Melinda

This week's installment of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a curious mix of moving things forward while tap dancing in place a bit at the same time.

On the one hand, things did happen. May actually began to doubt Coulson. Jiaying revealed herself as Skye's mother, a secret you might well have expected her to hang onto for a few episodes. Skye made big strides in mastering her new powers, while we the audience finally learned what power Raina got. (With great spikes come great auspex ability. Or something like that.) This is all a lot more forward momentum than the show had in its early season one days.

But then, from another perspective, everyone pretty well ended the episode where they began. Skye is still at the Inhuman mountain hideaway. May is still being wined and dine by "the real S.H.I.E.L.D." Coulson and Hunter are still on the run, and no closer to contacting Ward as they'd planned to do last week. So really, you could be forgiven for feeling like this episode didn't amount to much.

What it ultimately comes down to is whether you enjoyed finally getting to see May's backstory, the origin of "the Cavalry." I happened to like it quite a bit. As more hints had been dropped about Bahrain, it seemed more and more like nothing would reasonably explain the end result. What made May give up on field work, turn her back on Coulson, and let her marriage crumble? Well, I can believe that being forced to kill a little girl might just do it. (Even if you could justify it by arguing that she'd was an irredeemably evil little girl.)

What I enjoyed about May's backstory, though, was not just how it explained the person she became, but how it actually revealed in her another layer of emotional strength and character. She'd had about as miserable an experience with a super-powered individual as you could imagine, but she had still found it in herself to try to help and protect Skye after her transformation. And, for that matter, she'd allowed herself to get close to Skye before that, in the role of her S.O., a role that was in at least some ways rather maternal. It was a great episode for May's character, and Ming-Na Wen did a great job with it -- in particular, in showing how different May was at two very different times in her life.

So even though the series may have pumped the brakes a bit with this episode, I was still mostly entertained. I give the episode a B. (Though that said, I do hope the pace picks back up a bit next week.)