Marvel's Agent Carter: Season 1 DVD

Since Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Marvel has been pursuing other outlets to continue their ever expanding cinematic universe. Recently Marvel has turned to television and Netflix to keep their movie universe vibrant and ongoing outside of the movie theater. Agent Carter takes place in 1946, give or take a year after the events that that occur in Captain America: The First Avenger. Agent Carter still works with the SSR (the precursor to SHIELD), but despite her valiant efforts during the war she is just a secretary who grabs lunch for the agents who actually go out and do the grunt work. Howard Stark has been robbed and his weapons are found to have been sold to enemies of the United States. Howard, predominantly through his butler, Jarvis, enlists the aid of Agent Carter in retrieving his stolen property and setting the record straight. Along the way, Carter can’t let anyone know that she is working with Stark, all the while engaging and managing the everyday life of a woman in 1946 on the surface. The show is absolutely amazing. Marvel does an excellent job capturing the 40s setting. The soundtrack is very well done as well as appropriate both in sound and in adding the proper songs of the period. The casting is very good and the writing is excellent. Some of the best characters in the show are actually the supporting cast, my favorite being Chief Dooley who comes off as being a jerk but turns out to be a very multi-dimensional character. Marvel does a great job connecting the dots and showing items, places, ideas and people that we have seen or will see in the movies. It expands the universe and adds more depth to the world that we see throughout the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the show does stagger in a few areas but nothing that really impacts the quality of the show. The first, Agent Carter has demonstrated herself during the war as an exemplary agent. However, she is treated like a paperweight in the post war world. This is probably an attempt to make a statement about gender, which is fine, but that sacrifices a lot of story elements for the sake of a political statement and to be fair, I highly doubt a woman that has done the things that she has done would be reduced to such a low occupation after the war. Secondly, the show sometimes forgets that it is set in 1946, a different time where America was still prejudiced, racist and intolerant. The show doesn’t focus on that and tends to be more open to some of the things that we see today and not historically accurate depictions of people in the US at the time. But overall Agent Carter is a thrilling watch. A period piece with elements of noir that at the end of the day comes down to the hardships of loving someone who you will never see again. Reclusive villains from the comics lurk in the background as well as a nod to the origin of a specific Avenger….I’ll let you figure that out. Agent Carter is fun, daring, and adds even more depth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.