Agent Carter, season 1
Jan. 25th, 2020 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI recently finished rewatching season 1 of Agent Carter, and you guys, I had forgotten how completely fucking delightful this show is. Well, not forgotten, obviously, or I wouldn't have watched it again - but watching it again has reminded me of all of its wonderful qualities.
In no particular order:
The scene where Peggy and Jarvis beat up a whole bunch of SSR agents in the diner while cheery music plays is probably one of my favorite scenes in anything of all time. Followed by the bit where Daniel has her at gunpoint (after she's knocked Jack out cold!!) and then he can't shoot her... Ah, the glory.
In general, this show is really amazing at putting together these glorious set pieces that basically just let the characters show how awesome they are. This is most obvious with Peggy, as the protagonist - I am in awe of her strength as a rough-and-tumble fighter who can use whatever material comes to hand: the bit in the aircraft control tower where she fights Dottie using nothing but an aviator scarf!!!
But they have these showcase moments for other characters, too. Like the scene where Angie throws the SSR agents off the scent by sobbing into Jack Thompson's chest - especially impressive because we've seen aspiring actress Angie practice a few auditions in front of Peggy before, and she's not that good. Apparently she just needs the adrenaline of actual danger to get her going!
I will remain FOREVER SAD that the showrunners didn't follow up on this in season 2 by having Peggy recruit Angie to the SSR. Come on! She's just shown that she'd be amazing undercover! My God.
My feeling is that the showrunners got spooked by the popularity of Cartinelli, and while I don't ship it myself (Angie doesn't try to kill her even once and I guess that's what I like in a ship?), I am baffled by their surprise. They made Angie THAT emotionally invested in Peggy - personally offended when Peggy doesn't leap at the chance to move into her building - they have a dramatic reconciliation IN THE RAIN with ROMANTIC MUSIC playing - and they're surprised that people shipped that over Peggy/Daniel?
I like Peggy/Daniel fine, but surely someone involved in production noticed at some point that the show gave all the romantic beats in the first half of the season to Peggy/Angie? Surely.
I have a weakness for OT3s so I've read a certain amount of Peggy/Daniel/Jack Thompson fic, so it's been interesting to rewatch the show and remember what an absolute jerk show Jack Thompson is. I think fic tends to lean on his self-loathing aspects, which do exist, but so do his self-aggrandizing jerkface "Sure, I'm going to take credit for the case that Peggy just blew wide open" aspects, and the fact that he's probably going to torment himself about it the same way he torments himself about accepting a Medal of Honor he didn't deserve does not, in either case, substitute for actually not doing the thing.
...I still love the OT3, but it's definitely a case where I am also so so glad that the show never went there.
Going back to the way that this show gives everyone great character moments, though, I love the scene at the Black Widow training facility in Russia, where Thompson just freezes, and he's watching Peggy single-handedly hold off a whole bunch of guards to cover everyone else's escape (also an amazing moment for Peggy! The part where Dum Dum's all "What would Cap say if I left his best girl behind?" and Peggy's all "Cap would say 'Do as Peggy says,' MY HEART) - anyway, I'm pretty sure that's the moment when Thompson realizes that what he has previously considered a desire to do Peggy is in fact a desire to be Peggy, that Peggy is the person he would like to be and simply is not, and he's not too much of a misogynistic jerkface to recognize that fact. (But because he is a misogynistic jerkface, that fact makes him hate himself.)
ALSO SO HAPPY TO SEE THE HOWLING COMMANDOES, that whole episode is probably my favorite episode, I'm very happy with the show that we got but I'm also, let's be real, just a little sad about the imaginary show which is Peggy and the Howling Commandoes Kick Ass and Take Names. Mmm. That would have been beautiful.
But getting back to "Do I want to do her or be her? OR KILL HER?" - that brings me to Dottie Underwood, because GOSH I love the confused obsessive energy that she brings to her relationship with Peggy. This actually becomes much more prominent in the next season, but I was DELIGHTED to realize that it starts here, with the scene where Dottie sneaks into Peggy's room and looks in her mirror and pretends to be Peggy Carter. And also steals her knock out lipstick AND THEN KNOCKS HER OUT BY KISSING HER and look, we've seen Dottie's skillset, I think we can all agree that she could have incapacitated Peggy in MANY other ways, she just really really wanted to lay one on her, and I for one am DELIGHTED.
