I honestly have no idea how they pulled this one off.
I am one of those types of people that tries to be a completionist when it comes to long-running movie and television franchises. However, last year’s premiere of Agent Carter quickly proved to be one of the possible exceptions to that rule. Not only was the first season a complete mess in the writing department, but it also had the eye-rollingly bad idea to inject gender-based political nonsense into the equation. So after that, I felt like I’d have to be a masochist to engage with this show once again. However, I aim to amuse my audience with my suffering, so I thought I could grin and bear at least two hours and report my findings like the intrepid person that I am…
…and what I found was something that is surprisingly not bad.
The Characters
If nothing else, they nailed the period piece feel again.
Hayley Atwell returns as Special Agent Peggy Carter, leading a cast of characters that have done a complete 180 from Season One by becoming actually likable and well rounded humans for once. Part of my irritation with this show came from the fact that she was written to have a screw loose in Captain America: The First Avenger or be irritating in Season One. However, that is not the case here. She is surprisingly likable in this role for the first time and gels particularly well with Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, played well by James D’Arcy and, in a stroke of genius casting, Lotte Verbeek, respectively.
Chad Michael Murray and Enver Gjokaj are Agents Thompson and Sousa and… who are these professional agents of days gone by?! I could have sworn that these two people were in Season One, but I must have mistaken one for a half-chauvinistic, “boys are mean to Peggy” guy and the other for a bullied agent who figures it out because reasons. I don’t know who these guys are, but it almost seems like they add to the chemistry of the show instead of being an ultimately silly side plot.
The Plot
Jarvis was the only thing I liked last time… and luckily, he’s not alone on this go around.
The plot surrounds Peggy’s relocation to Los Angeles after the appearance of a woman who was drowned in a lake that has mysteriously frozen over in the middle of a heat wave. It’s a little bit on the cheesy side for Marvel, but the writers manage to connect the dots rather nicely and held my attention from beginning to end. There is a secret organization in play that is attempting something sinister behind the scenes, a deadly MacGuffin, and a corrupt politician waiting for his rise to power. I found it to be quite interesting.
On top of that, there is a B-plot that revolves around Dottie (Bridget Regan), a Soviet agent that may hold some clues as to what is going on. Kurtwood Smith also joins the cast as a senior FBI agent that points out how the SSR is a war-time agency that might be going away, which offers a possible path toward the rise of SHIELD. It seems like the pieces are being put in place for a longer storyline, which is nice because nothing was wasted for the first time.
You know what else was not at all missed?
The Politics
The biggest no-no that Season One of this show ever tried to pull on us was that it constantly tried to beat us over the head with talk about how women never get the credit for everything and all men do is pick on them and they are too stupid to figure out what our girl is doing right under their noses. Not only is this not really true from historical examples, but it was also the biggest factor that made me look forward to this review with dread. And yet, could they change? Is it possible that the writers finally had it beaten into their skulls during their sessions that people watch things for escapism and fun instead of a political lecture?
Yes. Yes they did.
The mind-numbing writing of last season has been replaced by little bits of comedy that hinge on Jarvis and Howard Stark, which is to be expected but is still quite fun. I especially liked Stark’s leisure vehicle because of how the writers made a true-to-character feat of engineering into something that can be played for laughs. And luckily, they managed to make Peggy feel slightly disgusted by it while not acting over-the-top! Who would have thought that, huh?
Conclusion
I’d make a joke, but you’d get the point too quickly.
Is Agent Carter a perfect show? No. Is it a miraculous return to slightly campy noir without all of the excess baggage? Absolutely. If you are looking for something to scratch that last little itch between now and Agents of SHIELD or Batman v. Superman, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
All I have to say is this: Where the hell was this show last year?
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