The show is not nearly as one-sided as you claim. While it starts out with overt displays of sexism, it moves on to showing more nuanced versions that are just as awful but not nearly so obvious. Howard Stark doesn't trust Peggy with everything because he fears she'll be emotional about it. Daniel Sousa puts Peggy on a pedestal, then lashes out when seeing she's not the perfect lady he envisioned. Deadly agents like Dottie prey on people seeing her as just a harmless mother or virginal young lady. Even Peggy makes the mistake of thinking Dottie is harmless.
It also nuances the "strawmen" more than expected. Jack Thompson starts out a jerk, but he's still a competent agent and turns out to put down Peggy because he's trying to make himself feel more like the hero. Chief Dooley seems like a Bad Boss at first, but he turns out to have a lot of unspoken respect for Peggy and understandable reasons for his distrust of women. Even the evil Russian bad guys turn out have deeper motives than lust for power.
I also retort that the characters do have show-long arcs. Peggy learns to not care if people think she's a hero as along as she knows her own worth, compared to the third episode and others where she grows angry about realizing she won't get any credit for her accomplishments. Jarvis learns to not trust Stark blindly and even face the possibility of killing him if it would save people. Thompson has an anti-arc of almost learning humility, then taking all the glory for himself. Peggy is not a Mary Sue and does have flaws, as described her
. Compare that to Captain America, who is literally perfect and yet still a compelling character.
Whatever your opinion of the sets, they still look more impressive than the One Shot's, which were basically four small rooms. What was the point of this show? We loved Peggy Carter in The First Avenger and wanted to see more of her. So did Marvel. What's wrong with a little more adventure while admitting our past wasn't as golden as we claimed it was?
I second everything Tuckerscreator stated. There's a lot of nuance in how the sexism is handled and even Jack Thompson — the most overt and harsh in his sexism — is given depth.
Nor is Peggy herself anywhere close to a Mary Sue. If she's one then a character such as Batman is absolutely 1000x WORSE. Peggy may be able to kick butt, however, she frequently has to improvise weapons and is very much a Combat Pragmatist. Moreover, she most definitely has flaws — a huge one being that she readily gets jealous and also cares a great deal what people think of her.
Also, Peggy is not sexist towards men. What is this bullshit? She didn't threaten that guy or think less of him because he was a MAN. She threatened him because he was HARASSING HER FRIEND. Her dislike of him stemmed completely from his behavior, not his gender/sex.
Also, if you think that the depiction of sexism post-WWII is a "war on straw" then you need to open a textbook. The sexism that Peggy faces is in no way an exaggeration of the sexism of the time. Following the war, socially, there was an ENORMOUS push to get women back in the home because returning soldiers needed their jobs back.
The portrayal of sexism in Agent Carter, far from being a War on Straw, is very representative of the time.
^Adding to these comments, another major flaw for Peggy is her go-it-alone tactics, rather than trusting and relying on her friends, either Jarvis in season 1 or Sousa in season 2. Most of this initial review is wrong, to the point that I suspect the person (1) didn\'t watch much of the series and/or (2) went in wanting to dislike it because it has a heroine dealing with sexism as one of its subjects.
They are right about its abysmal budget, though that\'s somewhat better in season 2. This show\'s clearly not getting the full support of Marvel, but the writing makes up for it.
LOUD NOISES
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The War on Straw: The Series
Thank goodness this show has finally arrived! Finally, a show that dares to stand up and say what NO SHOW or media has EVER DARED TO SAY:
Sexism against women is bad!
I KNOW, RIGHT?! SHOCKING! Thank goodness someone dared to come forward and make this mind-blowing statement in this day and age when absolutely no one else would ever make such a claim!
And it bashes it into the ground over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Of course, Peggy is routinely sexist toward men, (threatening a man's life because he annoys her friend) and the characters who we're supposed to root for her to overcome are so cartoonishly over-the-top in their discrimination that they might as well be twirling their mustaches, but still: BOLD NEW STATEMENT!
This is The War on Straw: The Series
Worse still... that's the entire show. It is nothing else. The "mystery", such as it is, ends up being purely about Howard Stark, who barely appears. Jarvis is the stock Battle Butler we've seen a hundred times before. Peggy has no character arc after the second episode, she just overcomes obstacles with her Mary Sueperpowers, which is only necessary because the Straw Misogynists around her are all Too Dumb to Live.
The production values are excruciatingly cheap. The show feels like it's being filmed on a single tiny set and a few cheaply-dressed locations. Dominic Cooper's American accent is even more unbearably awful than it was in Captain America: The First Avenger (impossible as that may seem) and the performances in general fit the "No time, no budget" feel of the whole thing. The props are particularly unimpressive, especially since they're such an important part of the plot; at one point they attempt to have an emotional moment while someone is wearing what appears to be a 70's flak jacket with an oven filament in it.
Again though, its cardinal sin is that it has no purpose. The plot is bland, the side characters have no arc besides eventually acknowledging the glorious perfection of our Mary Sue protagonist, who undergoes absolutely zero development. To paraphrase Joss Whedon's description of Air Force One: "She's a strong, tough, secret agent who, when the chips are down, is strong and tough!" It's dull, uninspired, and enamored of its own Anvilicious message.