Friday Fun: Agent Carter Season 2

Sorry I’m late on this week’s post. I’ve been trying to post Tuesday morning but I’m currently in moving hell. I’ll be back on Tuesday and try to stay that way. But since it’s Friday, let’s talk about something fun like the recently finished Season 2 of Marvel’s Agent Carter.

I was really excited about the first season of Agent Carter and I thought the show delivered on its promise. Sure it had a lot of heavy handed girl power, but I don’t usually have a problem with that. And sure it relied heavily on Howard Stark to move the plot along, but I can live with that. It still had Peggy Carter kicking butt and taking names, her and Jarvis being adorably British, some awesome female friendships, and some truly great fashion. I was pumped for season two.

Season Two took a lot of my favorite things about the show and ran with them. It also eased up on many of the things that I found annoying or problematic in the show. There’s still Peggy being awesome. And the show still looks amazing. But the story settled down and explored a meatier plot instead of focusing quite so much on Peggy battling blatant 50’s-style sexism.

Peggy arrives in Los Angeles (the change of venue is another strength. LA gives Peggy and Jarvis a backdrop that makes them seem extra British) on vacation but soon gets sucked into an investigation into a strange extraterrestrial substance called Zero Matter. The trail leads her through Roxon energy, into an old white men’s conspiracy club, and matches her up against scientist turned starlet Whitney Frost. Along the way Peggy reunites with Sousa and Jarvis, but also adds new friends. There’s the brilliant scientist Dr. Wilkes and we finally meet Mrs. Jarvis.

Howard Stark also takes on a more appropriate role in this season. He’s still around, but he’s less of a focus. In Season One he was essential to moving the plot along, but this time around he really just drops in to talk technobabble, make a few jokes about what a dog he is, and occasionally provide a deus ex machina. Literally at one point he just faxes in the solution to a major plot problem. Deus FAX machina, anyone?

There’s lots of fun things to enjoy this season. James D’Arcy as Mr. Jarvis continues to be an absolute treat, and he gets more time for both laughs and pathos this season. His chemistry with Mrs. Jarvis is lovely despite her completely inscrutable accent. (Seriously. Is she German? British? American? Just learning to speak?) On the more sinister side, Chad Michael Murray continues to be just the right kind of insufferable, and Kurtwood Smith makes a great guest star appearance as the slimy maneuvering Vernon Masters. But the true villain of the season is Wynn Everett as Whitney Frost. Whitney Frost is a brilliant scientist who learned to use her looks to get ahead, but decides to use zero matter to seize the power she’s always craved. As a smart, strong, ruthless villain, she’s the perfect foil for Peggy.

Of course the show still has some problematic spots. This season features a truly forced-feeling love triangle between Peggy, Sousa, and the charming Dr. Wilkes. Near the end of the season there’s literally a musical number about how the love triangle might resolve. Now I love a good musical number, but that was one of the most inappropriately timed things I’ve ever seen. It’s frustrating to feel like the show runners still don’t quite trust Peggy on her own to carry the show. After all she’s a female secret agent in the late 1940s whose literal point is that she shouldn’t have to prove herself. But it’s ok Peggy – you, and we, know your value.

The Expanse: Season One

Confession: I miss Battlestar Galactica. I’m not alone in this. So when I started seeing articles around the internets comparing Syfy’s new show The Expanse to my beloved Galatica, I jumped in on watching it with some friends. Others have written about the comparison, so I won’t belabor the point. I’ll just tell you why enjoyed this new show.

For those not in the know, The Expanse is based on the book series by James S.A. Corey. Stay tuned and I’m sure you’ll see the first book Leviathan Wakes reviewed here soon. I’m the only person in my show watching group who hasn’t read the books and that’s not a position I relish. Plus the first 10-episode season certainly left me wanting more.

The Expanse tells the story of a universe where space colonization has expanded out through the universe to cover the moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Through time, very different cultures have grown up on Mars and in the Belt, and tensions are riding high between Earthers, Belters, and Martians. In the midst of that tension appear two mysteries – one is the disappearance of a wealthy young woman whose father pays detective Joe Miller to find her. The other is the destruction of a ship called the Canterbury by stealth ships of unknown origin. The show follows Miller’s investigation and the surviving crew of the Cant as they both plunge deeper and deeper into the same plot that appears to involve someone trying to start an intergalactic war.

