The Emphasis On Relationships Forces "A View In The Dark" In An Awkward Direction!

The Good: Competent performances, Good special effects
The Bad: Tone, Dull plot, No genuine character development
The Basics: "A View In The Dark" oversells the relationships belabored in the second season of Agent Carter while only minimally progressing the season's mystery.


The second season of Agent Carter worked very hard in its premiere episode to do two important things. The first was that it clearly established that the second season would be a season-long mystery, not one that was instantly resolved, and that it was making much more explicit ties to Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Given that the first episode of the season tied into the third season of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. through the pin that Dottie Underwood tried to steal from the bank vault at the episode's outset and that image is featured prominently in "A View In The Dark."

Picking up where “The Lady In The Lake” (reviewed here!) left off, "A View In The Dark" is tough to discuss without some references to the prior episode. After all, "The Lady In The Lake" concluded with what appeared to be Gravitonium from the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "The Asset" (reviewed here!), which makes it clear that Agent Carter is committed to tying into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe in its second season . . . and someone involved in the mystery is a mad scientist, probably with ties to HYDRA.

Opening with Peggy Carter walking in on Jarvis weight training, Carter quickly illustrates that he does not have the skills to take her down. Chief Sousa arrives at the office to discover that Carter has already met Violet, his new girlfriend. Carter is all business, eager to get the autopsy done on Jane Scott. But, when the people transporting her body are killed and the body stolen, Calvin Chadwick is called onto the carpet by the secret society for which he works. Isodyne Energy - Chadwick's pet project - is being shuttered, much to his chagrin. After Carter gets the warrant she needs to investigate Isodyne Energy, she arrives at the facility to find Dr. Wilkes coming in and he slips her a note with a time and place to meet him.

After meeting with Wilkes at a nightclub, Carter appears to earn the scientist's trust, even though he is being tailed. Wilkes takes Carter to his office, where he shows her the footage of the creation of "zero matter," a by-product of a failed atomic test. When Wilkes's and Carter's enemies track them to the observatory, Carter has to activate the S.O.S. system Jarvis provided her. Returning to Isodyne Energy, Wilkes and Carter discover that the facility is in the process of being scrubbed and they work to recover the zero matter that is tied to Jane Scott's murder.

Working "zero matter" into "A View In The Dark" creates a problematic mystery for Agent Carter. After all, in order to make the presence of Gravitonium in 1947 make any sense, there has to be a plausible reason why it would pop back up for another 65 years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wilkes worked on the containment system for the zero matter and the viewer is expected to believe that however the second season is resolved, the zero matter has remained contained without creating more casualties like from "The Lady In The Lake" for 65 years. In fact, while the whole magnetic containment system for the zero matter makes sense, the small transport tube for it is somewhat ridiculous.

"A View In The Dark" features a number of problematic and ridiculous spy show conceits, most notably that Peggy Carter fails to observe any of the tails on Dr. Wilkes and the gunfight that ensues late in the episode results in no casualties. Both Wilkes and Carter have firearms training and real-world experience, but do not manage to hit a single one of their targets.

Chief Sousa is fleshed out in "A View In The Dark" through his relationship with Violet being revealed to be far more serious than Carter suspected. Carter is shocked to learn that Sousa is planning to propose to Violet, but the night he is to propose is the night everything goes wrong with Carter and he has to come to her rescue. The forced romantic conflict with Sousa - who has a special affection for Carter still - feels utterly unnecessary and viewers can pretty much figure where that tension is going to go with his relationship with Violet. "A View In The Dark" telegraphs the direction of that relationship in an unfortunate way.

Peggy Carter gets her first overt chance at a real romantic relationship in "A View In The Dark" and it, too, feels forced and abrupt. After all, Carter has shown no serious romantic inklings before - in fact, she spent the entire first season painfully ignorant of any of the romantic tension surrounding her. But, by the second episode of the second season, Peggy Carter is suddenly willing to hook up with a guy in a way that she had not been since Captain America (reviewed here!).

