A New (Old) Agent Is in Town

Last night, Marvel (and ABC) premiered the mini-series Agent Carter, to serve as a two-month replacement while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is on hiatus. Back in the first season of SHIELD, while it was still uneven at best, Carter probably would have been a fine replacement. Now that SHIELD has surged in quality, I'm feeling that Carter isn't going to fill the hole.

It was a fun show, for certain. The slightly campy, period setting that made me enjoy the first Captain America movie (more than I might have otherwise) is back in force, and just as enjoyable. It made for many great gags, from the ridiculous Captain America radio show to the 40s spy-tech version of "texting" (using a radio-controlled typewriter).

The lead character and performer are also very compelling. Agent Carter is a great protagonist. Television has been more progressive than movies have in bringing us these female spy masters (Alias and Covert Affairs come to mind, but there are more), but the time setting offers the opportunity to show something those other shows did not. Hayley Atwell, cast originally for one movie, seems more than capable of carrying a television series (be it for 8 episodes or 80). She commanded moments of action, humor, and drama in last night's premiere.

But I think a double-dose of two episodes was the wrong way to kick off the series. Put simply, what was some sugary fun for the first hour started to bore me a bit in the second hour. The "it's a man's world, toots" jokes began to wear a bit thin. The Macguffins moving the action from one place to the next seemed increasingly unclear, murky excuses to get to a new fight. To sustain through an hour and a half (without commercials), the series really needed to offer more -- and I don't mean an Ant-Man trailer at the end.

Of course, Agents of SHIELD took time to find itself too, so I'm hardly ready to write off Agent Carter. But then, Agent Carter doesn't have as many episodes ahead of it to grow and show more colors... so I guess we'll see.

Technically, last night's premiere was actually two episodes, so to grade them separately: I'd say the pilot was a fun, breezy statement of the show's identity, worth a B. The second episode was a too-formulaic restatement of that same identity, and was inferior to the pilot in just about every way, worth a C. We'll see how Agent Carter comes across next week, in its more traditional one-hour dose.