Nothing Personal

"All this time, everything we've been through, why? How could you?" "I was on a mission. It wasn't personal." It was-- you did NOT just say that. "It wasn't personal"?!"

- Skye and Grant Ward

Nothing Personal is the twentieth episode of the first season of the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Synopsis
With no one left to trust, Agent Maria Hill teams up with Coulson while S.H.I.E.L.D. is being destroyed.

Plot
Maria Hill left a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., while talking on the phone to Pepper Potts. She noticed that someone had knocked out the multiple surveillance tails following her before encountering Melinda May.

May asked her about Coulson and Project T.A.H.I.T.I., and Maria said Nick Fury said that he buried the information about who ran Project T.A.H.I.T.I., when he decided not to bury Coulson.

At Providence, Jemma Simmons went to make pancakes before discovering Eric Koenig dead in the supply closet. At the same time Leo Fitz noticed one of the fake windows had the message "WARD IS HYDRA" inscribed over it.

After an examination of Koenig's body, Simmons confirmed that he was killed by Ward. Fitz became extremely upset upon confirmation of Ward's betrayal. Coulson realized that Ward had Skye and that they must save her. However, Coulson and the rest of the team were soon ambushed by Colonel Glenn Talbot.

It was revealed that Maria Hill told Talbot about the secret base. After hearing Coulson out and realizing Ward was Hydra, Talbot emerged, ready to take the base. Alongside Coulson, Hill battled Talbot's soldiers unarmed; defeating them with an impressive array of martial arts, and worked with Coulson to save Skye.

Meanwhile, Skye and Ward went to a diner in Los Angeles to unlock the hard drive with all the information gathered by Coulson's Team on their missions. Ward constantly stressed about the drive. Ward and Skye were ambushed by policemen at the diner. Ward battled the police officers and shot them, while Skye attempted to run. She was stopped by Deathlok.

Skye refused to decrypt the hard drive, forcing Deathlok to nearly kill Ward with one of his weapons to convince her. As Ward tried to fly the Bus, he was confronted by Hill, who stalled long enough for Coulson to sneak on board through the landing gear. Coulson freed Skye and they escaped midair from Deathlok in his car, Lola. Deathlok then attempted to convince Ward to let them go now that the drive was decrypting on Garrett's orders, but Ward refused. The team retired to a hotel, where Skye revealed she left a trap in the hard drive. Later, May returned and showed Coulson the contents of a flash drive she recovered from his "grave," specifically a message to Fury from the director of T.A.H.I.T.I.

The file was a video of Coulson himself informing Fury that T.A.H.I.T.I. must be shut down because of horrific side effects the drugs had on test subjects, which could only be mitigated by erasing the victim's memory of what happened.

Coulson responded with a dumbfounded "huh."

Cast
Main Cast:
 * Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson
 * Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May
 * Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward
 * Chloe Bennet as Agent Skye
 * Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz
 * Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons

Guest Stars:
 * Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
 * J. August Richards as Michael Peterson/Deathlok
 * B.J. Britt as Agent Antoine Triplett
 * Adrian Pasdar as Glenn Talbot
 * Jeris Lee Poindexter as Older Man
 * Josh Breeding as a Parking Attendant

Locations

 * Washington, D.C.
 * United States Capitol
 * Ontario, Canada
 * Providence
 * Los Angeles, California
 * Ruthie's Skillet
 * Warsaw, Poland (mentioned)
 * Italy (mentioned)
 * The Triskelion (mentioned)
 * The Fridge (mentioned)
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy (mentioned)

Events

 * HYDRA Uprising
 * Attack on Providence

Items

 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Lanyard
 * Coulson's Team Hard Drive
 * I.C.E.R.
 * Centipede Device
 * Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant
 * Cybertek Prosthetic Leg
 * Forearm Rocket Launcher
 * Heart Stopper
 * Holocom

Vehicles

 * Bus
 * Lola
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Jump Jet

Organizations

 * S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * HYDRA
 * United States Armed Forces
 * FBI
 * CIA (mentioned)
 * NSA (mentioned)
 * NRO   (mentioned)
 * United States Congress (mentioned)
 * (mentioned)
 * Avengers (mentioned)
 * Avengers (mentioned)

Mentioned

 * Project T.A.H.I.T.I.
 * Man-Thing
 * Pepper Potts
 * Tony Stark
 * Nick Fury
 * Alexander Pierce
 * Eric Koenig
 * John Garrett
 * Audrey Nathan
 * Victoria Hand
 * Red Skull
 * Thomas Nash
 * Ian Quinn
 * Ace Peterson
 * Mindy Peterson
 * Natasha Romanoff
 * Guest Host

Goofs

 * When Deathlok punches through the windshield of the police car, the glass breaks as though it were standard 1/4" pane glass. Car windshields are made of laminated glass that would shatter into a spiderweb fracture pattern with no loose pieces falling out.