Raonaild

I didn't care for that speech, and I didn't care for all the time the episode spent standing around that box. It just wasn't that interesting.

The whole Ghost Rider arc fell a bit flat for me.

I'm assuming that that just happened after AIDA read the Darkhold. I assume that she started building the May LMD last week when we saw her constructing that brain, and then she made the switch when May went to pick up her and Radcliffe in this ep (which is why they had a whole scene where May and Coulson established that she was off to pick them up).

What I don't get though is whether we're supposed to assume May is still alive. I mean, AIDA didn't seem to have a problem killing the other agent, why was she keeping May alive, and if May was alive how would AIDA be able to hide her for very long?

I'm glad she's back, but the resolution just felt way too easy for me. Was that really all they had to say to make it alright, that she was working with SHIELD the whole time? So why was the fact that she helped SHIELD at the prison such a big deal that the Senator was able to blackmail Mace over it?

Again though, I felt like them all being together and laughing over beers was too easy. Is everything just okay now, and everything forgiven? I want more follow up, I want to see them talk. I don't want all the pain and angst that we got up to this moment to just be forgotten.

I especially want some follow up with FitzSimmons. I want to know what exactly about AIDA bothers Simmons - it is because Fitz kept her a secret, or that he's humanizing AIDA too much, or that she wanted to be involved, or that she thinks it's a big mistake, or what? And given how much the two don't trust the Director (which at least they spent some time addressing in this ep), what's the plan now? Have they considered just getting out of SHIELD? Fitz was pretty angry with Mace last week, is there no fallout from that?

One thing in the ep that also stood out for me was the new Director finally admitting how hollow his "team that trusts is the team that triumphs" nonsense is. I rolled my eyes when he started whinging about it - it's his own fault that they're not a team and that nobody trusts each other. Trust and respect need to be earned, and he's done nothing to earn it, on the contrary he's done things that are counter-productive to both trust and team building (e.g. convoluted security, lie detectors, splitting up the team).

I mean, why did he not tell Simmons anything about the mission he sent her on? If he really wanted to learn more about the Inhuman that Nadir had, shouldn't he have told her as much as he knew? What good did it do anyone to keep that all a secret? By not telling her anything, and not even letting her tell Fitz before he left, he made Simmons trust him even less, and antagonized Fitz in the process. What was the point of any of that? If he'd just handled it a little bit differently, given Simmons the information, made her feel like he had her back, then he would have been building trust instead of making things worse.

And is that all forgiven now because Mace did it to protect SHIELD? I hope this doesn't get forgotten, that there are consequences to the things he did as Director in this first part of the season.