...I still don't like mac, he's a porejudiced idiot...
Mac wasn't around during the Asgardian episodes. From his point of view, every alien visit was a hostile one (Kree, Chatauri, Elves, and even Thor who leaves the area he fights in a mess). Calling him prejudice (aka having a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason) isn't the word for being cautious.
He's not being cautious. He
hates powered people. There is a difference between caution and hatred.
If he hated powered people, he would never have rescued Skye (who had, so far as he knew prior to seeing the Inhumans carrying her unconscious form, fought against SHIELD at the end of the SHIELD visit to Afterlife).
Mack is very wary of alien artifacts, given what the Kree technology did to him in Puerto Rico. And he recognizes that powered people have the capacity to inflict harm on humans on a level unrivaled in history; he is as a result cautious about them. But I think he's also been willing to reassess his earlier prejudices about superpowers -- or else he wouldn't have trusted Skye with the safety of the
Iliad the way he did when he trusted her to operate alone.
bbjeg said:
...I was irritated that she didn't have the slightest regret for what she did to 33. I guess the writers have to make sure that Mockingbird has absolutely no redeeming qualities...
She didn't regret it because her actions saved more lives (she even spouted Spock's "need for the many" line).
She
thought she'd get intel to save people. We don't have to take her word for it.
We also don't have to take Kara's word for it. Or whoever's.
Suggesting without evidence that somebody is lying makes reconstructing events on the basis of testimony impossible. You cannot ascribe lies to someone without evidence.
Plus, for all she knew, there could have been two dozen people in that safehouse, she didn't know if she'd betrayed 24 to save 12.
The question Bobbi faced was this: Give Hydra the location of a SHIELD safehouse whose usage she had no information on in order to maintain her cover, or blow her cover and therefore know with certainty that 12 SHIELD agents would be killed/captured?
On the one hand, she has no information about potential harm her actions could cause. It could cause no harm, or it could cause great harm.
On the other hand, she knows with certainty that her actions will cause great harm.
Rationally-speaking, it is more logical to make the choice which has equal potential for no harm, minor harm, or great harm, than it is to make the choice which will with certainty cause great harm.
She also obviously didn't care.
I think she cares. She went out of her way to try to befriend Kara when Kara was at SHIELD HQ. But she does not regret her choice, even if she regrets the harm that came from that choice against her will. Again, to her mind, it's a question of "Potential for no or less harm vs. certainty of great harm?" She made her choice and feels confident that it was the best possible choice she could have made at that time given the information she had.
So why does she seem so uncompassionate towards Kara in "S.O.S.?" Well, because Kara has kidnapped her and is in the process of torturing her. I wouldn't be too inclined to show compassion towards Kara's suffering if Kara were torturing me, either. That's not because she doesn't regret Kara's pain -- it's because Kara's pain does not justify her present actions.
She'd probably have blown up civilians to keep her cover at that point.
You are now making shit up.
Anyway, as for "the needs of the many", Spock sacrificed himself. He didn't murder Kirk to save people.
And neither did Bobbi.
Of course, if we're gonna drag
Star Trek into this, perhaps we should consider that episode of TNG where Troi learns that in order to pass the Bridge Officers Test, she has to be willing to send a crewmember to his death in order to save the ship ("Thine Own Self").
Mack was understandably wary of alien influences after the way he was taken over (and Tripp killed) in the Kree city. But he's come around now. He chose to trust Skye, an Inhuman, and work with her to stop Jiaying. And he chose to trust Coulson, continuing to work for him and setting aside his earlier misgivings due to Coulson's alien influences. So yeah, he was prejudiced, but no, he's not an idiot. We all have prejudices, but the idiots are the ones who refuse to question or overcome them.
Excellent way of putting it.
ETA:
Really, you'd think SHIELD would've been aware of the risk of those crystals being at the ocean floor and would've interdicted the area until they could dredge the bottom, or something.
I think they're aware of the risk, but they simply don't have the resources to dredge the bottom. Bear in mind, we don't know how far out to sea the
Iliad was, or even which sea she was operating in -- for all we know, they could have been above the Mariana Trench. Add to this the fact that SHIELD remains an underground organization rather than a legitimate military force capable of summoning the resources of state, and I think it's understandable if there wasn't much they could do.
That was sloppy. Also, it's hard to believe the super-secure, do-not-open-at-any-cost container for the Kree monolith could be accidentally opened just by flipping a single handle.
Are we certain that it was Fitz accidentally hitting a handle that caused the door to open? (That'll play merry hob with his sense of guilt. Though I suppose it would make him and Simmons equal, since I think she felt much of this season feeling guilty over Fitz's brain damage.)
But I love it how the "monster" Cal ended up being one of the good guys, just because Coulson's the kind of guy who'd sit down and have a talk with him rather than responding with violence.
This. So much this. Coulson is the sort of person who is still willing to give people a chance and avoid violence unless absolutely necessary.
As for Jiaying, she came back from a far more conclusive death than this one, so we could maybe see her again someday.
Possible. Though I think if that were the case, she would have died while in the process of sucking out Skye's lifeforce. Though, yeah, to be fair, if I were Coulson, I'd probably have her body cremated just to be safe.
Honestly, though, somehow I didn't find Dichen Lachman's acting here anywhere near as impressive as I did in Dollhouse. I wonder why. Maybe this just wasn't the best character for her.
Totally disagree with you here.
Plus, on Cap's Kooky Sextet, we can add: second guy in armor suit, guy in flying battlesuit, Infinity Stone-mutated psychic, and synthezoid with convoluted origin story.
