A Certain Slant of Light

My Flash in the Pan fic was Chicken Soup, an Agent Carter fic set soon after the finale of season 2. Peggy and Daniel bring Jack chicken soup after he’s shot. Jack thinks he doesn’t deserve it. (Jack is also definitely happy for them because they’ve finally gotten together and not at all pining for both of them, not even slightly.)

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 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.

The next batch of Whumptober ficlets are here! Lots of sad Red Room girls these last five days.

The Heartland Film Festival starts this Friday (!!!!!), so I’m already hard at work trying to get at least some of the next ten days worth of Whumptober ficlets done in advance. Maybe I should toss in a Sutcliff fic or two? (I briefly considered an Eagle fic for pinned down - there’s literally a scene in the book where Esca has to pin Marcus down to be cut open for surgery! - but I don’t think it’s whumpy enough if we already know it all goes all right.) Ooooh, or perhaps a Tortall fic. I feel I ought to branch out a bit from the MCU.

( 6. Dragged away. Natasha in the Red Room; Miss Underwood scolds her for having friends. )

A friend on Tumblr asked for a bit of Briarley fic (self-fic?) with the prompt “isolation,” so what could I write except a bit of my favorite mopy dragon brooding as he flies?

( 7. Isolation )

I replaced prompt 8 (stab wound) with the alternative prompt 10, Nightmare, and wrote a Code Name Verity fic, which got long enough that I’ve posted it over on AO3: Dreams in Damask. About once a year, Maddie dreams of walking with Julie in the garden with the damask roses.

( 9. Shackled. Dottie Underwood Red Room backstory. )

( 10. Unconscious. A tranquilizer dart knocks Steve unconscious, and he’s too heavy for Natasha to lift. )

I have watched Ant-Man and the Wasp! Which means… I am not actually caught up with the MCU, because I haven’t seen Avengers: Infinity War or Spiderman: Homecoming or Dr. Strange... okay, it may be time to admit to myself that I’m no longer even trying to keep up with the MCU. There’s too much of it. I just can’t see “and then Thanos turned a bunch of people into drifting piles of ash” as anything but a colossally disappointing plot twist.

BUT ANYWAY, setting all that aside for a moment, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a pleasant popcorn movie: lots of fun action sequences, plenty of things shrinking or enlarging to hilarious effect, an underdeveloped romance (par for the course in this sort of movie), an engagingly sympathetic villain.

I hope we’ll see more of Ghost in future movies. Her backstory has only strengthened my belief that SHIELD is the true big bad of the MCU and probably ultimately a destructive force despite the fact that they clearly want to be protective. The road to hell etc. etc.

As sad as I was when Agent Carter got canceled, it’s probably just as well that they didn’t have enough seasons to attempt a SHIELD-founding plotline, because there’s no way that would have been anything but monumentally disappointing. How could they make the story of SHIELD’s founding seem like anything but a tragedy when it has so many problems? It was infiltrated by Hydra almost from day one. It pretends to destroy alien tech and then hoards it. It imprisons people with powers or uses them as assassins, as per Ghost, whom they controlled with the promise that they might eventually cure her incredibly painful condition.

Either Agent Carter would have had to sweep it all under the rug, which is disappointing on the face of it, or they would have tried to grapple with it all - and maybe argue that SHIELD wasn’t so bad at the start, that the worst abuses came later on, after Howard died & Peggy retired? I think that’s the only approach that could have worked. But still it’s probably better that they didn’t try.

For evelyn_b: the MCU. Which is awfully broad! There’s a lot of MCU out there and I have seen quite a bit of it (although I never did finish any of the Netflix shows). But even without them, there are still all those movies, and Agents of SHIELD, and Agent Carter (RIP! I wasn’t as fond of the second season as the first, but I still would have liked a third.)

the character I least understand

Oh, man. I love Skye a lot (have I mentioned that she and I have the exact same birthday? Not just the day but the year. WE ARE SPIRIT TWINS) but I still don’t get her swift switcheroo from “Rising Tide hacktivist” to “loyal SHIELD agent” in season one. It’s just so fast! And so completely devoid of guilt or regret! She meets up with one of her former friends one time, and then Coulson cuts off her computer access and all contact with the outside world (brainwashing 101! I’m just saying!) and she never tries again or worries about betraying them or anything. It’s like she’s forgotten her Rising Tide friends ever existed.

...and we know that SHIELD totally has the tech to make that happen. Fury used it on Coulson to make him forget the process by which they brought him back to life. I’M JUST SAYING.

interactions I enjoyed the most

Peggy Carter and Dottie Underwood’s interactions were all A++ and I will be forever sad that we won’t get to see them team up against a greater threat - not in the “You have to work with us or this exploding necklace will explode” way they worked together in season 2, but genuinely working together to fight, like, aliens.

I also loved Natasha & Steve’s friendship in Winter Soldier. And of course Steve vs. the Winter Soldier on the helicarrier is absolute gold, the fight that launched a thousand ships.

the character who scares me the most

Honestly I find the Hulk pretty terrifying and I don’t think it’s responsible of SHIELD or the Avengers to send him out on missions in anything less than a Chitauri-invasion type situation, because the threat he poses is just too great. Just look what he did in Age of Ultron: he loses control and wrecks great swathes of a city. (With Tony’s help in the Hulkbuster, of course, but that honestly only strengthens my point.)

the character who is mostly like me

Probably none of them; I am just not that badass. Even Darcy is way quicker with quips and cooler under pressure than I would be.

hottest looks character

You realize this is an impossible question in the MCU. There are so many of them and they are all so pretty, it’s completely impossible. Even just going with the movies - even limiting it to just the Cap films - how are you going to choose between Steve and Peggy and Natasha and Winter Soldier Bucky (I think he’s so much more attractive with the long hair and stubble)? You can’t do it! They’re all too gorgeous!

