Series Wonderfully clever
Great characters, great plot, acting ranges from good to unnervingly perfect. Suspense is always present, humor is sharp, clever, and offers welcome relief. The time period is pictured realistically, with all its glamor, its suffering, its Unfortunate Implications and its ideals.
Nothing and no one is useless. Peggy Carter is brave, sensible and devastating as a Blood Knight with a thirst for approval and justice, who must nonetheless lie and manipulate the people with whom she wishes to belong if she wants to do the right thing. Her friends and allies are wonderful too. Edmund Jarvis is snarky, competent and oh-so-proper, and Angie Martinelli is succesively warm, hot blooded, petty and heartbreaking. Both show flashes of heroism and vulnerability that remind the audience of the normal yet exceptionnal civilians Peggy is fighting for, while they're trying their hardest to survive the era and bring something to the world. In a similar vein, Dottie Underwood deserves special mention as an agreeable surprise. There's so much beneath the picture of that enjoyably camp Ingenue, I don't even know where to begin. Agents Dooley and Thompson are so much more than the condescending, entitled sexist and the petty, envious careerist they first appear to be. Similarly, Agent Sousa is more ambiguous than the empathetic Woobie in desperate need to feel useful again, which ends up making him much more engaging and watchable. Doctor Ivchenko, the Russian psychologist who has a few heartfelt discussions with the cast, not only about Russia, but about their daily life and anxieties, helps revealing the tragedy of a war-torn world where too much is changing and few can remain humans.
Series First 3 Episodes - Very promising indeed
In the MCU, there have been several prominent ensemble darkhorses. But perhaps only the Son Of Coul has come close to matching Agent Margaret 'Peggy' Carter, who following in his footsteps has landed a show of her very own - and what a show it could turn out to be.
The show is firmly set in the late 40s, post-war - which is a period often skipped over in media in favour of the actual WW2 period or the later Cold War of the 50s and beyond. There is a tip of a hat to this with plenty of retired soldiers and a few female characters mentioning how they lost jobs due to the original (male) employees returning.
The First Avenger got some (fair, I think) criticism for a slightly idealised vision of the 40s who wasn't a white male - that's not the case any more. While for some it may veer into the anvilicious the show does not shy away from the ever present sexism of the time - but strikes the balance well between acknowledging it's existence but not letting it get in our intrepid heroine's way. While it is rarely treated as intentionally malicious, it's not swept under the rug either.
Peggy herself is treated as just as heroic and badass as any male hero. There's no she-fu twirly, dance-fighting from Peg - she goes up against her enemies hand to hand, with a healthy dose of combat pragmatism to off set her relative weakness.
The other big selling point of the show is it's very own ensemble darkhorse - Jarvis. Not the sarcastic A.I., the actual human Jarvis who inspired the younger Tony Stark's later creation. Much of the early comedy comes from seeing a non-action, proper butler getting caught up in the action - though come episode 3 and we begin to see there is more to Jarvis than perhaps first apparent.
Overall, a very good show that makes its (relatively) low-tech, super-heroless setting a strength not a shackle. Personally I am worried that it will end up cramming a lot into a short time to resolve the Leviathan arc - nearly half way through the run and we don't actually know who or what Leviathan even is yet (a person? An organisation? HYDRA off-shoot? Russian?) but it's done more than enough to earn my faith.
Highly recommended.
Series 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.