Who Truly Cares If Agent Carter Gets Her "Hollywood Ending?!"

The Good: Direction is fine
The Bad: Lack of character development, Predictable plot, No astonishingly good performances
The Basics: "Hollywood Ending" resolves Agent Carter in a way that barely connects the series to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


When it comes to missed potential, Agent Carter might well take the cake. As the show entered what would end up being its series finale with "Hollywood Ending," it seemed like the show had played every possible "spy television" conceit to the detriment of the characters, the performers and, indeed, the plotline to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead of being a smart show that started to weave the threads that would lead into the blockbuster films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and connect the years between Captain America and the early scenes of Ant-Man in a compelling way), Agent Carter instead played out as a heavy-handed rip off of Alias (reviewed here!). "Hollywood Ending" merely continues that latter trend.

"Hollywood Ending" starts in the very last seconds of “A Little Song And Dance” (reviewed here!), so it is tough to discuss the explosive finale of the penultimate episode. "Hollywood Ending" is burdened at the outset by forcing the show to explain in a plausible way what Zero Matter is (after all, Frost and Wilkes can hear voices from it) and resolve the character of Jack Thompson. Thompson is either an incredible spy or exactly the type of person who would be a HYDRA seed within the nascent S.H.I.E.L.D.; figuring that out could plausibly link Agent Carter to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (reviewed here!). Sadly, "Hollywood Ending" does not do that.

As Jack Thompson prepares to detonate the Gamma Bomb, Peggy Carter holds him at gunpoint before a force knocks them all over. Entering Manfredi's facility, the SSR team recovers an apparently healed Dr. Wilkes and witness the Zero Matter going into Whitney Frost's body. Rescued by Jarvis and Stark, the SSR team is extracted. Manfredi, however, is frustrated by Frost's personality change with the Zero Matter and he turns to Howard Stark for help. Wilkes is concerned about separating the Zero Matter from Frost, while Stark wants to separate the two and take custody of the Zero Matter.

To get the equations that Whitney Frost is developing, the SSR team sends Manfredi to get her out of her room. While Carter and Sousa are getting photographs of her work, Frost menaces one of Manfredi's men and is shocked when his man actually has been extorted by the Feds! Getting the data back to the SSR, the team figures out that Frost is building a device to create another rift, without uranium. When the Rift Generator is created and activated, Frost senses the Zero Matter and it leads to an explosive climax for Peggy Carter's SSR team and Whitney Frost!

"Hollywood Ending" puts a human face on Joseph Manfredi, which humanizes the villain right before he is to never be seen again. Manfredi is in love with Whitney Frost (albeit in a generic way that is entirely independent of who she has become) and that allows him to willingly work with the SSR team. But the connection between Manfredi and Frost is tenuous at best and the most real moment for Manfredi is when he realizes that his man is on the take and he is genuinely shocked.

I am one who is very much for tolerance and inclusion, but "Hollywood Ending" goes for politically correct in a way that even I find troubling. Sousa is a great choice for an administrator, but using him as a field agent in a situation where the team might have to move quickly is somewhat ridiculous. A man with a serious limp who walks with a cane is not ideal for a clandestine mission where speed might be essential. Sousa is a good character, but a poor choice for infiltrating Frost's home.

Agent Carter takes on something of a ridiculous quality in "Hollywood Ending" through the technology that is being created. Whitney Frost is in psychic communication (presumably) with beings from the dimension that the Zero Matter is from. As such, she begins creating incredible calculations and equations for a device that will allow her to create rifts. It is beyond the realm of reason to believe that in 1947, even Howard Stark has the equipment on hand to manufacture the Rift Generator. That an advanced dimension would work on analog technology as opposed to transistors and digital or even more advanced technology is preposterous.

"Hollywood Ending" resolves the Isodyne case and completes the story of Agent Carter in a way that fans might want it to continue, but those who enjoy a serious story are not likely to. After all, viewers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were led to believe that Peggy Carter spent much of her life pining for Steve Rogers. While Agent Carter does a decent job of disproving that, it does not do so in a way that provides those invested in the franchise with viable alternatives to Captain America for Peggy Carter. Given how much of Agent Carter's second season hinges on some semblance of romantic entanglements for Peggy Carter, the lack of genuine emotional spark for Carter and her suitors is somewhat unforgivable.

Ultimately, "Hollywood Ending" is what the name promises; most everything gets wrapped up nicely, but Agent Carter ends at a point that might be aggravating for other series's, but just seems passe for the spy drama genre. Viewers are supposed to care who the shooter is in the final scene of the episode, but the villains are like the heroes in Agent Carter; unless they are someone who is seeding into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character is dead and gone long before the major action people care about ever begins.

"Hollywood Ending" resolves Agent Carter with even a minimal sense of style, making for a particularly lackluster season and series finale that leaves the blase prequel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the very bottom of the franchise.

For other series finales, please visit my reviews of:
"What You Leave Behind" - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
"Thank You" - True Blood
"Goodbyeee" - BlackAdder Goes Forth

[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!]

0/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Penultimate Agent Carter Works To Fix The Messes The Show Is In!

The Good: Decent direction
The Bad: Predictable spy plot conceits, Lack of truly extraordinary performances
The Basics: "A Little Song And Dance" lopes toward the finale of Agent Carter with spy conceits that are more predictable than audacious and a sense of style that overwhelms any of the show's smartness.