The romance aspect of "A View In The Dark" might not not be so problematic were it not for the poor writing in general and the way the episode quickly forces together the romantic relationship on the heels of two other characters abruptly having romantic subplots. And with racism, Agent Carter runs into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation in "A View In The Dark;" the show would seem absurd if it did not address racism in 1947 - especially after belaboring to death sexism in the prior season - but when it pops up in "A View In The Dark" it feels incredibly forced.

The performances in "A View In The Dark" are competent, but in no way extraordinary. The mystery that Peggy Carter finds herself investigating progresses, but in a minimal way and with forced sass and inorganic flow. The result is an hour of television that misses more than it hits and is a fairly unnecessary endeavor on all fronts.

For other works with Casey Sander, please visit my reviews of:
The Newsroom - Season 3
The Big Bang Theory - Season 5
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
16 Blocks

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Agent Carter - The Complete Second Season, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Agent Carter here!
Thanks!]

3.5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Murder Mystery With Mutants (Or Close Enough!): "The Lady In The Lake"

The Good: Good effects, Performances are decent, Engaging plot set-up
The Bad: Assumes relationships that are not developed, No real character development, Very familiar plot
The Basics: The second season of Agent Carter opens with a murder mystery involving that appears to be a serial killer, but opens up to being a mystery that has a villain with superhuman abilities in "The Lady In The Lake!"


There has been, fairly consistently, no corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I have cared less about than Agent Carter. The first season of Agent Carter (reviewed here!), was so underwhelming to me that when the ten-episode second season of Agent Carter aired on ABC during a winter hiatus, I could not muster up the enthusiasm to tune in to watch it. Perhaps the best reference I can give to how very little I cared about Agent Carter is this: as summer moved towards its end, I found myself picking up graphic novels pertaining to the Inhumans (Inhuman: Volume 1 - Genesis is reviewed here!) so I could better understand some of the nuances of season 3 of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (reviewed here!) before I bothered to track down the second season of Agent Carter and give it my attention. In fact, I only had a couple of weeks between reviewing the last television series's I actually cared about and the fourth season premiere of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the debut of Luke Cage, so I felt like I needed to catch up on Agent Carter solely to insure that I did not miss any allusions to the show in the continuing Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Season Two of Agent Carter opened with "The Lady In The Lake" and it continues by immediately picking up the loose end from "Valediction" (reviewed here!), in the form of capturing the escaped villain Dottie Underwood. Underwood was a Soviet spy working in the first season to undermine Agent Carter and the SSR and she managed to escape at the climax of the first season. Ironically, in "The Lady Of The Lake," it is Dottie Underwood and her arc that makes Agent Carter at all relevant to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, as a pin she was interested in contains the iconography for the mission HYDRA co-opted in the third season of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.! In other words, just as perceptive viewers might have figured early on that Will was (knowingly or unknowingly) working for HYDRA when Simmons encountered him on the distant world, attentive viewers will know almost immediately that Dottie Underwood is interested in or affiliated with HYDRA.

Opening with a woman leading a bank robbery, the woman manages to get the vault, where Agent Carter is waiting. The woman is Dottie Underwood and the bank is staffed entirely with SSR agents determined to apprehend Underwood and take her associates into custody. Moving to Los Angeles, 1947, Sousa arrives at a murder scene where it appears a serial killer from the past may have struck again. The SSR was called out because on the hottest day of the year, the lake where the corpse was found is almost entirely frozen. Sousa, who is running the new West Coast division of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, is understaffed and Thompson sends Carter, mid-interrogation, out to Los Angeles to assist him. Carter arrives in Los Angeles where she is reunited with Jarvis, who is working for Howard Stark, who is working for a movie studio as a location scout.