And it just gets worse when you bring Thor and Bobbi Morse and everyone else from every MCU thing into the mix. Too much pretty. Too much. Too much!

one thing I dislike about my fave character

Most of Bucky’s everything in Civil War, honestly. I dislike the fact that the writers went with trigger word brainwashing instead of something closer to real-world brainwashing (I realize that this is a silly complaint about a superhero sci-fi movie but I can’t help it), and the ending where he chooses to go into cryo. I realize he has every reason in the world to give up but I still don’t want him to.

one thing I like about my hated character

I ACTUALLY DO HAVE A MOST HATED MARVEL CHARACTER. I DESPITE DR. HOLDEN RADCLIFFE (the scientist who first shows up in season 3 of Agents of SHIELD) WITH THE FIERY PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS. He is trying to hide the fact that he is evil behind an eccentric yet harmless mad scientist veneer but I am NOT HAVING ANY OF IT ANY MORE, he is just straight up evil and views humans as chess pieces - not even chess pieces! Chess pieces have some individuality! - as checkers, flat little checkers to be moved around the board at his whim.

I will not list all the terrible things he does, because there are simply too many, but the scene that really snapped me is the one where he’s trying to manipulate Fitz by telling Fitz that Fitz is like a son to him - and then it turns out that Radcliffe isn’t even the one talking; he’s sent in a decoy robot to say all this while he scurries away out the back door. FUCK YOU RADCLIFFE.

Um. I’m supposed to be thinking of something I like about him. He’s always got a contingency plan, which is admirable in a way, or at least it would be if each contingency plan wasn’t more evil than the next.

a quote or scene that haunts me

Does “the entirety of Winter Soldier” count? I’m not sure I can narrow it down more than that. Although the helicarrier scene and “I’m with you to the end of the line” and Bucky jumping into the Potomac to fish Steve out and then leaving him on the riverbank - all of that got me in the feels.

Or the bank vault scene where Pierce is trying to explain to the asset about the importance of his world-saving mission and the asset is just “....but I knew him,” like, he doesn’t know what’s going on but he knows Pierce is not answering his question - and then Pierce just has him wiped...

a death that left me indifferent

Pietro. Honestly, I just don’t really believe that he’s dead: his power is literally being faster than bullets and then he dies in a hail of machine gun fire. And it’s so abrupt and weirdly quippy, I can’t take it seriously.

a character I wish died but didn’t

I haven’t finished season 4 of Agents of SHIELD so it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that Dr. Radcliffe will, in fact, die by the end. I CAN ONLY HOPE. But as of episode 12 he is still alive and I want him dead, as dead as a doornail.

my ship that never sailed

Still in mourning for the Bobbi/Simmons that never was. They had such a glorious beginning! Bobbi undercover as a Hydra agent! Threatening Simmons and then saving her life! And Simmons getting all giggly and “She’s amazing” about it!

And then nothing. They barely even get a friendship. WHYYYYYYYYY.

New Agent Carter episode!

( Read more... )

New Agent Carter! New Agent Carter!

I may possibly write about the episode at more length later, but for now: this is the kind of quality Dottie Underwood that I am here for. Is she actually that obsessed with Peggy Carter? Or does she just realize that hearing her swoon over Peggy really, really pisses Jack Thompson off? OR BOTH?

Also: we finally get to meet Anna Jarvis! Who is clearly feeling a bit territorial about Jarvis (that kiss at the beginning), but then, who wouldn't, Jarvis is adorable. He's all excited to show off his judo moves to Peggy! Peggy is all, oh Jarvis, you don't know what you're getting into. He should stick to looking dapper and making quips.

Also Agent Sousa has a new girlfriend, who seems like a lovely person, but I am not sure how I feel about this development because I am pretty sure that Sousa is still in love with Peggy (or possibly has fallen in love with her all over again now that she's shown up again), so I feel like this is going to end badly for everyone, SADFACE.

...Also I have the unpleasant feeling that the symbol that keeps showing up everywhere is the Hydra symbol that's been all over season 3 of Agents of SHIELD, which I don't like because (1) the Hydra in season 3 of AoS is comic book evil in a bad way, and (2) given that we the viewers all know that Hydra ends up infiltrating her organization and tearing it apart from the inside, I'm not sure how I feel about them showing up as the Big Bad in season 2. It's going to make any victory unpleasantly Pyrrhic.

But we'll see! We'll see where it goes! For now, my show is back!

I saw the Agent Carter finale! AND I WANT A SECOND SEASON SO MUCH, clearly it would be about Peggy's rise to power in the SSR: at the end of season 1 she's respected; at the end of season 2 she's poised to become the SSRs BAMF director, and even Agent Thompson has realized (or perhaps just admitted? I think he already knows this is true) that she will do an infinitely better job than he would.

( Spoilers, with lots of CAPSLOCK )

YES PEGGY GOT TO PUNCH JACK IN THE FACE, THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED. YESSSSSSSSSSS.

ETA: Apparently I lied, I wanted so many other things and THE SHOW GAVE THEM TO ME. Angie saves Peggy's bacon! (Angie turns out to actually be able to act when there's enough on the line! Also the SSR's guys reaction is priceless, I am laughing so hard at you right now Jack). AND THEN DOTTIE SLEEP SNOGS PEGGY WITH HER OWN LIPSTICK YES YES YES.

And next week we're getting an interrogation! I LOVE INTERROGATIONS SO MUCH maybe I have problems, um, but this is going to be AWESOME.