It is hard not to see the inherent weaknesses in prequels through Agent Carter. After all, prequels frequently feature characters in a time period where they are all dead well before the main narrative they are leading to and that can make it difficult to invest in the characters and the plots they find themselves in. While great drama puts the protagonists of a series in mortal peril, prequels are hampered both by the viewer knowing that the world cannot possibly end in the prequel and that even if some of the characters are casualties any connected characters from the prequel to the main story cannot. With Agent Carter, the title character and Howard Stark are off the table for potential deaths and while "A Little Song And Dance" opens with Edwin Jarvis in peril, Jarvis has not done enough of significance in the series with Howard Stark to earn him the immortality of becoming Tony Stark's AI in the future to make the menace he faces believable. "A Little Song And Dance" is an episode of Agent Carter that might have worked had the series not been a prequel, given that the episode's tension and intrigue are well-choreographed . . . even if the viewer might find it difficult to invest in the premise.

Picking up where “The Edge Of Mystery” (reviewed here!) went, "A Little Song And Dance" is essentially the second part of the mission to stop Whitney Frost and her new ally, Dr. Wilkes, after they open a Zero Matter rift. It is impossible to talk about "A Little Song And Dance" without references to where "The Edge Of Mystery" ended. After all, the prior episode was something of a cliffhanger, with Dr. Wilkes falling to Earth after entering a Zero Matter rift that was collapsed using a new Gamma Radiation weapon produced by Dr. Samberly based on plans from Howard Stark. Given that Jarvis had just gotten himself and Carter captured, the protagonists of Agent Carter open "A Little Song And Dance" at an inherent disadvantage.

Peggy Carter awakens in the abandoned SSR office where she sees her dead brother, quickly realizing that she is merely hallucinating. After a literal song and dance in her mind, Carter wakes up and wakes Jarvis up. Carter uses her hotwire to break the pair out of their truck, while Thompson and Sousa concoct a way to get rescued instead of killed in the desert. In Frost's car, Wilkes regains consciousness and is terrified by the power he now might possess. They realize that Carter and Jarvis have escaped and while they send some of Manfredi's men after the pair, the mobster and Frost head to one of Manfredi's hideouts with Wilkes to study him.

In Masters's custody, Thompson manages to save Sousa and Samberly's lives. At the remote facility, Frost begins the process of extracting the Zero Matter from Wilkes. Carter returns to the SSR where she learns that Vernon Masters has the team in a stalemate. Thompson meets up with Frost, while the SSR works on fixing up the battery and Gamma Ray Weapon. But when the time comes for the SSR team to deliver the weapon, Carter and Sousa are delayed and Samberly reveals that Thompson had him make the weapon into a Gamma Ray bomb to kill both Frost and Wilkes!

"A Little Song And Dance" begins with a big song and dance number, which is a hallucination of Peggy Carter's. The thing is, the dance number is not at all revealing of Carter's character or anything deeper within her. Instead, it seems to indicate that Carter recognizes that both Sousa and Wilkes have an interest in her and that she might miss Angie (from the first season). Music and distractions have not been a part of Agent Carter and the musical number in "A Little Song And Dance" is more indicative of budget issues than it is of actual storytelling or character revelations; if ever there were a reasonable point for a Steve Rogers cameo, the dance number in "A Little Song And Dance" is it. But, apparently, Peggy Carter's imagination is limited by ABC's budget department.

The continuity of "A Little Song And Dance" is similarly troubling for where the episode fits in with the season. First, it was not long ago that Peggy Carter was almost lethally wounded by a fall that left her with serious internal injuries. So, the moment Carter does a leap out of a moving truck early in "A Little Song And Dance," attentive viewers are likely to do a serious wince thinking that Agent Carter should be vastly more weakened than she is afterward. Second, Carter's wounds were in her abdomen and given that the primary Marvel Cinematic Universe features no evidence that Carter ever had children, "A Little Song And Dance" misses the opportunity to enhance Carter's character by revealing that her wounds are similar to Ana Jarvis's.

"A Little Song And Dance" packs Agent Carter with villains and for the first time, it seems unfortunate that Vernon Masters is being used in the show. While Vernon Masters is not based upon any specific character from Marvel Comics, he has developed in the second season of Agent Carter as a fairly formidable spy master - even if he is very quickly revealed to be a part of the HYDRA-esque Council. Masters is weakened in "A Little Song And Dance" by being caught in situation after situation where he is compromised. Instead of being a credible representation of the true depth of villainy that HYDRA represents, Vernon Masters flops through "A Little Song And Dance" into being an adversary that is more comical than even comic bookish.

While Kurtwood Smith plays Vernon Masters well, there are no truly extraordinary performances in "A Little Song And Dance" outside the dance number. The direction and choreography of Peggy Carter's dance number are good, but they are much more flash than substance. Sadly, that might well be the epitaph of Agent Carter.

For other works with Lyndsy Fonesca, please visit my reviews of:
Agent Carter - Season 1
Kick-Ass 2
Hot Tub Time Machine
Kick-Ass
Heroes - Season 2

[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!]

1/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Utterly Generic Trade-Off, "The Edge Of Mystery" Disappoints.

The Good: James D'Arcy's performance
The Bad: Utterly bland plot, No significant character development, Forced character movements
The Basics: "The Edge Of Mystery" belabors moving Agent Carter forward on all fronts in an albeit generic way.


Agent Carter was a television series whose cancellation was utterly unsurprising for me. In fact, the series has been so oppressively dull, that it took a lot for me to go back and finish reviewing it. Indeed, by the time I got to "The Edge Of Mystery," watching and reviewing Agent Carter was more of a chore than anything even remotely enjoyable. "The Edge Of Mystery" is disappointing on its own merits, though, unencumbered by any potential prejudice I had going into it.

Picking up where “Monsters” (reviewed here!) left off, "The Edge Of Mystery" is impossible to discuss without some references as to where the prior episode ended. After all, with Carter's attempt to rescue Dottie from Whitney Frost leaving Zero Matter expert Jason Wilkes in Frost's possession, "The Edge Of Mystery" begins with the protagonists suffering from some serious setbacks. Add to that that Ana Jarvis is on death's door, "The Edge Of Mystery" is very much dependent upon the prior episodes.

