Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 3, Episode 12 Review

"The Inside Man" saw the return of General Talbot as the new [acting] head of the ACTU, with him and Coulson teaming up to set-up an Inhuman initiative with ambassadors from other countries, and made for a mostly very fun episode with an admittedly unnecessary twist.
The dynamic between Coulson and Talbot is a consistently amusing one in Agents of SHIELD, and Clark Gregg and Adrian Pasdar have great chemistry together. The scene where Talbot meets all of the ambassadors is a great and very amusing little scene that just highlights this perfectly.
Then, the episode has to go and pull the rug out from under us and reveal that Talbot was in fact working with Hydra all along - after his son was kidnapped by them.
*Sigh*
Could we not have just had a fun little episode at a peace conference interrupted by Hydra, instead of having Talbot betray Coulson and Malick come in to reveal Coulson as a "traitor"? It would have been so much simpler and so much better.
Honestly, I loved everything apart from this twist in the episode, as it just brings the whole thing tumbling down to just being 'good' and not 'great'. The acting, writing, directing and overall production quality of the episode was very strong, with some cool little SHIELD gadgets in there as well. There was also a sense that this was both a standalone episode but also a plot-relevant episode, building up the overall storyline of the season (which, in this season, is much easier to follow on a week-to-week basis). Not sure what the deal with Ward-alien hybrid is yet, but we'll see. 7/10

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