Her approach is all stick, no carrot, even though we’ve seen before that this approach doesn’t work on Dottie (it ended with Jack Thompson pinned to the floor with a table at his throat) - and also that Peggy knows that, because she knows how to handle Dottie, at least as well as anyone does.
YES, and it's so frustrating. Peggy isn't going to want to be friends with Dottie, but her inability to connect with Dottie is glaring, given their connection in S1 and that Peggy canonically makes a deal with Zola and he says in TWS that SHIELD was always rotten to the core. TWS doesn't inform Agent Carter as closely as TFA does, but Dottie and the Soviet pre-Red Room program are links to Natasha, who came in from the cold decades later, and while the relationships between the TV shows and movies were fucked until the Disney+ deal, they could have at least alluded to it. (And the writers of TWS wrote a number of Agent Carter eps and co-created the series, to boot.)
talk to Dottie as if she’s a valued and trusted teammate, and the tracking device that will explode if Dottie tries to escape is an unfortunate bureaucratic necessity. Sure, Dottie will see through it, but she’ll eat it up anyway.
....I NEED THIS FIC
As it is, Peggy gives Dottie no reason to cooperate, so when the plan goes all pear-shaped it feels like a foregone conclusion. What did Peggy expect? She gave Dottie no reason to cooperate, and so Dottie didn’t.
It's so OOC for Peggy, too. She's not empathic exactly, but she's very just and honest, and she's actually good at dealing with hostile not-quite-allies she needs something from -- it's been her whole working life, and her element in the show! It makes no sense that she can't coordinate something with Dottie, or Whitney, for that matter. (My favourite moment in all of S2 may be Peggy going back for Dottie -- if I'm remembering that right.)
And I think this sort of encapsulates a lot of the problems in the second half of the season: the characters, who hitherto have been so clever and on top of things, suddenly seem like incompetent pinballs tossed around by the levers of an increasingly out of control plot.
Yeah, I remember someone making the point that there are more women in season two, but Peggy interacts with them much less than she did Angie and Dottie in the first season. Ana's character was great and they had an intriguing spark, but it felt like Ana became a plot device to come between Jarvis and Peggy so we could have a fight between them. Sousa having a fiancee was the same kind of silliness. I personally think it's a sign of lazy plotting when characters are pushed apart for no reason so there can be Angst and then have a Happy Reconciliation later.
ITA about the villains -- Frost in particular is way too overpowered, and . Agent Carter often glories in its pulpiness, which is fun, but it felt out of control in the second season -- it felt more cartoonish and there was WAY too much emphasis on Jack and Masters et al. It's a shame because it started off with a bang, but S2 really was disappointing. The finale, with Peggy and a bunch of guys literally physically pulling down a bad special effect, was really shallow compared to the S1 finale with "I know my value" and Peggy moving on from Steve into her own life on her own terms.
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Date: 2020-03-26 02:49 pm (UTC)YES, and it's so frustrating. Peggy isn't going to want to be friends with Dottie, but her inability to connect with Dottie is glaring, given their connection in S1 and that Peggy canonically makes a deal with Zola and he says in TWS that SHIELD was always rotten to the core. TWS doesn't inform Agent Carter as closely as TFA does, but Dottie and the Soviet pre-Red Room program are links to Natasha, who came in from the cold decades later, and while the relationships between the TV shows and movies were fucked until the Disney+ deal, they could have at least alluded to it. (And the writers of TWS wrote a number of Agent Carter eps and co-created the series, to boot.)
talk to Dottie as if she’s a valued and trusted teammate, and the tracking device that will explode if Dottie tries to escape is an unfortunate bureaucratic necessity. Sure, Dottie will see through it, but she’ll eat it up anyway.
....I NEED THIS FIC
As it is, Peggy gives Dottie no reason to cooperate, so when the plan goes all pear-shaped it feels like a foregone conclusion. What did Peggy expect? She gave Dottie no reason to cooperate, and so Dottie didn’t.
It's so OOC for Peggy, too. She's not empathic exactly, but she's very just and honest, and she's actually good at dealing with hostile not-quite-allies she needs something from -- it's been her whole working life, and her element in the show! It makes no sense that she can't coordinate something with Dottie, or Whitney, for that matter. (My favourite moment in all of S2 may be Peggy going back for Dottie -- if I'm remembering that right.)
And I think this sort of encapsulates a lot of the problems in the second half of the season: the characters, who hitherto have been so clever and on top of things, suddenly seem like incompetent pinballs tossed around by the levers of an increasingly out of control plot.
Yeah, I remember someone making the point that there are more women in season two, but Peggy interacts with them much less than she did Angie and Dottie in the first season. Ana's character was great and they had an intriguing spark, but it felt like Ana became a plot device to come between Jarvis and Peggy so we could have a fight between them. Sousa having a fiancee was the same kind of silliness. I personally think it's a sign of lazy plotting when characters are pushed apart for no reason so there can be Angst and then have a Happy Reconciliation later.
ITA about the villains -- Frost in particular is way too overpowered, and . Agent Carter often glories in its pulpiness, which is fun, but it felt out of control in the second season -- it felt more cartoonish and there was WAY too much emphasis on Jack and Masters et al. It's a shame because it started off with a bang, but S2 really was disappointing. The finale, with Peggy and a bunch of guys literally physically pulling down a bad special effect, was really shallow compared to the S1 finale with "I know my value" and Peggy moving on from Steve into her own life on her own terms.