osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2020-03-26 08:59 am
osprey_archer) wrote2020-03-26 08:59 am
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Agent Carter, season 2, the second half
We’ve reached the part in season 2 of Agent Carter where the show begins to unravel. The first half of the season is actually pretty solid (which surprised me; I suppose the song-and-dance “which man shall I choose?” number in episode nine colored my memory of the whole season), but things start to go downhill after Peggy gets mildly impaled in episode 5. (Don’t worry, she’s back on her feet in episode 6.)
I’m fairly sure the impalement occurs mostly so there’d be an excuse for an unlikely team-up with Dottie Underwood, and in theory I love this idea - more Dottie! More of Dottie and Peggy forced to work together!!! Of course it’s inherently a rather silly plan, but this is a superhero spy show, I’m willing to revel in silly plans if the characters pull them off with competence and panache.
Unfortunately that’s not the case here. Peggy has no reason to believe that Dottie will cooperate, or indeed do anything at all except run the moment she gets the chance - and she does nothing that might change Dottie’s mind about that. 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.
Of course, the carrots that Peggy can offer are somewhat limited: given the nature of Dottie’s crimes, Peggy can’t exactly let her go free, for instance. But there are other carrots she could offer. A long personal chat with Peggy is probably high on Dottie’s wishlist, for instance, and the prospect might at least make Dottie delay her inevitable escape.
At very least, Peggy ought to pretend to be friendly, instead of being so clipped and cold. As Whitney Frost notes, Dottie wants to believe that Peggy is her friend; Peggy could win a lot of ground simply by playing into that hope. Yes, still take all possible precautions, but 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.
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.
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. I think the writers made the villains in the story just a little too powerful (the Arena Club controls everything; Whitney Frost is an unstoppable force of destruction); even by the generous standards of “realistic” one expects in a superhero spy story, it’s hard to see how our heroes could realistically win. So the story loses its thread.
I’m fairly sure the impalement occurs mostly so there’d be an excuse for an unlikely team-up with Dottie Underwood, and in theory I love this idea - more Dottie! More of Dottie and Peggy forced to work together!!! Of course it’s inherently a rather silly plan, but this is a superhero spy show, I’m willing to revel in silly plans if the characters pull them off with competence and panache.
Unfortunately that’s not the case here. Peggy has no reason to believe that Dottie will cooperate, or indeed do anything at all except run the moment she gets the chance - and she does nothing that might change Dottie’s mind about that. 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.
Of course, the carrots that Peggy can offer are somewhat limited: given the nature of Dottie’s crimes, Peggy can’t exactly let her go free, for instance. But there are other carrots she could offer. A long personal chat with Peggy is probably high on Dottie’s wishlist, for instance, and the prospect might at least make Dottie delay her inevitable escape.
At very least, Peggy ought to pretend to be friendly, instead of being so clipped and cold. As Whitney Frost notes, Dottie wants to believe that Peggy is her friend; Peggy could win a lot of ground simply by playing into that hope. Yes, still take all possible precautions, but 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.
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.
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. I think the writers made the villains in the story just a little too powerful (the Arena Club controls everything; Whitney Frost is an unstoppable force of destruction); even by the generous standards of “realistic” one expects in a superhero spy story, it’s hard to see how our heroes could realistically win. So the story loses its thread.
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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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I also was thrown off by the song-and-dance number—me, who loves musicals!—but I remember being particularly turned off by Jarvis' "you can't be in love with two men at the same time" speech. I get that he was trying to be a supportive and sympathetic friend (and I still appreciate that this is one of the few shows that contains a genuinely platonic friendship between opposite-sex characters without any of the extended will-they-or-won't-they-ing, even if they had to queer-code the heck out of one of them to do it), but like, have you lived at all, my dude? Love (or attraction, anyway) is nothing if not inconvenient.
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