Opening with a flashback to New York City, a year prior, where Ana Jarvis overhears Edwin Jarvis advising Agent Carter on how to diffuse a bomb. In the present, Ana Jarvis lays near death with Edwin being entirely distraught by her condition. Wilkes awakens, handcuffed to a pipe, to an interrogation from Frost. Frost wants to compare notes with Wilkes and has made a number of observations about the relationship between herself and Jason while he was unconscious. Carter returns home to find Sousa investigating the grounds. Sousa reveals that Vernon Masters is after uranium rods for Whitney Frost before the pair head to mobster Joseph Manfredi's restaurant to interrogate him.

In London, Thompson tries to dig up dirt on Peggy Carter. In Frost's custody, Wilkes begins to get freaked out by the fact that Frost hears a voice from the Zero Matter. While Frost and Sousa prepare to go on their mission with fake uranium to make the trade, Howard Stark's teletype goes off. Dr. Samberly realizes that Stark has sent him plans to make a machine that can neutralize Zero Matter and he sets to building it. When Thompson confronts Carter with evidence she committed war crimes, Carter rejects his premise and goes ahead with the mission to save Wilkes.

"The Edge Of Mystery" is a lackluster hunt story. Peggy Carter and Daniel Sousa are on a fairly mundane search for Whitney Frost. The SSR agents want to make a trade, or lure Frost into believing they are willing to make the trade and Frost is playing the same game from the opposite side. The Thompson subplot in "The Edge Of Mystery" is both forced and the perfect example of "simple problem, simple solution." It undermines Thompson's character that he does not realize how he is being manipulated when Carter takes about half a second to conclude that.

While the fairly generic spy drama continues, Jarvis sits holding his wife's hand as she lays near death. There are any number of dramas that could pull off the Jarvis subplot well, but Agent Carter is not one of them. Jarvis is not a well-developed enough character for viewers to truly care about and his love of Ana is a comparatively new phenomenon in the Agent Carter storyline. Add to that, "The Edge Of Mystery" very quickly brings Ana Jarvis back from the brink of death and it adds a new sense of conflict to the Jarvis's relationship that lacks resonance based on not knowing enough about their relationship before the episode began. Indeed, lacking flashbacks that show that Edwin and Ana actually were invested in having children before Ana was shot, the loss of that ability seems like a generic conflict as opposed to something that is actually character-based.

"The Edge Of Mystery" continues the trend of presenting spies who are unfortunate idiots working for an obviously corrupt version of S.H.I.E.L.D. (pre-S.H.I.E.L.D.) and the only redeeming aspect of the episode is James D'Arcy's portrayal of Edwin Jarvis. Jarvis might not be the most splendid character, but D'Arcy plays him perfectly well. As Edwin holds his wounded wife's hand, D'Arcy plays anguish with only his facial expression and the result is one of his best performances of the series.

Sadly, "The Edge Of Mystery" is not enough to sell the episode or Agent Carter . . . for Marvel fans or those who like television in general!

For other works with Damian O'Hare, please visit my reviews of:
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl

[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!]

2/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Step Down From Season One: Agent Carter Season 2 Stumbles!

The Good: A few well-delivered performance moments, Hints of character complexities
The Bad: Predictable reversals, Problematic overall plot, Lack of emotional connection to the characters, Generally uninspired performances
The Basics: Agent Carter Season 2 creates minimal ties to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe while further undermining the character of Peggy Carter.


Far too often, there is a mentality from marketing types to buy into the old adage "more is better." As the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles around its critical mass for blockbusters (eventually, there will be a Marvel Cinematic Universe film that performs more like The Wolverine, reviewed here, than Guardians Of The Galaxy!), it is hard not to argue that Marvel and Disney have saturated television as much as the audience can accept and the creative team can deliver upon. While Netflix is doing a decent job at bringing the "street level heroes" to the small screen, ABC keeps desperately trying to churn out another Marvel Television series. Even as it failed to sell a Bobbi Morse-based pilot (for a second time!), ABC produced the second season of Agent Carter. Agent Carter clearly needed some retooling after its first season (reviewed here!) and for its second season, Agent Carter moves to the West Coast.

That, alas, does not make it better.

The second season of Agent Carter starts to seed the fundamental problems with the S.S.R., which could credibly lead to HYDRA easily infiltrating the earliest incarnations of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the show does not quite get where it needs to to close the loop on that idea. Instead, Agent Carter Season 2 is a season-long struggle for Peggy Carter to keep a powerful new element out of the hands of a HYDRA-like organization.

Months after getting Dottie locked up, Peggy Carter arrives in Hollywood when a body is found in a small lake . . . after the lake has abruptly been turned entirely into ice. As the investigation into the Jane Doe in the lake leads to an increased body count, Carter discovers that there is a connection between an energy company's experiments and the death. Meeting with the scientist Dr. Jason Wilkes, Carter learns of the existence of Zero Matter, which is an element with unearthly and possibly sentient properties! When Wilkes is infected with the Zero Matter, he becomes incorporeal, which hurts Carter, who had started to develop a romantic attraction for him.

But the new director of the West Coast SSR, Daniel Sousa, and Jarvis leap into action to help Carter try to unravel the mysteries surrounding Zero Matter and the nefarious, secret organization that is hell-bent on acquiring the dangerous material. The mystery centers around a corrupt politician and his actress girlfriend . . . until Jack Thompson pops up from the East Coast SSR and starts working with Vernon Masters. Together, Carter, Sousa, and Jarvis must unravel the mystery and save the SSR from the same organization that want the Zero Matter!

