There is another significant difference between Mace and Iron Man, Ant-man, Green Lantern, etc, though. They're all either in direct control of the technologies that give them power, or they're part of clearly trustworthy organizations that don't micromanage their members. Mace's powers come from the US military and - unlike Cap - are still directly under the control of the US military/govt., which could take them away at any point and give them to someone else, or give them to lots of other people without taking them away, etc, etc (depending on the exact nature, of course, which hasn't been fully revealed yet). Therefore he doesn't really have control over them, and could at this point still turn out to be nothing but a prototype prior to a much wider use of the serum as a weapon. It's understandable that a situation like that could give rise to questions about the difference between 'superpowers' vs. just powerful weapons (hell, in another continuity Icers could count as a superpower, but here they're SHIELD standard issue). There does come a point where something can be so divorced from the individual that it's hard to count it as a personal superpower (ie, one 'Yellowjacket' is a supervillain, but an army of 'Yellowjackets' is just a really strong army). Of course, Coulson was mainly just angry in the scene, not reasoning out the proper terminology for Mace's serum.
Do you really think naming a bullet would distract anyone? Not everyone knows what a truncheon is but that didn't stop Agents of Shield from naming Sif's Kree's weapon that. Do you think someone was like "What's a truncheon? Stop everything, I'm distracted"? And how many times have Fitz or Simmons technobabble? I don't think you have much faith in the intelligence of fans if you think saying a name could be distracting. Who said it was?
I'd say combining the phrases 'Judas bullet' and 'exploding bullet' would sound stupid and awkward, and using one only to further explain it with the other would be a redundant waste of time, therefore one of them had to go. Easy choice which one, since the exploding part is actual necessary information that most people would miss if you just said 'Judas bullet'.
As a writer, I've had to do a lot of editing. So yes, I know from experience that small, irrelevant details can get in the way. I've had to cut out any number of moments I loved because of the need to streamline the narrative as much as possible. (Did you ever see the West Wing episode where Ron Silver's character Bruno uses yacht racing as a metaphor for political campaigns, the need to get rid of any source of drag and inefficiency no matter how trivial it seems? That metaphor works for editing fiction as well.) Besides, it's not just about distraction, it's about running time. Commercial TV episodes are required to fit into an exact running time that keeps getting shorter and shorter over the years (1960s "hourlong" TV shows had at least 50 minutes of story, these days it's barely over 40). So even something that adds mere seconds of running time can be a problem, and anything that isn't absolutely relevant to the story may need to be cut in favor of something that is. It's possible that a reference to the Judas bullet was scripted and shot, but had to be removed in editing because there just wasn't room for it. Because, in that particular context, it worked to do so. That doesn't mean it'll work in every context. Each situation is diferent. That's why they have editors -- because the decisions for each episode, each scene, each moment need to be made individually based on the needs of that particular instance. The decisions that were made in a different episode don't matter, because the context is different.
Of course, we may well get a stronger connection at some point. Someone had to supply the watchdogs with Judas bullets. Those things haven't really hit the mainstream market yet. That someone could be connected to Diamondback in some way?
Well, I'm sure they could come up with some excuse. Maybe Radcliffe wants to be able to boss Ward-Hive around after being traumatized by him. Maybe bossing around people stronger than him is his real reason for creating LMDs in the first place.
Realistically, I don't think there's enough time left in the arc to bother with that. besides, really it's still too soon after Ward was killed off for any kind of return to have any impact beyond a collective groan. Maybe for the 100th episode if they make it that far? Who knows!
No, it's not going to happen. I'm just thinking in terms of how it could if they wanted to give Bret Dalton more work. And I feel kind of sorry for him getting stuck in a religious propaganda film.
When they talked about giving May a scenario she was fighting, I half expected the vision in her head to have Ward appear.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with Ward per see, only that the character ran his course and probably should have been written out/killed off a little sooner. Even though technically the last arc was Hive, not Ward, by that point it was perhaps too difficult to separate the two in the minds of the audience. Perhaps if they'd killed him off in the previous season, only to have him return as Hive would have worked better. If nothing else it would have saved us Coulson's half-arsed romance/revenge arc that didn't really go anywhere.
I felt that Ward should have been killed off at the end of Season One. His appearances throughout Season Two and early Season Three struck me as unnecessary and prolonged. In fact, he didn't really become interesting again until his body was taken over by Hive. And honestly? They could have used another character for that scenario.
Season 2 Ward was ok, trying to find a place and a purpose in the world after Garrett. It would have been too easy and convenient to just kill him like that.
I preferred the easy and convenient way. I wasn't that interested in watching Ward try to find himself in Season 2. Come to think of it, I can recall that a lot of people didn't. He really wasn't that much of a character to me. I found him boring to mildly interesting in Season One. After that, I found him annoying . . . like a small stone in a shoe. It seemed as if Mutant Enemy didn't really know what to do with him - aside from portraying him as the greatest SHIELD/HYDRA agent that ever lived (which was a bit too much, as far as I'm concerned) - before Coulson bumped him off. Since Coulson had learned the truth about Mace, how is he going to resume control of SHIELD without the President and Talbot finding out? Are they really going to roll over allow him to do so?
Mace is still officially in charge, and still handling the political and PR side of things. The only real change is that Coulson now has autonomy with regard to field operations, strategy, etc. Mace still has the authority on paper to override Coulson on those matters, but unofficially, he's agreed not to use it. Outwardly, it can be spun as Mace delegating those decisions to Coulson, or maybe pretending that Coulson's plans are actually Mace's.
Plus, Mace and Talbot want to keep the truth about his power from the nation. Coulson has the upper hand.