I also love that one of Dottie's go-to moves is to play the helpless fluttery female, both because she's SO good at it, but also because it establishes a connection between her character and Natasha's - because that's one of Nat's moves, too. It's nice to see that bit of continuity in Black Widow tactics over time (although I think that people often vastly overestimate how static the program would be: just because Stalinist-era Black Widows were handcuffed to their beds doesn't mean that Yeltsin-era Black Widows would be, for instance. The political situation is so different!)
I could go on (in fact, I may go on in another post at some point: I've barely touched on Jarvis, and not at all on Howard Stark, or the plotline about Peggy's grief over Steve, or...), but I think this is long enough for now.
In no particular order:
The scene where Peggy and Jarvis beat up a whole bunch of SSR agents in the diner while cheery music plays is probably one of my favorite scenes in anything of all time. Followed by the bit where Daniel has her at gunpoint (after she's knocked Jack out cold!!) and then he can't shoot her... Ah, the glory.
In general, this show is really amazing at putting together these glorious set pieces that basically just let the characters show how awesome they are. This is most obvious with Peggy, as the protagonist - I am in awe of her strength as a rough-and-tumble fighter who can use whatever material comes to hand: the bit in the aircraft control tower where she fights Dottie using nothing but an aviator scarf!!!
But they have these showcase moments for other characters, too. Like the scene where Angie throws the SSR agents off the scent by sobbing into Jack Thompson's chest - especially impressive because we've seen aspiring actress Angie practice a few auditions in front of Peggy before, and she's not that good. Apparently she just needs the adrenaline of actual danger to get her going!
I will remain FOREVER SAD that the showrunners didn't follow up on this in season 2 by having Peggy recruit Angie to the SSR. Come on! She's just shown that she'd be amazing undercover! My God.
My feeling is that the showrunners got spooked by the popularity of Cartinelli, and while I don't ship it myself (Angie doesn't try to kill her even once and I guess that's what I like in a ship?), I am baffled by their surprise. They made Angie THAT emotionally invested in Peggy - personally offended when Peggy doesn't leap at the chance to move into her building - they have a dramatic reconciliation IN THE RAIN with ROMANTIC MUSIC playing - and they're surprised that people shipped that over Peggy/Daniel?
I like Peggy/Daniel fine, but surely someone involved in production noticed at some point that the show gave all the romantic beats in the first half of the season to Peggy/Angie? Surely.
I have a weakness for OT3s so I've read a certain amount of Peggy/Daniel/Jack Thompson fic, so it's been interesting to rewatch the show and remember what an absolute jerk show Jack Thompson is. I think fic tends to lean on his self-loathing aspects, which do exist, but so do his self-aggrandizing jerkface "Sure, I'm going to take credit for the case that Peggy just blew wide open" aspects, and the fact that he's probably going to torment himself about it the same way he torments himself about accepting a Medal of Honor he didn't deserve does not, in either case, substitute for actually not doing the thing.
...I still love the OT3, but it's definitely a case where I am also so so glad that the show never went there.
Going back to the way that this show gives everyone great character moments, though, I love the scene at the Black Widow training facility in Russia, where Thompson just freezes, and he's watching Peggy single-handedly hold off a whole bunch of guards to cover everyone else's escape (also an amazing moment for Peggy! The part where Dum Dum's all "What would Cap say if I left his best girl behind?" and Peggy's all "Cap would say 'Do as Peggy says,' MY HEART) - anyway, I'm pretty sure that's the moment when Thompson realizes that what he has previously considered a desire to do Peggy is in fact a desire to be Peggy, that Peggy is the person he would like to be and simply is not, and he's not too much of a misogynistic jerkface to recognize that fact. (But because he is a misogynistic jerkface, that fact makes him hate himself.)