Investigating the frozen corpse from the lake, Carter and Sousa discover some peculiarities, including the fact that the corpse glows because it contains radioactive elements. The lab tech clues Carter into the fact that there is a particle accelerator in Pasedena at Isodyne Energy. Carter sneaks into Isodyne Energy where she meets Dr. Jason Wilkes, who is able to identify the corpse from the lake. Carter learns that the scientist who was killed was associated with Calvin Chadwick, a politician who was having an affair with her. Carter interviews Chadwick and finds him willing to comply with her requests, but only if they come from official, legal channels. The situation is complicated by the coroner dying during the autopsy; frozen when he first cut into the mysterious corpse. As Thompson discovers that Dottie is out of his league, Carter unravels the mystery behind the frozen lake and the corpse it contained, revealing that there is a massive new conspiracy that requires Agent Carter's attention!

My own antipathy toward Agent Carter notwithstanding, "The Lady In The Lake" illustrates what a tenuous concept Agent Carter was to begin with, by almost completely redefining it in its second season premiere. "The Lady In The Lake" is a fairly abrupt transition for the series which belabors maintaining the few successful elements of the first season (like the Carter/Jarvis relationship) while moving the show in a very different direction.

"The Lady In The Lake" picks up character relationships in progress, most notably one between Carter and Sousa. Sousa's move to Los Angeles strained the budding romantic relationship between him and Carter. The relationship was never truly developed and when "The Lady In The Lake" leaps back into it, it seems somewhat abrupt. Even more forced than the Sousa and Carter relationship is the banter between Rose and Carter. The dialogue is good, but it assumes a relationship that was not at all substantive in the first season.

The three new characters in "The Lady In The Lake" that are introduced to the Agent Carter mix are Jason Wilkes, Ana Jarvis, and Vernon Masters. Wilkes is a brilliant physicist working for Isodyne Energy, who has an instant rapport with Agent Peggy Carter. Indeed, Reggie Austin (Wilkes) plays off Hayley Atwell (Carter) with such palpable chemistry that it is almost hard to believe that the writers and producers forced any romantic tension in "The Lady In The Lake" between Carter and Sousa! Ana Jarvis is a supporting character who seems to have been thrown into the mix to replace Carter's roommate in the first season and Vernon Masters appears to keep Jack Thompson and his thread even remotely interesting. Kurtwood Smith plays Masters and his appearance is what allows Thompson to lose Underwood as a prisoner and the truth is that Jack Thompson was such a white bread character that the viewer does not so much care whether or not he is heading up the East Coast SSR or not; Agent Carter was revealed in the first season as the most competent agent of the SSR, so that the story follows her makes so many of the other, prior, supporting characters superfluous. So, Vernon Masters is a tangential character to an unnecessary lingering thread on the Agent Carter story.

Agent Carter's first season was somewhat hampered by the theme of "Agent Carter is a woman, here's how that complicates her life." "The Lady In The Lake," fortunately, progresses past that. In fact, when Thompson begins his interrogation of Underwood, there is a threat of physical violence between them that is very much the embodiment of gender equality. To keep the sense of time and place, "The Lady In The Lake" includes references to racism of the day, which enhances the realism of the era beyond the simple costumes and sets.

"The Lady In The Lake" is very much a set-up episode of Agent Carter and it almost instantly creates an issue with the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.. On Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., Simmons is characterized as a brilliant medical doctor who also idolized Peggy Carter; the elements included in "The Lady In The Lake" undermine that characterization as they are ridiculously close to elements from the story of Donnie Gill. In other words, Donnie's story is a "brand new" mystery to Simmons, but it should have been incredibly familiar to her as the common elements would have been included in the legend of Peggy Carter, available (at least) to a high level agent like Simmons.

That said, on its own, "The Lady In The Lake" is a surprisingly good start to the second season of Agent Carter. The acting is competent and the story is engaging enough to be watchable, even if there are larger continuity issues and the mystery seems more predictable than it was audacious. "The Lady In The Lake" might not light the world on fire for portraying any universal themes or making any grand statements, but it is entertaining enough to be watchable.

For other Marvel Television Universe season premieres, please check out my reviews of:
"AKA Ladies Night" - Jessica Jones
"Bang" - Daredevil
"Laws Of Nature" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Agent Carter - The Complete Second Season, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Agent Carter here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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