Agent Carter is immediately plagued by its use of a comparatively weak protagonist. The executive producers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continue to underestimate women; no one would expect an Iron Man movie to hinge on anything other than the heroics of Tony Stark or a Spider-Man film to work only as an ensemble piece. (While it is not Marvel . . .) Wonder Woman is a powerful enough character to carry her own movies and television series's and does not need a whole team to win the day. Peggy Carter does not have the resonance or inherent strength and the executive producers and writers seem to have no idea how to credibly put her at the forefront of her own show. As a result, Agent Carter Season 2 sinks into crummy ensemble cliches like a robbery episode and a large musical number instead of presenting Peggy Carter as well-rounded and resourceful-enough to do all she needs to on her own. Agent Carter Season 2 could have been great if it had been a female-driven, period piece version of MacGuyver.

Instead, Peggy Carter finds herself outwitted by a secret organization, whose headquarters she infiltrates exceptionally early in the season, and a scientist/actress who has nothing on Natasha Romanov!

As well, the second season of Agent Carter has credible issues in the way it fits into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Viewers are asked to believe that the SSR stumbled upon Zero Matter and all of the evidence and information surrounding its creation and it took more than sixty years for someone else in the MCU to replicate that particle?! If HYDRA agents were there at the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D., with access to all the SSR data and records, wouldn't there have been a whole generation of super-villains long before Ant-Man sprung up all using or attempting to generate Zero Matter?!

The second season of Agent Carter is largely plot-based instead of focused on character decisions. Still, in the second season, the key characters in Agent Carter are:

Agent Peggy Carter - Still disrespected by the American-run agents of the SSR, she heads out to Hollywood to see Jarvis and Howard Stark and is dragooned into working a case with the West Coast SSR. There, she falls for Dr. Wilkes, befriends Jarvis's wife and works to unravel the mysteries surrounding a scientifically impossible event in Hollywood. She goes undercover to learn about the organization Dottie was trying to get access to and slowly unravels the mysteries surrounding why that organization wants Zero Matter,

Edwin Jarvis - Howard Stark's butler, he is tired of ferrying around Starks' celebrity guests and is thrilled to get back into the field with Carter. His love for his wife comes to the forefront when she is mortally wounded and he vows revenge,

Jack Thompson - Tasked with getting information from Dottie and then encouraged to take part in a cover-up by Vernon Masters, the new Director of the East Coast SSR proves to be as ambitious and corrupt as Carter and Sousa believed he could be,

Daniel Sousa - Having taken the position as Director of the West Coast SSR in order to get away from Peggy Carter and his feelings for her, he is now engaged. But when Peggy Carter comes back into his life, he finds it tough to juggle his feelings for her and his commitment to his fiance. He supports Carter's investigation, but does not spend excessive time in the field with her,

Dr. Jason Wilkes - A brilliant scientist working for an energy company, he studies the properties of Zero Matter until he is "infected" by it and becomes (essentially) a ghost. He has real chemistry with Carter, but the longer he is incorporeal, the more susceptible he becomes to the machinations of Whitney Frost,

and Whitney Frost - A world-renowned actress, she has worked deep cover for almost her entire life. Actually a brilliant scientist only playing house with a rising star politician, she encounters the Zero Matter and becomes obsessed with it. She starts to study the Zero Matter and reasons how to make more and take control of it, though she starts to hear voices from the Zero Matter!

The second season of Agent Carter is not impressively performed. Hayley Atwell seems to have peaked with her range for Peggy Carter and Enver Gjokaj is relegated to performing soap operatic emotional swings in the second season. Wynn Everett established Whitney Frost fairly brilliantly, but after the episode in which Frost's backstory is detailed, Everett is not given anything even remotely as emotionally significant to play in the season.

At the end of it, the second season of Agent Carter feels like a forced attempt to keep the series going more than an organic and compelling continuation of the character and story arcs begun in the prior season.

For more information on the series, check out the reviews of the individual episodes at:
“The Lady In The Lake”
“A View In The Dark”
“Better Angels”
"Smome & Mirrors"
"The Atomic Job"
"The Life Of The Party"
"Monsters"
"The Edge Of Mystery"
"A Little Song And Dance"
"Hollywood Ending"

For other works from the 2015 – 2016 television season, please check out my reviews of:
Orange Is The New Black - Season 4
The Flash - Season 2
Game Of Thrones - Season 6
Grace And Frankie - Season 2
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 3
The Walking Dead - Season 6
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Season 2
Legends Of Tomorrow - Season 1
Jessica Jones - Season 1
Daredevil - Season 2
House Of Cards - Season 4
Rick And Morty - Season 2
Doctor Who - Season 9

.5/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Agent Carter Fights The "Monsters" . . . Poorly.

The Good: Moments of character
The Bad: Poor continuity, Melodrama, No truly great performances, Mood telegraphs the plot reversal
The Basics: "Monsters" forces Agent Carter into a very simple trap that requires some troublesome filler.


Every now and then, I encounter a very simple work that is stretched out in unfortunate ways to meet the minimum time requirement of the medium. "Monsters" in Agent Carter is one such episode of television. To get to the 43 minute mark, the Agent Carter episode includes contrived scenes and a dragged out mood that telegraphs a number of the plot reversals. The result is that genre fans are much more likely to be bored by "Monsters" than excited by all of the plot and character elements that were mashed into the episode.

Picking up where “Life Of The Party” (reviewed here!) left off, "Monsters" continues to have Dottie Underwood in play with Vernon Masters pulling some of the strings. As well, "Monsters" has to deal with Director Sousa telling Agent Carter that his engagement ended as a result of her.

