Marvel's Agent Carter

The drama is every bit as brisk and engaging as its lead character, and I can only list one real objection to the show: its brevity.

Richly detailed and wonderfully atmospheric ... If the first episodes are any clue, Marvel's Agent Carter will make millions of fans very happy, indeed.

Agent Carter hits the screen a much more confident show than “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” did last season. This is a show with a clear vision, a powerful acting ensemble, and the perfect Marvel blend of action, excitement, pathos and humor.... [It is] easily one of the most entertaining premieres of the season.

To make Agent Carter work, and work well, Atwell and ABC knew she needed to be a relatable human first, and a subsidiary member of the populous Marvel universe second. Those priorities are straightened out efficiently on Tuesday's episode.

Carter's aiming for something between His Girl Friday, Dick Tracy, and Alias--a tough tonal mixture, especially on a weekly broadcast budget. But Atwell's firing on all cylinders. [9 Jan 2015, p.74]

Atwell is so good, and the show has so much fun with the period setting, that it's a really promising start for Agent Carter.

So far, the Disney experiment is working, if not always perfectly. Agent Carter‘s tone seems right and its lead seems perfect, helping the live-action wing of the Marvel franchise to evolve as it spreads across time into our current entertainment and its future.

As it stands after two entertaining episodes, there's a lot that Agent Carter can do going forward. It already feels like a series, and if it can keep that up--plus highlight the hell out of Hayley Atwell--then a second season should come easy.

The series successfully blends super-heroics with women’s post-war fight against sexism in a fun, winking way.

The show has fun with the "Captain America" mythology--cutting to a radio program in which Peggy hears herself portrayed as a damsel in frequent distress--yet is more accessible to newbies than "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD."

Shows as thematically and tonally diverse as "Downton Abbey," "The Americans," "Mad Men" and "Madam Secretary" all rely heavily on the changing nature of women's roles in the 20th (and 21st) century to heighten the drama between characters and make larger points about the modern age. Being a product of Marvel and ABC, Agent Carter is, well, a lot more fun.

There’s plenty of action to go with snappy grownup dialogue, and Peggy is the kind of dame you won’t be able to resist watching.

The combination of [Atwell] and post-World War II setting make the Marvel-branded vehicle, Agent Carter, considerable fun, and in some ways more promising than the series it’s replacing.

More entertaining than its network stablemate “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ” Agent Carter is a lighter, welcome addition to the ranks of TV’s kick-ass women, from Kalinda Sharma on “The Good Wife” to Carrie Mathison on “Homeland.”

What matters is Atwell's ability to project both Peggy's sense of loss and her determination, and the show's skill at highlighting the problems women faced while still retaining the pleasures of a comic-book pulp adventure.

While I liked Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD well enough when it began, I got tired of it after a while because it became repetitive. I have a feeling I’ll stick around longer with Carter, largely because of the nifty period details, the character development and the performances.

Casual viewers may be a little overwhelmed by the show’s strong connections to Marvel’s movie and TV continuity.... But Marvel fans will be delighted by the way the show fills in gaps and expands on the cinematic world, and setting the show in the past means that it has entire decades of history to explore on its own.

Agent Carter‘s writing early on isn’t at the level of the best Marvel films, or even The CW’s new The Flash... But Atwell and the producers (including Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters of the late, clever Reaper) have made something entertaining and engaging enough that you don’t miss the superpowers and spandex.

A fairly entertaining conglomeration of nostalgia, postwar intrigue, comic-book science fiction and screwball comedy (with frequent interludes of bone-crunching violence).

A welcome, interesting entry... But to work over the long haul, Agent Carter will need to beef up its stock sexist characters and make them more human.

Those who swoon at the name Marvel are likely to be entertained anew by a short-run series that pushes all those familiar buttons before the next feature film attraction kicks in with bigger stars, bolder visuals, better battles and a tease for the next one.

The show isn’t great yet, though it has potential.

For now, Agent Carter is a safe venture back into the World War II era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but “safe” is nothing to write home about.

It has all the things I'd like in a show but none of the energy to hold them together.

Somehow, in its first two episodes, Agent Carter muddies this structure up so sufficiently that it does not even deliver its rote pleasures, as diminished as they may be.