kennyab

Natasha was a young girl at the end of WWII (who, interestingly, was kidnapped from Russia by Nazis) placed into a Russian program named the Red Room, used to produce super spies. She was given their version of the Super Soldier Serum/Infinity Formula, which slowed down her aging. A fascinating little bit of that is that she was brainwashed into thinking she was a ballerina and made to forget her time at the Red Room. Yelena is younger Black Widow from the same program. But the show could easily flip that around.

Howard Stark, Sr, was also a businessman in the comics, but I don't know that they've said anything about it in the MCU. It's not that big of a change, and it helps to better differentiate Howard from Tony. I'm also thinking that Dottie is actually Yelena (I mean, I'm really doubting she's Claire Voyant). It would be pretty cool if they mirrored Natasha's WWII origins in the MCU, as I'm one of those people really bugged by the assertion that MCU Widow was actually in the KGB.

S2 has some really standout episodes ("Greg Pikitis", "Ron and Tammy", and "Hunting Trip" are all favorites), but S3 for me is when they really kicked it up a notch in terms of storytelling. With the Harvest Festival arc, they started delving into the long-form. Plus, that's Leslie's first big win. I was sad when I heard that they were writing Mark off the show, but it's turned out better than I could have hoped. They didn't need two straight men with both him and Ann, and he was the more disposable of the two. I wouldn't trade Leslie and Ann's friendship for anything. The show took on a more optimistic tone starting in S3, which I think was needed on TV, and Mark would have just dragged that down.

I found myself completely blindsided when I recently discovered that Peggy Carter has become my favorite character in the MCU and the Cap franchise as my favorite thread. I was a Marvel boy growing up, but Cap was only on my radar in that he was in the Avengers and big events. I didn't dislike the character, but I didn't have a real affinity for him either. I actually really did like Peggy when she'd pop up on the Avengers support team, but if you asked me who my favorite characters were, she wouldn't have come to mind. Cut to today, where I have a hard time watching Peggy's scene in Winter Solder, not because of Steve's loneliness but because it just tears me up to see Peggy like that. I have to remind myself that she's well into her nineties and has lived a very full life. I just watched the film's commentary, and it seems they went back and forth on Peggy's condition, as she is such an heroic character. As painful as it is to watch, I'm glad they left it in, because it really is a powerful moment. But what I'd give for them to figure out a way to make her young again and see her adventures in the modern MCU (and for her and Steve to finally get their dance).

I'm really glad that the Leslie/Ron feud wasn't actually about their ideological differences. One of the best themes of the show for me is that the bonds of friendship should be strong enough to withstand squabbles over politics, so having their rift be based on completely personal reasons felt very true to the core of the series. And while Leslie Knope is often seen as superwoman who excels both in ambitious work projects and competitive gift giving, it was a very nice and realistic beat that she'd eventually mess up somewhere along the way now that she has a much more demanding job and triplets at home. And I agree with everyone who's sad that the series is going to be over that much faster with the back-to-back episodes but that these two worked better in one viewing. I don't think that NBC's intention was to burn them off, however. I just don't think they have anything to pair it with. My feeling (and this is totally a guess) is that it was originally supposed to be paired with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, capitalizing on the Poehler/Fey connection, but NBC's no longer airing that one, leaving them with a hole in the schedule. They've only got two more midseason comedies ready to go, and they understandably want to show those two as a block to try out as replacements for Marry Me/About a Boy. So the choices are to show one ep of P&R a week with a 30-minute void in their lineup or double up.

I also thought this second episode was much stronger. I don't mind the 100 bit, but I'd gladly sacrifice to just keep the group discussion going. And while I'm glad there was more than one woman on the panel, I hope they don't only do that when discussing women's issues (and that they don't only have gay panelists when discussing gay issues, Muslims when discussing Muslim issues, etc).

Or they're using it as a storytelling device to demonstrate the characters' double lives. In Jarvis's case, we're seeing his "spy" life while receiving gentle reminders that it's only a part of his existence, and not even the largest part of it.

