TV Review No. 22 Marvel: Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Watchdogs (S3, Ep 14)

Strong Points:
Nice character development
Mack and brother relationship/conversation
Escape sequence from house
Bomb weapon thing
Hologram sequence
Lincoln's starting to become likeable

Weak Points:
Build-up episode
Daisy really needs to calm down
Used a character who should've been important, but no-one remembered him
Fitz's scene didn't really amount to anything

In-depth Review:

A hactavist group with weapons of mass destruction. That's never good. Watchdogs is the enemy for this episode, although you could be mistaken for the enemy being Daisy, what with the 'Master Race' ideals she's been having lately. Anyway, the main premise of this episode is that a group of trolls on the Internet have gotten hold of implosion bombs and are ready to seed mass terror. So nice things, nice things. 

The head of this Watchdogs group is an ex S.H.I.E.L.D. member, who if you can remember that far back, was in season 1 and got his legs blown off after trying to find the Clairvoyant. I feel that AoS was trying to go for something more impactful with reintroducing this character, but as it was so long ago, I have to say, I didn't recognise him, which is a shame. 

Someone who did however, was Coulson and he uses this opportunity to see if Lincoln has got what it takes to be part of the group. Long story short, he does but only after nearly killing a hologram just to please Coulson. I mean, I know Coulson knew it was a hologram all along but surely that counts as mental abuse right? So Lincoln now has Coulson's trust which is good, as I am starting to slowly like Lincoln now.

Watchdogs main weapon is an 'implosion bomb' that is really awesome, except for when your on the receiving end like one of the characters, but we'll get too that later. Instead, let's have a quick update on the world of May as she tries to track down Andrew. What follows is a rather poignant scene between optimist Simmons and realist May as she asks not to be given hope that Andrew can be saved.

The character that got harmed by this 'implosion bomb' was none other than Fitz, as Daisy's rage and misjudgement caused him to bearly explode. Thankfully, science saved the day again and he walked away with no harm and as much as I would've hated to see Fitz die or get wounded, the entire scene looked like it was building up to it, then just fell flat, which is a bit odd.

Of course, the main storyline for this episode was none of the points listed above but was actually to do with Mack and his brother. Mack, still grieving about the loss of Bobbi and Hunter, took some much needed vacation time off to visit his brother and fix some bikes. He gets called back to take care of some 'insurance', one thing leads to another and his brother finds out Mack's a spy. After some arguments over each others problems (Mack's brother is broke), they have to escaped from the Watchdog's who mistakenly believe that Mack is an Inhuman. What follows is an awesome escape scene, using lots of techniques such as keeping the house in darkness etc. (reminds me of Rainbow Six Siege) and reminds us how well trained S.H.I.E.L.D. members are. The scene ends with Mack, who got hurt trying to escape, leaving to go to hospital and his brother getting semi-recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. I for one, hope he does join.

Conclusion: overall, the episode focussed more on character development than moving the story forward, and it will be interesting to see if Watchdogs or any other group will be in the series later.

Rating: 72%

Thanks for reading, Satamer.