Opening with Whitney Frost staging a press conference to explain the absence of Chadwick and others on the council, Carter and Sousa try to figure out where Dottie Underwood is. They correctly deduce that Underwood is under Frost's thumb. Underwood is actually in custody of Vernon Masters, who attempts to interrogate her and discovers she is made of stronger stuff than him. When Masters fails to get results, Frost breaks Underwood using her Zero Matter abilities. Carter and her team manage to make Dr. Wilkes corporeal again . . . right before Underwood's tracker goes live again!

With Masters squeezing Sousa for the uranium that Carter stole to prevent it from falling into Frost's hands, Carter and Jarvis head knowingly into Frost's trap. After getting captured attempting to rescue Underwood, Jarvis, Carter and Underwood attempt to break out while Wilkes and Ana Jarvis have a heart to heart conversation. But in liberating Underwood, they discover the true nature of Frost's trap and when Frost abducts Wilkes, Ana Jarvis is caught in the crossfire!

Dr. Wilkes begins to show some of the psychological strain associated with being disembodied as long as he has been. Wilkes advocates using the destruct mechanism in Underwood's necklace and that is a shift in his character, which makes some sense given how he is coming psychologically unraveled. Wilkes has a reasonable evolution in "Monsters" that actually works for his character as he becomes desperate to develop a containment vessel.

At the other end of the spectrum is Vernon Masters. Masters continues to develop as one of the true villains of the second season of Agent Carter. In "Monsters," Masters subtly reveals how he has risen to such a position of authority and power by revealing that he still has some faith in the U.S. Government and the agents under his command. Masters knows how to use the institutions that exist for his own gain and Kurtwood Smith has great range to play both the torturer and extortionist. Masters's machinations in "Monsters" move him to being a more overt threat to Carter and one of the ironic and few delightful elements of the episode is how Underwood alludes to the HYDRA presence within the SSR!

Jarvis continues to have his own sidekick and side story in "Monsters." Ana Jarvis has been watching Jarvis interact with Peggy Carter and she is reasonably concerned about the level of danger Jarvis is put in by "Monsters." While Ana Jarvis and Edwin Jarvis's interactions work wonderfully, the episode takes an abrupt, literal, stop in the middle to have a painfully forced conversation between Edwin and Carter. While there are certainly ways such a scene could work and seem vital, it comes across as very . . . high school in "Monsters."

While "Life Of The Party" allowed Hayley Atwell to present a new level of physical performance that she had not previously played, "Monsters" does not continue to play up Carter's wounds. That is somewhat problematic as Agent Carter should not have recovered nearly so quickly from being impaled as she has. Given that Carter was nearly mortally wounded 48 hours prior, her moving around the way she does in "Monsters" is terribly unrealistic.

"Monsters" has no great performances, though all of the acting is competent enough. The character development is minimal and the sudden attention to Ana Jarvis only serves to rob the episode of any surprise when Frost uses her as a component of her getaway. The result is an Agent Carter episode that barely progresses the main plot and does so in a fairly dull way.

For other works with Hayley Atwell, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Agent Carter - Season 1
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
"The Things We Bury" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Shadows" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America
The Duchess

[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!]

3/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Agent Carter Is Not The "Life Of The Party" For The Next Big Mission!

The Good: Decent performances, Good use of humor
The Bad: Incredibly contrived plot, Forced use of Thompson, No real character development
The Basics: "Life Of The Party" has a wounded Peggy Carter forced to rely upon her worst enemy in her attempt to save Dr. Wilkes.


I admire ambitious television. There is a fine balance between complicated, ambitious, television and television that just throws far too much out there to actually be worthwhile. By the sixth episode of the second season of Agent Carter, "Life Of The Party," it is hard for viewers not to feel like there is so much going on that it is bordering on sloppy. After all, the whole idea of the West Coast SSR allowed the show to put the elements that did not work as well to rest. One of those elements was Jack Thompson, yet "Life Of The Party" puts him and Vernon Masters back in play, as opposed to focusing on the critical characters of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

"Life Of The Party" continues the story from "The Atomic Job” (reviewed here!) and it is impossible to discuss the new episode without some references as to what happened in that episode. After all, Carter was wounded during the mission to prevent Whitney Frost from getting a nuclear weapon from the Roxxon facility and Dr. Wilkes continues to slip further and further away from the real world because of the Zero Matter. Without understanding how wounded Carter was before now, it is hard to reconcile Carter sitting out the bulk of the episode's action!

Opening with Dr. Wilkes experiencing the dark realm of the Zero Matter before Peggy calls him back, the wounded Agent Carter suggests that they create a new containment vessel for the Zero Matter. At Chadwick's home, the politician placates Frost by telling her he has managed to call a meeting of the Council for her. The wounded Carter pushes herself to return to work to save Dr. Wilkes, despite barely being able to walk. To infiltrate Chadwick's campaign fundraiser to get close to Frost to get access to the Zero Matter, Agent Carter interrogates Dottie Underwood and attempts to enlist her. Carter breaks Underwood out and, of course, Underwood almost instantly attempts to betray them.

While Whitney Frost prepares for the evening, Carter preps Underwood on getting a blood sample from Frost. At the party, Thompson and Masters show up, much to the alarm of Jarvis and Underwood, who are already at the party. After Underwood gets the sample, she slips away and witnesses Frost reveal herself to the Council. When Chadwick turns on Frost, she eliminates all of her enemies! With Underwood in the wind, Carter and her team have to retreat with the Zero Matter sample.

The plot of "Life Of The Party" is somewhat problematic in that the SSR has two offices and neither Sousa nor Carter trust anyone at either office. While the idea of working with Underwood is a fun plot, it is one that feels especially contrived, even for a nascent spy organization. At least the episode is not so foolish as to make it appear that Dottie Underwood is at all stupid.

