I liked the characters - agree on Dottie!! - but the plot was meh to me. I like how it was used to frame different women in different situations - Peggy, Dottie, Whitney, Ana, and even Rose - I just wish Zero Matter didn’t feel like just a Macguffin.
I have heard that a 3rd season was in question because the ratings weren’t there this season. If they had a better plot, it would be great to see the characters put in motion for something more engaging.
I agree with nearly everything you said. My only quibble would be with Samberly, I thought the point was that he was brilliant but ignored because he wasn’t a field guy. To that end, his character was done well.
One item that I particularly liked was less Stark. Having him off screen almost the whole time except for a bit here and there kept it from being tiresome.
I hope they keep doing this ten episode format as a break in the middle of the Agents of Shield. It gives both shows a more event type of feeling.
He wasn’t in the first season much more than he was in the second (3 episodes Season 1, 2 episodes Season 2). What I think made the difference was not the amount of screen time but that he was disconnected to the plot this time around. In the first season, Peggy had to clear his name and protect him from a revenge plot- so he had a pretty strong interest in seeing that things turned out o.k.
In the second season, he’s pretty much just a curious third party- this allows the writers and the actor to really bring out the fun side of the character. He can be excited about the scientific discoveries, humorously nonchalant about the idea of world destruction, and he can completely undermine any moments of other characters taking things seriously. This is the character at his strongest. Of course, being detached from the main plot kinda goes hand in hand with less screen time but I don’t think it was the difference in screen time that made him a better character this time around, it was that he was allowed to essentially be a heckler at the side of the stage while the other characters are trying to do something important.
I loved the reveal that he and the mob boss were actually old buddies, “I’ve told you before, you don’t wear your skivvies in a schwitz!”
It probably is true that Stark’s role as a third party is what made the character better. Dominic Cooper is credited with three episodes in season one and two in season two, so pretty much the same.
The more I think about it the more I like this show. Both gender and racial barriers are shown in their context, and shown to be as stupid as they ever were. It ain’t perfect but it is fun. Good to see that it is probably getting renewed despite low ratings, now just need the same to happen for Galavant.
I agree with most of the comments upthread. I thought the overall plot was kind of weak and meandering, but they added some great tertiary characters that worked well. I really liked Ana Jarvis and Dottie Underwood. I thought Dottie’s love triangle wrapped up rather too neatly. And I’ve already forgotten how they left it off - are she going back to NY with her boyfriend in LA? It’s already fading from memory.
One thing I really liked was seeing the depiction of LA in the late forties, much like I enjoyed the New York in the forties from last season. I’ll watch again if it’s renewed but I hope they come up with a more compelling story.
The season started a bit slow, but the second half was brilliant! Great ensemble cast. I’d like to see Rose get out in the field more, such a fun character.
Yeah, unfortunately the Zero Matter was by far the least interesting thing about the season, unlike last season’s Leviathan. Whitney kept going on and on about it being a world changer, but AFAICT it didn’t do anything some mooks with a gun and a shovel couldn’t do already.
But Jarvis and Ana, the plot with Jack and Vernon Masters, Manfredi and his mother, Dottie, all that was really well done. I was surprised they never revealed that the Council was yet another Hydra front.
Skammer, Peggy told Sousa she was going to miss her flight back to NY. Presumably the cliffhanger will make her end of season plans moot anyway. Who knows if next season will pick up right where this one ended, or if it’ll be a year later back in NY, with Peggy in charge after Thompson’s still unsolved murder?
In some ways this season was better, in some ways it was worse.
Dottie is a fun foil for Peggy up to a point, but she could very easily fall into “Fan’s love her! More Dottie!” and overshadow and diminish Peggy.
Murdery Jarvis was overplayed.
If they do season 3, it really needs to do the transition to SHIELD.
All I wanted was a companion piece to Captain America, one that tells the origins of SHIELD. I’ll watch it, but I think the show’s had its run. It should have started and ended with the founding of SHIELD.
That cheesy British accent of hers makes my teeth grind. Peggy Carter is 100% American.
And the fact that her agency is always corrupt, incompetent, and sexist is a bit much.
Not to mention she seems to cause half of her own problems, like releasing the Soviet assassin.
Peggy Carter is American or actress Haley Atwell is American? I’m pretty sure she was a British agent in the original Cap movie, unless you’re complaining about the comic book character. 
Peggy Carter is American. Per the Comic books.
Ah, but you were watching a TV show. Perhaps you noticed that you didn’t have to turn the pages, and your lips weren’t moving.
If Agent Carter is not picked up for S3, I won’t be surprised. Agents of , is just at the half way mark of S3 and ABC has already renewed for S4. While the peeps at Agent Carter have said that ABC is waitin on the final ratings that come out in May.
In my opinion, its in the wrong time slot on the wrong day. Instead of filling the AOS hiatus time slot, it should have been on Saturday morning with all the other cartoons. Thats pretty much the level of story line that it has.
To be fair, it seems like it only has a fraction of the budget that AOS has, and instead of playing Junior G-men, they should have stuck to their core competencys and gone with either the howling commandos , or SSR retrieval of dangerous objects.
What I would have love to have seen, but I doubt that it would work, would be to have Doctor Jones lose something in a warehouse in Nevada during a nuclear test, that the SSR now has to recover, and spend the ten episodes around that.
I think AC is done like dinner, but we shall have to wait.
Declan
muldoonthief Try to get your point across without the snark. Thank you.
Observations on the season, now that it’s over:
The flamingo thing from early on really went nowhere, I was expecting some comic relief out of it.
Steve Rogers was a notable absence from the song and dance scene in episode 9. They probably did that intentionally in order so Agent Carter doesn’t seem to be bound to Cap, but it would have really been an appropriate addition.
I lost track of Dottie - is she in custody, or at large?
The last scene with Manfredi and Whitney was very well done. The actor really sells the heartbreak.
Very much at large, and I cant see any reason why Carter let her go to start with. That’s Treason.
I expected Dottie to be the one holding the gun at the last minute. Nothing else could justify her vanishing from the show.
Mixed bag all around this season. Way more comic book-y than season one, which felt embedded in a slightly exaggerated real world. Too many characters, too many villains, too many people bouncing in for an episode then mysteriously disappearing the next. (What happened to Vernon?) None of the action scenes were much fun - people standing around staring at a green screen, but a lot of the one liners were perfect. The plotting was despicable. Peggy’s actions made no sense except for somebody reading off a script. (Which actions? All of them. Every one, episode after episode after episode.) SHIELD works, when it does, because it acts smarter than the rest. Everybody at SSR is stupider than the next person.
I want to like the show. I really do. I like the period setting. I like Peggy as a concept (not as much as a person). I like Howard Stark and Jarvis. (I kept thinking that Mrs. Jarvis’ utterly bizarre accent was Irish, too. No Hungarian ever spoke that way.) What might help is making the show less modern. Every bit of tech is obviously a retro version of what they would use today. The joke wears thin. If they used ingenious low-tech ways to solve problems it might not seem as ridiculous. OTOH, no one ingenious would put a manual crank on a gadget they can’t stand within 20 feet of. Sigh.
I mostly just rolled my eyes when Thompson got shot at the end of the final episode. It just reeked of a totally needless, tacked-on cliffhanger. It certainly wasn’t going to be the crucial factor determining whether I stick around for another season.