see her as the bad-ass SHIELD agent who enjoyed being a bad-ass SHIELD agent when she first started taking out all the nameless baddies as she entered the compound. All this time previously, when we’ve seen her as ultimate badass, it’s always been very cold and detached- like kicking ass was an unfortunate obligation. Pre-trauma May clearly enjoyed kicking ass and Ming-Na Wen seemed to really have fun playing at that.
Civil War is way too far in the future for this season’s storylines to be lead-ins. Adama and his storyline will be long-gone by the time the buildup to Civil War begins; it’s doubtful he’ll be around after the season finale, at this point. This season will end post Age of Ultron, with a new status quo.
And at this point, y’all breathlessly anticipating the imminent return of Lucy Lawless just-as-predicted should maybe start coming to terms with the idea that y’all have been played. They brought someone well-known to the viewers’ subculture knowing that they’d never expect her to go out like a chump… and then had her go out like a chump. It was played for shock value. They succeeded.
[Rick Blaine]We’ll always have flashbacks[/RB]
So why, exactly, couldn’t May have just knocked out the girl? It seemed to me that there were plenty of heavy things around (like for instance the gun) that she could have used in order to just conk her on the head hard enough to make her pass out; true, this might not have loosened her hold over the SHIELD agents (though it’s usually how such mind control powers are depicted to work), but it’d have been worth a try, with escalating measures if it doesn’t help. The point is, it wasn’t made clear enough to me that she really, absolutely, had no other choice.
Also, I’m usually quite tolerant of this, but those last couple of episodes, they’ve really laid on the ‘Skye’s a special snowflake’-sauce a bit thick—just consider her character’s arc: started out as an extraordinarily talented hacker (have we even seen her near a keyboard lately?), then was gradually revealed to be of some unknown, special origin (not just one, but the original 084!), has mysterious ties in the past with SHIELD, is eventually revealed to be of alien descent, gains superpowers (while of course being appropriately tormented by this!), and isn’t just of any old alien descent, but the daughter of an alien enclave leader, doesn’t just get her superpowers any old way, but with a DIVINER! in a KREE TEMPLE! (which, OK, may be the ‘old way’), isn’t just trained in their use by any old trainer, but by the inhuman leader who NEVER trains anybody herself (of course, because she’s her mother), and on and on…
I mean, she’s by now like special to the sixth power: not just special among human beings due to her capabilities, but also special thanks to her mysterious past, which is linked to her being part of a special group of people being descendend from aliens, which are special because they can gain superpowers, among which she is again special for gaining her powers OLD SKOOL, and once more special for being the long-lost daughter of their leader. Really, I’d welcome the introduction of a context for the character in which she serves as more of just a point of attraction for gawking and fawning over.