Indeed, Underwood is well restored to the Agent Carter narrative in "Life Of The Party." Underwood was a super spy in the first season and she was characterized then as Carter's equal, if opposite. So, when Carter trains Underwood for the mission, when she observes that Wilkes is not touching things, she makes an objective test of her own. That level of observation and experimentation is clever.

"Life Of The Party" is one of Hayley Atwell's best performances on Agent Carter. Carter was deeply wounded in the prior episode and she is not, frankly, a super-hero. She has no super-healing ability, so the fact that it is only two days since she was nearly mortally wounded requires Peggy Carter to limp through most of "Life Of The Party." More than her American accent, Atwell succeeds at the physical performance of Carter as a wounded warrior.

The humor in "Life Of The Party" is well-executed. Dottie is used brilliantly for her efficiency as a spy and the humor that comes from putting her back in play with Jarvis works quite well. And while Thompson is somewhat forced back into the narrative, Vernon Masters is played very convincingly by Kurtwood Smith. While Masters has obvious ties to the Council (which is essentially HYDRA), Smith plays him with a level of depth that makes him seem anything but monolithic.

"Life Of The Party" does not actually include much in the way of character development; the Council was pragmatic before this, Chadwick was spineless, and Thompson was ambitious. Even Dottie Underwood remains in character by seizing the opportunity to survive her encounter with Frost. "Life Of The Party" is plot-heavy Agent Carter and while its climax takes a turn for melodramatic and farcical, it is not the worst episode of the series by any measure!

For other works with Bridget Regan, please visit my reviews of:
"The Lady In The Lake" - Agent Carter
Agent Carter - Season 1
John Wick

[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!]

4.5/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Heist Flop: "The Atomic Job" Continues The Disappointing Agent Carter!

The Good: Adequate performances, Hints of character development
The Bad: Bad mix of goofy and menacing, Inconsistent character directions, Predictable plot
The Basics: "The Atomic Job" awkwardly progresses the mystery of the second season of Agent Carter with a heist episode.


The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a big problem with retcons. As much as fans want to love Iron Man (reviewed here!), it is hard to reconcile the originality of Tony Stark becoming Iron Man with the existence of Ant-Man as an active super hero for decades decades earlier, as glimpsed in Ant-Man (reviewed here!). Going back much further has proven problematic in Agent Carter. While Peggy Carter might have had some interesting aspects to her hinted in her brief appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before Agent Carter The inherent problem with fleshing out Peggy Carter is that it fundamentally weakens the bond between her and Steve Rogers and it asks the viewer to emotionally invest in relationships that cannot possibly endure. With "The Atomic Job" Agent Carter continues to lay the framework for a substantive relationship between Director Daniel Sousa and Agent Carter and that has been a fairly doomed relationship since it was first hinted at.

Picking up where “Smoke & Mirrors” (reviewed here!) left off, "The Atomic Job" is a heist episode of Agent Carter, which relies on the prior episodes to make it at all comprehensible as to why the caper is progressing. At this point in the season, Zero Matter is being developed enough that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are likely to have developed some theories as to its nature and there appears to be a sentient component to it based upon how Whitney Frost and Jason Wilkes are reacting to it.

Agent Carter wakes up to find Dr. Wilkes in her room and he asks her to accompany him to the lab they have been using. There, Wilkes shows Carter that the piece of Jane Scott's body that the SSR has from her autopsy reacts to the disapperated Wilkes and releases a small quantity of Zero Matter. When the Zero Matter bursts out of the glass jar in which it was contained, Wilkes temporarily becomes tangible to Carter. That leads Carter and Wilkes to hypothesize that the Zero Matter could make Wilkes tangible again permanently and they set out to steal Jane Scott's body (as it should have enough Zero Matter in it to do the trick). Carter and Jarvis's attempt to steal the body is met with the surprise of discovering Frost and Chadwick attempting to do the same thing! Witnessing Frost absorbing the Zero Matter out of Scott's corpse, the pair learns that Frost wants to recreate the disaster that created Zero Matter by getting her hands on an atomic bomb.

After Sousa proposes to Violet, Carter approaches him for a disguise to use to infiltrate the Los Angeles Roxxon facility that is housing a nuclear weapon. After Carter steals a key to the facility from Hugh Jones, Frost approaches her ex-lover to get goons needed to get the bomb she wants out of the Roxxon facility. Carter, Sousa, and Jarvis enlist Rose and Dr. Samberly for their team to infiltrate Roxxon to recover the bomb before Frost. With Jarvis locked inside a room with the atomic bomb, Carter must defend her team and prevent Frost from reaching their location or else risk the uranium falling into Frost's hands. With Los Angeles at stake, Carter and Frost confront one another.

Ray Wise returns to the Agent Carter narrative as Hugh Jones and his return takes a previously dangerous character and makes him into a joke. The gag involving Wise is fun to watch, but completely undermines the menace of one of the Club members and by extension his whole organization. For a change, Ken Marino wows with a performance of the menacing Joseph Manfredi that actually stretches his range in a decent way. For sure, the violence of his gangster character is completely telegraphed, but Marino truly sells the menace and credibility of his character. Wise and Chadwick seem entirely goofy compared to the mob-connected guy and it undermines the threat of the nascent-HYDRA cell.

"The Atomic Job" plays as an awkward mix between a crime caper and a parody of a heist film. Rose's incapacitating of a client at the cover for the SSR facility is troublingly obvious and plot-convenient as opposed to organic. Dr. Samberly continues to be a parody of a scientist character, as he is portrayed as lacking in social skills but possessing excessive intelligence. The stereotype is so old that it is sad that Agent Carter bothered to perpetrate it.

