"TV quality actors playing potential film characters" - I actually think they did a decent job with the casting, Ming-Na Wen is an absolute gem in it. I just more of her with her mom.

I think it would have killed Cal. His powers are just the result of good ol' mad science.

Yeah, it's worth noting that the most complex villain (Loki) gets paired with the most bland hero (Thor). In the movies interesting heroes (Tony Stark, The Guardians of the Galaxy) tend to suck up all the energy.

Coulson asking about inhumans being people seemed really forced in light of the rest of his character, but yeah, she was totally planning it from the get go. But Gonzales was not all sunshine and smiles with his "insurance policy" either.

Speaking of the Hyde serum… how is Calvin supposed to get to it in SHIELD custody. I mean, I realize lacks security is a recurring theme in the show but this is getting ridiculous.

Yeah, I was wondering what her relationship to the royalty is, and this makes all kinds of sense.

It's implied in this episode that it's the impurities in the crystal that cause it to kill people. My money's on a planet bomb, with our heroes managing to stop the killy bits.

It would have been pretty jarring for people who follow the films to see Coulson, maybe have him shrug politely and say "Yeah, it's a long story." And yeah, Skye and the other Inhumans seem like they're going to be too big to fully quarantine from the movies.

I thought this episode was pretty weak from a character standpoint. One of Coulson's biggest strengths is his ability to make people feel comfortable with him even if he's double crossing, but his grilling of Sky seemed designed to yell "PARANOIA" without actually earning it. As for Jiaying… 1) I don't feel like the…

I am hoping for when he gets a bit too cocky and Cal DOES have his serum. It's going to get messy.

That's twice as many as there are!

I still don't buy Badass Action Skye (seriously, how long has she been training? Does Hydra just hire mall cops with dubious ethics?) but I do like her family arc, and the fact that she's the only one who thought about how abandoning Calvin might play out was a nice touch.

Draco in Leather Pants.

I'm actually kind of happy they brought up Loki's staff. The premise of the show was originally mere mortals toiling in the shadow of the Avengers, so it's nice to see them cleaning up loose plot threads. But why didn't Thor take it back to Asgaard?

1) It must be said that tripe is awesome. Not necessarily Chinese tripe, but next thing you're going to tell me your don't like lingua tacos. THOSE ARE THE BEST STREET TACOS.

The parents would have grown up in Taiwan before the political liberalization of of the late 1980s. At that point the KMT was firmly entrenched and devoted a lot of energy to maintaining their claim on mainland China (like making people do drills for taking back the motherland). Strong localization of institutional…

No shoes inside is pretty common everywhere outside of Europe and places where European cultures have replicated themselves as far as I can tell. Persians, Moroccans and Indians are all against wearing shoes indoors in my experience.

The cloaca is really good cooked up right, as are the gizzards. And I will never understand why people are so weird about Rocky Mountain oysters.

The problem isn't that she wears a qipao. The problem is that she wears a qipao in a way that's meant to be the butt of a joke, the same way everything about Chinese culture is the butt of a joke in this episode.

The most common method in the US is the Yale Method which is from the 70s, although lately Hong Kong academics have been promoting the Jyutping method. There's also and official Hong Kong pinyin… then there's the way Romanization was traditionally which didn't actually have any standard rules. They all wound up being…