At the end of season one, I’m still not sure I have a complete grasp on what the nefarious plans at work are, but I know I want to find out. The political world of The Expanse is detailed and complex as you would expect from a series that has 5 long novels and counting as source material. It’s rich and exciting, and our guide through all the political machinations is my new favorite bad-ass: Chrisjen Avasarala. She’s strong, graceful, ruthless, takes no shit, and can wear those awesome dangly earrings that look like they’d rip my ears off.  She’s basically a really good reason to watch the show all on her own.

And she’s not the only great character in the series. Miller gets more and more compelling and spooky as the show goes on. And the surviving crew of the Canterbury are pretty awesome. I’m fairly ambivalent to their reluctant leader Jim Holden but I think that’s by design. But Texan/Indian Martian pilot Alex is a joy to watch, and I also have a hero crush on mechanic Naomi Nagata. Her fascinating leader/follower relationship with the muscle Amos makes him my favorite enforcer character since Firefly’s Jayne proclaimed “This is my very favorite gun.”

Yes indeed folks, The Expanse is a detailed show full of compelling, diverse, characters you want to root for and yell at. It takes place in a gritty, well-worn, richly imagined science fiction universe, and it’s got a plot that despite all the twists and turns so far is just getting started. You’ve only missed the first season so, jump in now. So say we all.

Marvel’s Jessica Jones

I went into Jessica Jones wanting to love it. I enjoy Private Detectives and noir stories. I love whiskey drinking, ass-kicking, hard-core lady types. I want more female superhero media in the world. I wanted to like this show. And I mostly succeeded.

In many ways Jessica Jones is a classic superhero. Her powers are your basic super strength. She works alone. She doesn’t have parents and has a troubled past. She broods. Sounds familiar, yeah? The basic premise of the show is that hard drinking private eye Jessica Jones runs into trouble when a supervillain named Killgrave rolls back into town. But things start to become more unique when we learn that Killgrave’s powers are mind control and he used them to control Jessica into being his live-in plaything and “love interest” for some time. She’s got serious PTSD from the experience, but is determined to bring him down before he ruins the lives of more young women like her.

That’s what really makes Jessica Jones different. This isn’t just a slug fest where fairly equally matched hero and villain punch it out. This shit is personal. Jessica had her will taken away from her. Killgrave calls his obsession with her love. The rest of us would call it rape. The show has been lauded in many places for diving deep into the experience of victimhood and survivorship, and it deserves it. This show is at its best when it goes deep into PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and other mental issues around trauma.

Where the show falls down some is just pure plot. The first half of the season has a great build. We learn more and more about Jessica’s history with Killgrave, and watch as he slowly destroys and threatens everything Jessica cares about until she feels like she has no choice but to engage him. She then takes him on head-on by agreeing to move into her restored childhood home with him. It’s tense, exciting, edge of your seat stuff. When she captured him, I was so ready to see shit go down. The problem for me was that then the shit just kept going down and down and down. The show seems to reach its emotional climax in the horrific but thrilling Episode Ten: “1,000 Cuts.” But then it goes on for another three episodes.

That’s where some of the flaws that seemed totally excusable early on in the show start to be too much for me. Most of the characters in the show lack basic social skills. Jessica is too busy doing all that brooding to just ask for help or call her friend or do one of a dozen other obvious things that would help her take down Killgrave. And for a while that fits with the “I have to do it myself” genre trope. And then it just gets ridiculous. Also, as soon as the show tries to explain Killgrave’s powers, I start shooting holes in it. I’m totally on board with accepting that he just has this awful innate ability. But if you tell me it’s a virus, I start to question the logic of him being able to control people via phone or video screen. That just doesn’t make sense!

When the final climax of the show comes, it just feels too late for me. At that point the characters are so battered, the body count is so high, and the final solution just doesn’t seem special or interesting enough to justify everywhere we’ve been. Also, they spent too much time setting up both Season 2 of their own show and Luke Cage for his own show. It took focus away from the characters at the heart of the show.

It’s a shame because the characters at the center of the show are fabulous. Jessica Jones is complex, powerful, and a lot of fun. Sure she’s rough around the edges, but her relationship with her sister Trish is truly lovely and touching at moments. It’s a joy to see. And David Tennant is a terrifying marvel as Killgrave. He’s charming, terrifying, and utterly monstrous. I only made about three Doctor Who jokes before I was too scared and engrossed to continue, which is really saying something. I’ll be interested to see how the show does without him next season, as well as interested to see if Jessica continues to grow and change. I hope for yes, she deserves it.