I thought it was good for a first episode and am looking forward to me. Of course they're going to have growing pains, that's completely normal. Interviewing and moderating are learned skills, and I think that Larry started off strong enough that he'll only get better with time. It was an odd bit when Shenaz brought up the murder statistic, but it also felt like she just kind of shoehorned it into the conversation in a fairly inorganic way, so I don't think it's as much as the guys ignoring her as the realities of trying to halt the momentum of the existing conversation. I would like, however, for there to be more than the token female woman on the panel. And I'd absolutely love for Jessica Williams to come on for an episode. Based solely on this episode, the biggest change I'd like to see would be cutting down the opening monologue and spending more time with the panel. With only thirty minutes, there's not a whole lot of time to let the group discussion breathe, and there are enough other people making all of the jokes about current events. I'm more interested in seeing a more diverse panel than we get on other shows without Bill Maher's smugness.

The SSR guys had done their homework on Jarvis, and Thompson was the one who brought up Anna when threatening Jarvis with deportation. If she were dead, they would have known it before the interrogation.

Dear Mods: I realize this convo is a bit off-topic, but I couldn't find a place to discuss the business of TV in general to redirect it, and seeing as how you have to be something of a TV nerd in the first place (raising both hands) to be on this site, I figure there are others that enjoy analyzing and philosophizing on the topic. If I missed a spot, please point me to it, and I'll very happily move this to the correct thread. In many ways, yes, but there are two key differences. The first is that British residents are required to pay the license fee. You can opt out, but that means that you're not supposed to watch any live TV, even if it's live streaming over the Internet. Fines for watching live TV without having paid the license are hefty, and there's possibility (although probably small) of incurring a criminal record. And that applies to any channel, not just the BBC. More people are opting out now, and it's starting to be seen an unenforceable, but historically that's meant that everyone has to support BBC programming without choice. That's still quite a bit different from HBO and Netflix, who still have to make sure they're getting enough viewers to pay for the programming. If audience drops low enough, they can still lose revenue. They have more freedom in providing niche programming and giving a series a chance to grow, but they are still commercial. The second difference is that the BBC charter specifically states that they are supposed to provide challenging, innovative programming as a public service. That doesn't mean that every show has to be groundbreaking, and it allows them to continue airing old stalwarts like Doctor Who, but it gives them the ability to completely divorce a show from its ratings. If they deem a work to be of important cultural or artistic merit, that's the only criteria they need to go ahead with it. We have PBS to fill that niche, but it has nowhere near the monetary backing of the Beeb. And then there's the fact that the charter gives this non-commercial entity complete editorial autonomy of its news, safe from government intervention, which is why the quality of BBC News is way beyond any TV news station in the US (and that's why support of NPR is so important, because the rest of news radio is completely dreadful, regardless of your political leanings). We're definitely following British television in the sense of shorter seasons and limited series, which is wonderful. Pumping out 22 episodes of scripted TV year after year is incredibly difficult, and I've not seen a show yet that hasn't benefited from a downgrade in the number of episodes per order. Not only does it keep from totally sapping the creative energy of everyone involved, it allows you to pull in talent that would usually be averse to committing themselves to multi-year contracts that don't allow much freedom for other projects. So that's a huge win. But where the UK has the charter to guarantee a wide range of viewing choices, the US is depending on the explosion of the sheer number of media outlets to deliver more niche content. But because our model of providing programming diversity is so different and relatively young, there are many people wondering just how sustainable a model it really is.

The restaurant here is a weird amalgam of a short-order diner and automat (hence the diner from the premiere sending the eggs back). They have sandwiches and desserts in the automat portion, but other dishes available from the kitchen. Kind of like Pret A Manger now, where you can grab a pre-made sandwich or get a bit more of a custom order, expect that the ready-to-go portion is automat-style on the show.