ALSO SO HAPPY TO SEE THE HOWLING COMMANDOES, that whole episode is probably my favorite episode, I'm very happy with the show that we got but I'm also, let's be real, just a little sad about the imaginary show which is Peggy and the Howling Commandoes Kick Ass and Take Names. Mmm. That would have been beautiful.
But getting back to "Do I want to do her or be her? OR KILL HER?" - that brings me to Dottie Underwood, because GOSH I love the confused obsessive energy that she brings to her relationship with Peggy. This actually becomes much more prominent in the next season, but I was DELIGHTED to realize that it starts here, with the scene where Dottie sneaks into Peggy's room and looks in her mirror and pretends to be Peggy Carter. And also steals her knock out lipstick AND THEN KNOCKS HER OUT BY KISSING HER and look, we've seen Dottie's skillset, I think we can all agree that she could have incapacitated Peggy in MANY other ways, she just really really wanted to lay one on her, and I for one am DELIGHTED.
I also love that one of Dottie's go-to moves is to play the helpless fluttery female, both because she's SO good at it, but also because it establishes a connection between her character and Natasha's - because that's one of Nat's moves, too. It's nice to see that bit of continuity in Black Widow tactics over time (although I think that people often vastly overestimate how static the program would be: just because Stalinist-era Black Widows were handcuffed to their beds doesn't mean that Yeltsin-era Black Widows would be, for instance. The political situation is so different!)
I could go on (in fact, I may go on in another post at some point: I've barely touched on Jarvis, and not at all on Howard Stark, or the plotline about Peggy's grief over Steve, or...), but I think this is long enough for now.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-28 10:46 pm (UTC)Yeah, and I think that was even maybe deliberate, but that went a bit too meta for me. (gwyn wrote a brill series about Steve in wartime Hollywood that is just amazing.)
...I would have super loved to see a season set in London, though, that would have been amazing, forever bitter that we didn't get season 3.
SERIOUSLY. The Michael storyline was ehhhh (Steve had that one. Plus, don't make Peggy about men, show!) but post-war London? DAMN that could have been amazing. It might have been a bit Young Indiana Jones but I wanted Peggy to maybe meet some other female spies or codebreakers, not just other women undervalued by Jack and co. There weren't a ton of women, but they were there.
I saw the Brideshead Revisited movie a few years ago, before Captain America was even a thing, and IMO even Hayley Atwell couldn't save it
OH DEAR
....THEY STRAIGHTWASHED IT? Wow that is a, wow!
When Black Widow comes out, I'm going to be really interested if we see more of Natasha's Russian side once she's among Russian assassin friends. Maybe that's just something she strives super hard to hide when she's with SHIELD? Given SHIELD's... everything... I could see her feeling that it's just safer to act as American as possible.
Ooh I like that, yes. I don't think Nat is super-Russian in the comics, but it would be nice to see her encountering stuff (food even) that she remembers from her earlier life, and whether or not she chooses to include it. Like, remember Nat just casually had her ballet slippers on a chair in Endgame??
no subject
Date: 2020-01-28 11:09 pm (UTC)And yes, I was so annoyed about the Michael storyline. They did such a good job in the first season about making Peggy's grief for Steve an important part of the story while still definitely focusing the story on Peggy, not Steve, and I felt like they actually lost ground on the "don't make Peggy all about men" front in season 2. But we'll see how I feel about it during the rewatch!
We just watched the first episode of season 2 last night - I still LOVE how Dottie's all about Peggy (that little pout when Jack tells her Peggy won't be interrogating her anymore! Followed by the moment when she nearly murders him with the table, because behind the little pout she's REAL mad. (And of course Jack sent Peggy away to get rid of the competition - he just can't stand the fact that she's truly not afraid of Dottie and he, in his heart of hearts, is.)