Orphan Black Season 3: Wait, What?

If you check this blog often, you might remember I loved the first two seasons of BBC’s Orphan Black. It’s a science fiction show that follows a family of identical clones as the find each other, protect each other, and generally figure shit out and fuck shit up. So, of course, I was excited to sit down and watch season three. I’m going to go ahead and assume that if you’re reading this, you have too. So spoilers ahead Clone Club!

Ok, so is it just me, or what this whole season kind of one big WTF? It feels like the show took a sharp turn and wondered off into the weeds bit. Season two ended with the exciting revelation that there’s a whole group of boy clones out there, and season three picks up the boy clones story and runs with it. Sort of.

The Castor (boy) clones are the big focus of much of season three, but the show seems to have made some big missteps with the Castor boys. Mostly, they’re indistinguishable. There’s Mark, the former Prothethean who’s now married to poor Gracie. He’s outside the group, on the run, trying to do what’s right for his new love while not totally turning his back on his family. Cool. I’m into this. But after that I can’t tell any of the other boys apart. There’s Rudy, I think he’s the one with the scar. There were a couple of other super rapey clones, but I don’t remember their names.

But basically, I had no reason to care about any of the boy clones but Mark. And that’s fine since they all ended up dead, but it left me feeling a little like what was the point. I didn’t have a reason to get emotionally invested in that storyline, so I didn’t really care what the resolution was. The only part that really registered was Paul’s epic exit. And really that had to happen because Paul and his Russian doll of loyalties had gotten so far off the rails that the only thing to do was kill him in a blaze of glory. We were never going to actually be able to EXPLAIN all of this craziness, so this was certainly the way to go.

Also in WFT land: Allison’s entire season three plot. Allison has always been the clone who’s less involved in the major plot, but dang was this quite the digression. She wasn’t just off in her own world, she was running a damn drug ring in a plot that seems to only have existed for the Helena fucks shit up payoff. Now let’s be real, I love watching Helena do crazy shit. But it just felt a little shoehorned. And Helena already literally ate her imaginary friend who was a scorpion. So I’m ok.

Aside from Helena, Cosima is probably the fan favorite, but this season also felt a little weak for her. She went from making hot science with Delphine to being whiney and not wanting to take her medicine. Snap out of it Cosima! I don’t care about Shea and your love drama. I care about the science! When you stop doing science to whine, I rapidly loose interest in you.

Ok. I’ve just done a lot of whining. This season had a lot of strong points. Helena was flawlessly flawed, as always. Allison’s side-plot, while super random, was fun. Mrs. S got to come through with some seriously interesting backstory and action, and I’m always grateful for Mrs. S being awesome. Also, watching both Gracie and Helena rock the fish out of water comedy was a lot of fun. Finally, I think the season finale set us up to be back on track next season. I can’t wait to see what goes down with Rachel’s mom and the Neolutionists. So, when does Season 4 start?

Orphan Black, or Joining Clone Club

I go into the first season of any new television show ready to give them a while to warm up. Some of my favorite shows have first season that belie their later brilliance. It’s the Parks and Recreation effect. So I started the first episode of Orphan Black ready to give them time to earn my interest. They made it very clear that they did not need it. AT. ALL.

Immediately the show grabbed me, and after two season it hasn’t let go. Orphan Black starts with the troubled but street-wise Sarah finding a woman who looks exactly like her and then immediately seeing her commit suicide. Sarah grabs her apparent twin’s wallet and starts following the information about her deeper and deeper into a crazy rabbit-hole. Eventually she figures out that she’s a clone and she’s not alone. She’s one of many identical clones, all leading different lives, and all apparently being hunted.

The show has gotten well-deserved buzz about Tatiana Maslany, who plays each of the very different clones perfectly. You guys, I’m pretty sure Tatiana Maslany isn’t actually human. She’s got to be some kind of superhuman. I don’t know. I went to theatre school. I know some very talented people. I can be really picky if I want to. This woman is flawless. In any given episode, she’ll play as many as 6 different characters. Sometimes the characters pretend to be each other. Think about that. There’s a woman, pretending to be a fictional woman who’s pretending to be another identical but very distinct fictional woman. How do you even do that? And I seriously can’t even think about all the movie magic that has to go into all the moments where all the clones interact with each other. It hurts my head.