Sadly, the differences between management of US and UK TV have made it so that US audiences were delivered a steady diet of sameness for a long period of time, and we're having some growing pains dealing with this new golden age of TV. My theory is that is that the BBC charter has made all of the difference in consumption habits of our two countries. Because the BBC isn't advertiser-driven and the charter pretty much requires diversity in programming while putting less of an emphasis on ratings, y'all are used to having a greater variety of shows and more open to different types of shows. Meanwhile, we were limited for the longest time to three commercial networks that were furiously competing for the greatest number of eyeballs, and therefore would stick to tried-and-true formulas that would pull in viewers. And those habits are slow to change. We are lucky now to have more outlets producing more varied and higher quality programming, which is awesome. But it still has to be monetized, and they're still trying to figure out that one. That's why something like Agent Carter is currently a bit of a puzzle to the networks. By many metrics it's a successful show. Critical reaction has been quite positive, as has viewer reaction. People are time-shifiting it to a higher degree than many other shows, so its L3s and L7s actually have it much higher in the rankings than the same day viewings. People are talking about it very heavily in social media, so it does have a good deal of mindshare among the general public. But people aren't watching it live when it first airs, and that can be worrisome to the network, as it's harder for them to make money on advertising for the initial airing. So there are plenty of viewers out there who like something different, but that population also seems to have different viewing habits from those who watch more "comfort" TV, such as your CSI and NCIS procedurals, which I don't think is totally surprising. If you're not a creature of habit in the shows you watch and like to try different things, you're probably not going to be ritually tied to your TV set at an appointed hour. Plus, ABC is trying to court the younger male demo, an area in which they're pretty weak, with Agents of Shield and Agent Carter. And that's the generation of cable cutters who are growing up with TV as an on-demand exercise, with event TV exclusively meaning sports. The short version is that our Nielson ratings don't actually measure the actual popularity of a show amongst the general public, only the popularity of a show by the portion of the population that watches TV in one specific way. But that one specific way is important to advertisers. That's why a show like Agent Carter has a leg up. It's run on ABC and is produced by ABC Studios. While not the same entity, they do have profits eventually feeding into the same place, so with some creative bookkeeping, ABC Studios can give a low enough license fee to ABC so that ABC still makes money airing the show even though they aren't pulling in as many advertising dollars as NCIS, and ABC Studios can look at the longer picture, which includes syndication, DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes/etc sales, and streaming rights. Oh, how I wish PBS had the power of the BBC.

I know people are just interested because we know a bit of how her future is going to turn out, so there's an air of mystery about the husband's identity (maybe this is what became of the failed pilot for How I Met Your Dad), but it does oddly feel like the meta version of the woman who runs the hotel inquiring about the future prospects of the women living there.

The cafe isn't strictly an automat, as they also seem do made-to-order, but the automat is there: http://teachme2save.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Agent-Carter-Automat-Set-1024x768.jpg

My Atwell love is now complete. Being the professional stuntmen that they are, I'm sure they were wearing cups.

USA and SyFy are both in the NBCUniversal family, so unlikely to happen. The closest ABC has is its CW analogue ABC Family, but Agent Carter is a complete mismatch for that station. If they don't do more seasons on ABC proper, Netflix and Hulu are the only real options. The L+3s were really good, actually getting a higher percentage bump than AoS, and it's been one of the highest trending shows in social media. While I know those don't matter for the ad rates on the show's first-run showings, they do point towards a strong long-tail for the series, where it's value comes from DVD sales and streaming rights. I've harped plenty before about changes in viewing habits and long-term monetization strategies, so I'll not repeat myself, but it's way too early to consider this experiment a success or a failure.

I'm not, unfortunately. After the premiere, I was telling some of my friends (who are female MCU fans, mind you), that they needed to watch it, and the response was, "but doesn't it take place in the 40's or something." Based on my anecdotal findings, that's a larger hurdle to gaining interest than I expected.

