With regards to the lie detector, I think those complaining about it are relying on some false assumptions:
1) It's actually a super unbeatable lie detector. How do we know this? Because Patton said so to the people he was about to interrogate? Everything he said it does has to do with people's physical reactions to lying. By making them nervous about being caught, he's helping the machine out. Even when they asked if it worked, he said Fury wanted a machine that Romanoff couldn't beat, but then didn't actually know if it worked.
2) Ward beat the lie detector. Actually, he didn't. Right from the start, Patton noted that his baseline was screwy due to the pain he had inflicted on himself. That in itself makes the test unreliable, yet it still alerted Patton every time he lied. That lie detector worked perfectly
3) Patton just accepted the Skye answer and that was the end of it. They clearly showed that he still didn't trust any of them and the lanyards were a ploy to get trackers on them. Asking more questions in a test he has already identified as unreliable would just waste his time and make Ward suspicious if he was a spy. Patton took the easy out to set Ward's mind at ease and kept tabs on him.
Naturally, that will lead to complaints that:
4) If he didn't trust him, why did he let Ward in on what they were doing. But he couldn't exactly keep naive, trusting Skye from blurting everything out to her crush when he walked into the room. Patton was keeping such close watch on what Ward was doing that he gave away his trick to Skye.
5) Patton let Ward corner and kill him. Which is true, and fair. But what else could he do? He has no chance in any combat situation, but isn't totally sure that Ward is a plant, so all he can really do is pretend to trust him and wait for Ward to slip up. Being alone with Ward and Skye makes it that much harder to protect himself
and
6) Why not just kill Ward for being suspicious? Because the rest of his team is there, and not likely to be happy about that without concrete proof of Ward's complicity.
The lie detector did what it was supposed to: it gave Patton an idea of who to distrust and it let him plant the tracking lanyards on them.
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