While "The Atomic Job" continues to enhance the character of Jarvis by putting him in the field, he is still treated as something of a buffoon, along with Dr. Samberly. Agent Carter is, for fans who know the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, the story of a woman who is essentially a dupe, so packing "The Atomic Job" with overt buffoons makes the show seem far less compelling than it already was.

The problem is, the heist aspect of "The Atomic Job" quickly degenerates into yet another threat to Peggy Carter that viewers know will play out entirely in her favor. Agent Carter is a spy show where there is zero chance of true mortal peril to the protagonist because other elements of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feature Carter at an older age. So, when Carter squares off against a woman who can utterly destroy her with her bare hands, there is no real menace to the conflict. Sure, it is well-choreographed, but the results are obvious from before the episode begins.

Similarly obvious is the character arc for Daniel Sousa. While Agent Carter has not at all settled on which relationship it might develop as a love interest for Peggy Carter, "The Atomic Job" takes the necessary step to foster the potential Sousa/Carter relationship. Even as Carter gets that opening (unbeknownst to her, but well-telegraphed to the audience), she and Wilkes seem to be headed toward a relationship.

"The Atomic Job" undermines pretty much everyone but Jarvis and Frost and it makes it difficult to take Agent Carter seriously.

For other works with Ray Wise, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Batman: The Killing Joke
"A View In The Dark" - Agent Carter
"Bridge And Tunnel" - Agent Carter
X-Men: First Class
The West Wing - Season Seven
"Hope And Fear" - Star Trek: Voyager
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Twin Peaks
"Who Watches The Watcher" - Star Trek: The Next Generation

[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!]

2/10

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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Agent Carter Flounders Through "Smoke & Mirrors"

The Good: Special effects, Character backstories are well-executed
The Bad: Imbalanced performances, Very obvious plot development and character arcs
The Basics: "Smoke & Mirrors" erratically mixes the past of Peggy Carter and Whitney Frost with clumsy progression of the season-long mystery around Zero Matter.


Whenever constructing a mystery, there is a tough balance to be found between servicing the story, servicing the characters and servicing the audience. Most mysteries unfold with the viewer learning at the same pace as the protagonist, with clues peppered in that they might have missed, which allow the viewer to get there first or have something to return to the work to look for in subsequent viewings. The least satisfying mysteries are those where the revelation is a long exposition at the end that is based upon leaps the detective makes that the viewer would not have been privy to. The other major way the formula can be shaken up is by letting the viewer know what is going on before the audience. In the second season of Agent Carter, the mystery the season is constructing is following that model. The key to pulling off such a mystery is in finding the right development that allows the protagonist to learn the truth in a reasonable amount of time. "Smoke & Mirrors" does not keep the viewer waiting very long.

"Smoke & Mirrors" continues the story where “Better Angels” (reviewed here!) left off, with Carter and Jarvis investigating the mystery surrounding the Zero Matter. As the second season of Agent Carter is essentially one long mystery, it is impossible to discuss the current episode without some revelation of how the show has gotten there. By the fourth episode of the second season of Agent Carter, the main players seem to be in place in the form of the mysterious Arena Social Club (which appears to be related to HYDRA) and Whitney Frost, who is a scientist posing as an actress. Frost is contaminated with the Zero Matter and has been revealed as able to release it at times, though her control is not yet clear. As "Smoke & Mirrors" picks up, Carter is hot on the case and given that the season has ten episodes and "Smoke & Mirrors" is episode four, viewers might come into the episode wondering just what will keep Agent Carter going the whole season when she is already so far up the right track.

Opening with Peggy Carter as a little girl playing before chided for being unladylike, the episode leaps up to 1947, where Agent Carter is discussing the truth about Whitney Frost with the disembodied Dr. Wilkes. Wilkes reveals that Frost was a scientist beyond genius who modified a power source to generate a stunning amount of power. As Frost tries to learn the extent of her abilities to use Zero Matter by trying to release it upon lab mice, Jarvis tracks down Mr. Hunt, Chadwick's driver and guard.

Carter is reunited with Sousa to interrogate Hunt. When Hunt is resistant to torture, Peggy uses a Stark bioweapon to get him talking. But, when Carter and Sousa prepare to make a raid on the Arena Club, Vernon Masters arrives to audit the West Coast SSR instead.

Peppered throughout the episode are flashbacks to young Agnes Cully (before she started using the alias Whitney Frost) and Peggy Carter as she was brought into the proto-SSR in Europe in 1940. The two groups of flashback offer contrasting views on the directions that both women took to get where they were. Agnes was a genius always studying and pushing herself to be more, resisting social conventions and family pressures in Oklahoma, while Carter was characterized as a code breaker who wanted to follow a very conventional lifescript until she was given an offer she could not refuse. Carter and her relationship with her brother Michael is vastly more interesting than any of the adult relationships Carter fumbles with in "Smoke & Mirrors." Unfortunately for Agent Carter, Agnes Cully is painted in "Smoke & Mirrors" as being more initially compelling than Peggy Carter through her backstory.

In the main narrative, Peggy Carter's relationship with Wilkes begins to develop true chemistry and sexual tension while they are entirely unable to act upon it. But, at the same time, Sousa comes through for Carter against Masters in a substantive way, which makes the episode feel like it is taking the shotgun approach to Carter's romantic life. This plays poorly in an episode where her committing to being a spy is finally revealed and Carter takes on a sense of adult resolve. Her seriousness in her albeit predictible flashback arc seems ridiculous beside the goofy buckshot romances of Agent Carter and her and Jarvis bumbling through getting to Hunt.

Arguably the peak of "Smoke & Mirrors" comes up early with a fairly original take on a character who is out of phase with our reality. The disembodied Wilkes is an interesting take on the old "ghost" character. As Wilkes attempts to describe what being affected by the Zero Matter feels like, the show has a feeling of being original. Seeing Wilkes look into the heart of the Zero Matter is an interesting moment of perspective that is well-executed as well.