The show has also gotten more of that well-deserved buzz for being everything a feminist like me could want. This show is telling a huge variety of women’s stories compellingly, originally, compassionately. The show is LGBT friendly as hell. The show has a huge variety of female characters and they’re all wonderfully complex and flawed. And so many of them defy the tropes that trap that so many other “strong” female characters out there in media-land. But the show doesn’t make a big deal about it. It’s not waving the feminism in your face. It just takes it for granted that female characters are inherently interesting and complex. What an idea.

An example: one of the problems I have with Game of Thrones is that every time a woman gets threatened, it’s with rape. Beyond any problems I have with that politically, it’s also just really boring. It’s lazy. You can just hear a room full of men saying “What don’t women like? I don’t know? Rape?” But when you start from the default of respecting your female characters, you have so many more options. In two season, an incredible amount of shit has gone down and the characters have been deeply traumatized in so many ways. But rape hasn’t even really come up. As weird as it sounds, it’s refreshing to see a show that takes a unique and personalized approach to putting women through the wringer.

But anyway. The show is more than great acting and special effects tricks. It’s more than smart about gender issues. It’s also just a damn good show. The characters are compelling. I’m so invested in EVERYONE in this show. The twists and turns are incredible. It’s the kind of show where you know you can never trust anyone, get attached to anyone, or know where you stand. And it’s got a little something for everyone. It’s a science fiction show with cops, spies, crime, suburban parody, and hot science-obsessed lesbians. This show has everything.

Now I need to go watch Season 3. No spoilers please!

Daredevil: Fart of Darkness

You guys. I’m so sick of darkness. This trend of super dark stories about loathsome, irredeemable, broody characters has gone on too long. I’m declaring it over. Attention media: I would like a character I can root for, fiction that doesn’t make me want to crawl under a blanket fort, and to actually be able to SEE what’s happening on my television! Shoot a scene in daylight goddamnit! So I’ll acknowledge now that this review is biased by me being fed up with overly violent and gloomy media, but I really didn’t dig Marvel’s much-hyped Daredevil.

The story follows blind lawyer/vigilante Matt Murdock as he protects Hell’s Kitchen from truly nasty mob boss William Fisk. I was excited about the show because it promised a more realistic comic book story without all the superpowers. Matt Murdock has no spider bite, no super serum, no backing from SHIELD; he’s just a guy trying to do what’s right. I came for some realism, but was disappointed. Hell, of all the comic book media I’ve consumed, this might be the least realistic.

All comic books have some element of magic in them. What really matters is that we know and accept what kind of magic it is. Kree powers gave you the ability to shapeshift? I need to know the limits on that. I mean, can you just get bigger or smaller? Or can you turn into a rock or a hippo or a duplicate of the president? In that spirit, the rules in Daredevil are maddeningly unclear. Daredevil is blind, but his senses are seriously heightened. Ok. He can do things like know if people are lying by hearing their heart beat. Ok. He’s a good fighter because he can hear the air resistance around your fist. Ok. But he can backflip over low walls? How does he know how tall the wall is? He can sense the number of road flairs in a tool box across the room from him? How?? Can he hear the flair’s heart beat???

And on top of the sheer nonsense of it all, there’s also inconsistency in the narrative itself. Not only does blind Matt Murdock have super senses, he’s maybe not blind? He gives his friend Foggy this strange explanation of being able to see a world on fire. What does that mean? I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but you have to give me some sort of internal logic to hold onto.

I mentioned Foggy, Murdock’s friend and partner-at-law. Let’s talk about Foggy and the people around Murdock. Clichés. Just so many clichés everywhere. The show hit bascally every superhero cliché. The best friend who doesn’t know, then finds out and feels upset and betrayed. The assistant who doesn’t want to stand by and watch the hero kill themselves. The uncomfortable brush with the villain while under an alias. Daredevil nails them all without adding anything terribly interesting or unusual to the mix.

Ah yes, I see you are also in this cliche

Even the characters themselves seem like clichés. There’s the dopy best friend who’s a little jealous of the hero’s charisma. There’s two women characters who are friends with the hero. Go ahead and guess their professions. Guess. That’s right, we’ve got a secretary and a nurse. How cheap, simplistic, and insultingly unoriginal can you be?