How long has Peggy been working in the New York office at this point? A few months, right (I don't think a whole year). I get the impression that Peggy and Angie have been very friendly acquaintances for a while now, even if they aren't besties. And it's obvious that Peggy has grown quite fond of her in that time, which I think Angie picks up on. We've seen that they do talk to each other a bit about their respective lives and engage in girl talk, even if Peggy has to be a bit more circumspect. And heck, at this point, Angie really is Peggy's best friend in New York (she's still feeling Jarvis out, he's not quite there yet).

I agree. While she's incredibly strict and her mores seem absolutely archaic by today's standards, I really do think she's trying to provide a safe space for the women at the hotel at a time when women had very few safe spaces. Yes, it was super-annoying that her ultimate approval of Peggy was based on Peggy's "desire" to get married. But I find the character to be an interesting example of the tension at the time between society's desire for women to continue to fulfill traditional gender roles and the empowerment that women embraced while they were basically keeping the nation going. She believes in those traditional roles but acknowledges the importance of women as capable and independent people (well, until they find the right guy). Plus, the actress has a sharpness to her that I find immensely appealing, even if there are times that I want to roll my eyes at the character.

I wouldn't quite say mean, but I would definitely say judgmental. It's one of those things where I thought the delivery was fantastic, but the line itself made me cringe a bit. It gives me that cognitive dissonance where I realize it's being said by a character from the 40's, when the notion of slut shaming wasn't frowned upon, but was written by a modern writer, and I end up finding it funny and then feeling a bit bad that I find it funny. So then I imagine it coming from a crazy 80-year-old who doesn't know any better and hope the bad thoughts go away.

Here's a really good article about SHIELD's founding, Zola, and how the events mirror real life. My guess is that Peggy probably wasn't too keen on having someone like Zola on board, but I could see Howard vetoing her with the blessing of the US government.

Jarvis was stirring a soufflé while on the phone to Peggy, and we were watching him. That would have been a hell of a setup for him to start a tape player (actually, some other type of recording, as this was pre-tape-as-common-recording-medium), answer the phone, and then physically react to his wife getting home. That seems a bit unlikely. As a guy with crush on James D'arcy, I'm calling this as Jarvis being happily married.

Considering the fact that SHIELD was built from the SSR, I bet there had been talk amongst some of the higher staff about it, maybe even interviews about roles in the new organization. They had probably heard that the SSR was going to be subsumed into this larger group and had been playing their political games jockeying for top jobs. In the meantime, Peggy was her badass self getting the job done (and, we're finding out, clearing the name of Howard Stark, who's pretty integral in forming SHIELD in the first place).

One possibility is a syndication package with AoS, where AoS could be on daily rotation and Agent Carter shown as a marathon. But I'm really wondering if ABC is experimenting with shows like Agent Carter and Galavant to see how they do in streaming syndication on Netflix and/or Hulu. These models are obviously changing, and we're transitioning to the point that people do their channel surfing via Netflix recommendations and social media instead of pressing the Up/Down buttons on their remotes. TV syndication is in a weird place right now. If you're not a blockbuster show like NCIS, Modern Family, or Friends, you're more than likely going to end up a niche station like SyFy. My guess is that the magic syndication number is going to mean less and less as networks depend on streaming services to extend the lifetimes of their shows. I think that's why Disney is willing to experiment with the Marvel franchise a bit. Each new movie is a chance for new audience members, as we have a very constant stream of kids reaching PG-13 viewing age. And they're putting together a back catalog to keep those new consumers in the family in an on-demand fashion. It's what they've done with the princesses, and why they purchased Marvel in the first place, as they've never been able to build a "for boys" franchise themselves (and while I'm not one for enforcing gender constructs, I have to be honest about the demographics game). They just got lucky with Marvel in that it touches more demographics than the princesses. But the goal is the same, and they're in inventory-building mode right now.

One other thing about the ratings -- Agent Carter was still the highest rated show of the evening that doesn't start with the letters NCIS. Honestly, that's about as good as anything can hope to do on a Tuesday. If it can manage to keep that up, I count that as a bit of a success.