Beyond that, "Smoke & Mirrors" develops Frost's condition by illustrating the side effects of releasing the Zero Matter by having the fissure on her forehead grow with each use. Hunt delivers a lot of exposition by revealing some of the members of the inner circle at the Arena Club, which puts Carter on track to discover all she needs to know about the proto-HYDRA group.

"Smoke & Mirrors" falters in trying to find a balance and remain at all compelling. The erratic nature of the character relationships and yet another work where torture is illustrated as being an effective means of getting reliable information is frustrating. But, for the overall narrative of season two of Agent Carter, "Smoke & Mirrors" is necessary for developing Whitney Frost and her newfound powers, even if it is hardly consistent.

For other works with Chris Mulkey, please check out my reviews of:
Whiplash
Cloverfield
Dreamland
Twin Peaks

[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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"Better Angels" Continues The Lackluster Mystery Of Agent Carter

The Good: Special effects, General plot progression, Adequate performances
The Bad: No character development, Lack of character moments that resonate to allow the performers to truly show off their chops
The Basics: "Better Angels" is an Agent Carter episode that belabors including unnecessary characters and blandly progresses the second season's mystery.


The second season of Agent Carter was, admittedly, much more effective than the first at creating a serialized narrative. From the first episode of the second season, the show was committed to creating one ten-episode arc that was one complete story. By the third episode, "Better Angels," Agent Carter was committed to its new path and still wrestling with lingering elements (and especially characters) from the first season. The fracture between where the show was in its first season and where it wanted to be in its second causes some erratic renditions of established characters and "Better Angels" forces Jack Thompson back into the narrative in a way that makes the viewer realize just how unnecessary the character is to the second season's story.

Picking up where “A View In The Dark” (reviewed here!) ended, "Better Angels" is impossible to discuss without references to that episode. After all, "A View In The Dark" continued to deepen the mystery surrounding the death of Jane Scott. "Better Angels" marks the return of Howard Stark to the Agent Carter narrative, as well as Kurtwood Smith's role of Vernon Masters from the second season premiere.

The morning after Dr. Wilkes was killed, Agent Peggy Carter arrives at his home where she and Sousa find evidence that seems planted that implies Wilkes was behind Isodyne Energy's troubles. Visiting Howard Stark, Carter learns what the pin Dottie Underwood was after (and one of Carter's assailants possessed) represents; the Arena Club, an exclusive white's only, rich person's club that is a front for the people who ran Isodyne Energy. Whitney Frost, apparently infected by the Zero Matter, asks her politician boyfriend Calvin Chadwick about retiring from acting, but he is reticent. Thompson visits the West Coast Branch of the SSR to bolster the false story that Dr. Wilkes was a Communist before he learns about Zero Matter. Stark helps Carter infiltrate the Arena Club, where she attempts to plant listening devices and uncovers the inner sanctuary.

Returning to the SSR, Thompson and Carter clash and on her way out, Carter notices that items on her desk are levitating. Returning to Stark's, Howard diagnoses Carter and he creates a way to make the field around Carter visible. In attempting to make the field visible, Stark, Carter, Jarvis and Sousa discover that Wilkes is still alive, but has been rendered invisible by the Zero Matter. Wilkes reveals that Whitney Frost attacked him and Carter goes to interview her. After the interview, Frost uses Chadwick to get the Council's assassin to target Carter. Sousa discovers that Frost is the public face of the woman who ran Isodyne Energy just before Thompson learns that Carter was right about the Arena Club creating the news when Masters introduces him to Chadwick.

"Better Angels" feels like it has a number of anachronisms that are problematic; the spread of information seems to go at internet-like speeds, as opposed to 1947's lack of a 24-hour news cycle. While some of that is the result of the Arena Club creating the news, the speed at which the media descends upon Dr. Wilkes's home with relevant questions seems entirely unrealistic.

Agent Carter seems desperate to create a noir thriller with its second season and "Better Angels" has many of the classic conceits. Masters comes in as the mysterious stranger, Frost is the woman with the past, and Carter is very much a classic gumshoe in the episode. "Better Angels" continues to force the racism of the 1940s in ways that are occasionally laughable; Dr. Wilkes praises Stark for letting him into his home - clearly intimating that Stark letting a black man in his home would be uncommon - which is ridiculous given that Wilkes was invisible and non-corporeal at the time! Whatever Stark's opinions are about people of different ethnicities, he would have been utterly powerless to stop Wilkes from going wherever he wants.

And that leads to one of the serious problems with the characters in "Better Angels;" they all suffer from a severe deficit of imagination. The major players in "Better Angels" are embroiled deep in a mystery and long before the end of the episode, they know there is a secret society involved in the conspiracy they are uncovering. Agent Carter and Director Sousa have on their side an invisible, non-corporeal man; how does it not occur to them (or the supposedly brilliant Dr. Stark) to use Wilkes to get the information they seek by having him go back to the Arena Club.

Perhaps the most enjoyable element of "Better Angels" is Jarvis making a joke about spending his future as a disembodied voice.

The performances in "Better Angels" are good enough, though none are particularly stellar. Dominic Cooper leaps right back into the role of Howard Stark without any issues. Wynn Everett impressed me in "Better Angels" by both seamlessly interacting with the CG elements of the episode's climax and disappearing into the role of Whitney Frost so completely that she was utterly unrecognizable from the other works I had seen her in.

Ultimately, "Better Angels" progresses the plot, but does not substantively advance the characters of Agent Carter.

For other works with Wynn Everett, please check out my reviews of:
The Newsroom
Charlie Wilson's War

[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!]

3/10

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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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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