‘Agent Carter’ takes a look at the noir world of Marvel through the eyes of a lady agent in the 1940’s following the demise of Captain American in a world still looking for a hero….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The experiment of Marvel television shows is still in the testing phase after a lukewarm start to ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ a season ago, but with Netflix set to debut four new series in the next couple of years along with the debut of ‘Agent Carter’ — an eight-part miniseries that started on Tuesday night — the comic book giant appears to be finding the right way to do things although there are still a few bumps in the road that need to be weathered.
‘Agent Carter’ — based on the character first seen in ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ — is Marvel’s latest TV offering and it seems they’ve learned from the sins of the past when creating this new series. The issues that plagued ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ during the first three-quarters of the debut season were enough of a problem that the folks behind ‘Agent Carter’ did their best to avoid all those pitfalls and create a series that was fun and spunky with just enough comic campiness to make this still feel like it was ripped from the pages of a book.
The series is set in 1946 after the end of World War II and following the icy demise of Captain America in the original film. There, Agent Carter (played quite brilliantly by British actress Hayley Atwell), was devastated to lose the man of her dreams, but like any strong woman she has to carry on and so her new duties take her to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a precursor organization to what will one day become S.H.I.E.L.D.
The only problem is in 1946 with all the boys back home from war, the ladies are being pushed back into the home to tend to children and take care of laundry just a few months after they were being depended upon to build munitions and keep the country afloat doing just as well as any man could in the same job. Poor Peggy Carter is now stuck doing nothing more than secretarial work after she was leading a team of highly trained operatives in a war against the Red Skull and his Nazi led organization, HYDRA.
Lucky for Peggy she’s quickly drawn back into a covert mission when her old friend from the Captain America days, Howard Stark, is accused of selling weapons to the enemy and as each day of his meetings with Congress go further and further downhill it’s clear his future is probably going to be in a jail cell instead of private jets and penthouses. With the entire law enforcement world ready to drop the hammer on him, Stark turns to Agent Carter for help, but since she’s no longer on the inside, Peggy is forced to operate outside the law while conducting an investigation to not only clear Stark’s name but find a cache of weapons he built and kept in storage that were just a little too scary for the rest of the world to see right now.
Atwell shines brightest on the show, as she should given the starring vehicle, and she doesn’t disappoint at all. Unlike ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’, which was always envisioned as a team based series, ‘Agent Carter’ is clearly a one woman show. Sure, there are plenty of male decorations coloring the outside frames of every shot. Chad Michael Murray appears as an overly ‘bro’ agent named Thompson while Kyle Bornheimer plays the exact same character he plays in every show he’s ever done. Enver Gjokaj (Dollhouse) pops up as a sympathetic agent who befriends Carter while also living through bullying on the job after he lost his leg in the war. Needless to say his puppy dog eyes and sad sap demeanor almost guarantee that he’ll end up either dead or as the secret agent that’s infiltrated the S.S.R. from the ranks of HYDRA or some other nefarious organization.
Shea Whigham plays Carter’s boss Roger Dooley and it seems he got to keep his costumes from ‘Boardwalk Empire’ because he’s playing a toned down version of Eli Thompson on this show as well. Whigham doesn’t steal scenes, but instead acts as embellishment to the actors and actresses whose job it is to stand out so in that way he does his job with tremendous grace.
The action puts Agent Carter front and center where she not only does better work than the boys, but generally speaking she’s usually kicking their asses in the process. The story is set up as a ‘whodunit’ of sorts while on the hunt for a plethora of MacGuffin’s courtesy of Howard Stark’s oft-times-too-dangerous invention skills. With only eight episodes — two of which aired back-to-back on Tuesday night — ‘Agent Carter’ doesn’t have time to screw around with the machinations of a procedural drama looking to fill time like its predecessor ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ and where that show flickered for about 15 episodes, this one ignited at least a flame in the first two hours.
This show won’t blow anyone away when it comes times to hand out gold statues and I’m not even sure ‘Agent Carter’ would work as a full season order with 13 or 22 episodes, but given the mini-series feel and the noir setting with the 1940’s as a backdrop, this is a fun exploration into a time before superheroes when spooky things were happening right under our noses but there were no Avengers to be found and not even a bad ass boss with an eye patch to bark orders.
‘Agent Carter’ is definitely worth your time, especially given the immaculately short run the show has with only six more weeks of episodes to go until ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ returns to ABC in March. It’s pulp fiction mixed with Marvel gumdrops — what more could you ask for on a Tuesday night in January? (at least until ‘Justified’ comes back in two weeks).