Is it just me, or do the ladies look unimpressed?

The show wasn’t without redeeming qualities. Charlie Cox is an adorably lovely man who does a nice job with what he’s given. But frankly I can see more of both his face and his charm by re-watching Stardust. Vincent D’Onofrio gives a compelling performance as baddie Fisk. In fact, he’s the most compelling thing about the show and everyone knows it. The show purposefully puts him center, and it’s a good choice. The sympathy for the devil angle has been played before, but D’Onofrio is compelling enough to make it work. Also, his stone cold lady-love Vanessa is as close to a truly original character as the show gets.

Overall the show left me cold at the wrong times and laughing at the wrong times. I had a hard time getting over the lack of consistent logic, a hard time getting over boringly sexist female characters, and a hard time getting over darkness for the sake of darkness. By the end I just wanted to throw a rainbow and say things like:

The 100 Season One

Nerd Fest. Drama fest. What’s not to love? The 100 is a sci-fi show on the CW that just finished its second season. The first season is on Netflix, which is where I went to check it out. The basic premise is that we destroyed the Earth, but built a space station called the Ark where humanity survives. After 100 years, the Ark isn’t in great shape. Unsure if the Earth is safe to re-inhabit, the people in charge do the only logical thing – send 100 teenage criminals down to investigate.

Based on that premise alone, you and I should both acknowledge that we’re not dealing with a show that sticks strictly to realism or hard science. Look at that poster. This is fun, pretty sci-fi you shouldn’t think too hard about. The show follows the action of The 100 (those teenagers on the ground) as they try to survive. They’re lead by Clarke, the daughter of one of the Ark’s leaders/doctors, and Bellamy, who was sent to jail for trying to assassinate the Chancellor in order to save his sister. Nope. Stop it. I can already see you questioning that premise. What did I tell you about thinking too hard?

We also follow the action of the adults on the Ark, led by the Chancellor, Clarke’s mom Abby, and love-to-hate-him guy Kane. Also Gaeta, whoops I mean Sinclair. That brings me to one of the reasons I enjoyed this show – the cast. Among the adults, there are several familiar sci-fi faces it was fun to see again. Battlestar Galactica alums Alessandro Juliani and Kate Vernon join Dichen Lachman (Dollhouse, Agents of SHIELD) in a celebration of TV shows I miss.

The show is fun for more than just the cast. It’s a ridiculous space soap opera that’s smart enough to keep you on your toes. The first season is uneven, as many first season are. The first few episodes really feel like a Post-Apocalyptic Dawson’s Creek. The teenagers on the ground fight, and flirt, and screw around, and shift alliances so fast your head will spin. But soon they discover that they are not alone. The Grounders are a savage people who don’t seem interested in chatting, so our teens have to grow to meet the new threat.

As the show goes on, characters start to settle. A great example is Octavia, Bellamy’s younger sister. Her character fluctuates wildly in the first few episodes.

Drastic shift? What drastic shift?

 

Apparently on the Ark you’re only supposed to have one kid, but Bellamy and Octavia’s mom had two. She kept Octavia hidden in their room and frequently under the floor for her entire life, so now little sister is ready to bust out. For a while she’s petulant, wild, and flirts with everyone. She’s the one who takes off her clothes to jump in the lake, sneaks out after curfew, sometimes loves and defends her brother, sometimes hates him. It’s dizzying and annoying. But then her life is saved by a grounder named Lincoln who later gets tortured for information by Bellamy. Her character starts to have some real, active drama to work with. She slowly strengthens as she fights for her love, her family, and her home.

As far as reasons for personal growth go…

 

The same is true of many of the characters. Kane goes from generic bad-guy to reluctant hero. Nerdy science boy Jasper goes from cliché lovesick puppy to play a more interesting and crucial role in the camp’s survival. My favorite character is Raven, a brilliant mechanic and one third of a love triangle also involving Clarke. She’s sassy, smart, and manages to duck some of the annoying teenage girl clichés. She’s tough and willing to fight for her love, but she’s also not going to sit around and pine if her boyfriend chooses someone else.

So is the show ridiculous? Yes. Absolutely. There are leaps in plot and logic that are truly dizzying. Some of the dialogue is so cliché it almost hurts. But the characters and world are interesting, and I look forward to watching the show grow in its second season. Anyone know when that’s coming to Netflix?