I wonder what Dottie's dream scenario for all of this was. Did she hope to bond with Peggy, or to outsmart and destroy her? (Or perhaps outsmart and kidnap and then bond with her?) Probably she didn't really know.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-28 11:35 pm (UTC)THAT IS SO UTTERLY WHACK
What's even worse is that there's a series from the 1980s (with Jeremy Irons) that *didn't*
Aww I adore that one even if it now looks kinda dated (the BBC 1980 production teams went for a Look, didn't they) but yeah, that was just about perfect -- and the CAST! Claire Bloom! Gielgud! Diana Quick! They totally nailed (heh) the whole atmosphere of repression and renunciation and Waugh's glorious romanticization of it all. I think I have the videotapes somewhere, I have a whole ton of taped-from-PBS stuff I can't bear to toss (and some of it never got released, like Death of the Heart, which was also perfect).
And yes, I was so annoyed about the Michael storyline. They did such a good job in the first season about making Peggy's grief for Steve an important part of the story while still definitely focusing the story on Peggy, not Steve, and I felt like they actually lost ground on the "don't make Peggy all about men" front in season 2. But we'll see how I feel about it during the rewatch!
SERIOUSLY, I really loved that Peggy was so Not About Steve or Jack or Sousa in S1, she didn't need them. Whereas in S2 it didn't feel more like an ensemble, but really, the fiancee? Jack and proto-HYDRA? The big kiss with Daniel? Those are all so predictable. It felt like the Dottie and Whitney storylines were built around Peggy, but weirdly went almost parallel to her. But if we had seen Peggy given a file somehow on Dottie -- everything she'd done and that had been done to her -- and Dottie would have loved and hated it, because being Known is such a terrifying thing for her. (I think, anyway.) (And if they're going to do a Winter Soldier type storyline for Peggy with anyone, it needs to be Dottie.)
We just watched the first episode of season 2 last night - I still LOVE how Dottie's all about Peggy (that little pout when Jack tells her Peggy won't be interrogating her anymore!
That season started off SO WELL, with that bank robbery episode. DOTTIE IMPERSONATING PEGGY, FIGHT SCENE, INTERROGATION, OMFG. And it had such energy! The emphasis was all on Operation Paperclip and Zola, but what if Dottie told Peggy she was ready to talk and Peggy was in charge of the debriefing or whatever? I know they were really stuck on the idea that the END of the show would be Peggy leaving SSRC somehow and founding SHIELD, but....I was really interested in the possible postwar buildup from wartime espionage and sabotage to "peacetime" intelligence gathering and how spies became heroic in the context of WWII. (And SHIELD winds up being headquartered at first in the Jersey army base....A season set in Jersey doesn't sound that appetizing tho maybe.)
Followed by the moment when she nearly murders him with the table, because behind the little pout she's REAL mad. (And of course Jack sent Peggy away to get rid of the competition - he just can't stand the fact that she's truly not afraid of Dottie and he, in his heart of hearts, is.)
LOL and Dottie is NOT AFRAID of him at all either. I think it's been a while since Jack experienced that one. He's trying to throw his weight and privilege around like usual and she literally just turns it on him. (DOTTIE <33)
I wonder what Dottie's dream scenario for all of this was. Did she hope to bond with Peggy, or to outsmart and destroy her? (Or perhaps outsmart and kidnap and then bond with her?) Probably she didn't really know.
WHY NOT BOTH? I always think of Dottie offering Peggy that roll, and how it's such a loaded and tragic gesture for her. It's like there's still a fragment of personality and genuine affection in there, but it was so twisted. (Dottie would probably eat the liver of anyone who called her a victim, tho.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-31 12:32 am (UTC)It's so puzzling to me that the Agent Carter creative team looked at season one (which was so well-done, and is very little about romance) and went, "Let's make season 2 all about romance!" - not only by making Peggy & Daniel's relationship a big focus of the season, but ALSO by giving both of them a second love interest, just to make absolutely sure that the romances swallowed up all the air in the season. Why? Whyyyyyyyy. Surely if they needed an obstacle for Peggy & Daniel's romance, the SSR could have a "no intra-SSR dating" rule or something.
We just watched episode two and it has reminded me (1) how much I liked Daniel's girlfriend Violet, and (2) how utterly thankless her role in this season is. Good on them for making her likable, but how did they ever expect that storyline to work out in a satisfying manner?