Agent Carter 2x05

[sholio]

HEIST EPISODE! WHEE! I loved the humor in this one, even if some fairly serious plot stuff ended up getting worked in as well.

I also loved how it was the female spies who ended up doing the fighting, and the guys ended up defusing the bomb and doing the wires for the door. :D Very casually too. Lovely.

Gasped out loud at Peggy getting impaled. I didn't expect that! Also, nice to know that Whitney's Darkforce thing can be interrupted halfway through, and the person will still be okay.

Daniel is utterly adorkable and anyone who doesn't think so (i.e. half of Tumblr) can fight me. He was obviously trying to do the right thing, as he sees it, both with Violet and with trying to keep Rose out of danger. But, similarly, I liked that he wasn't right about either of those things, and I also liked that Violet was allowed to be angry and unhappy, that she didn't end up bowing out sweetly, but with fury instead. (Also, I really do think he's in love with Violet, at least a little bit. It's possible to love two people at once!)

There's also something Enver Gjokaj mentioned in an interview, that Daniel really is not a good manager; he's better at being a field agent than being in an administrative role, which I think was also evident this episode. He's not good at matching people to roles that bring out their areas of strength, or remembering details about people in a managerial kind of way, and I think this episode brought that out without being terribly heavy-handed about it. I mean, he's not a total shit boss, and most of the people who work for him clearly like him? But he's also not a kickass boss either; he's just a mediocre one. And I liked that the show went that route, instead of having him be good at everything.

Nice to see him display a previously unknown talent for demolitions, however. *plots how to work that into fanfic*

Comments

[veleda_k]

That's really interesting about Sousa as a manager, and I agree that the episode got that across well. I though in general this episode was good about showing Sousa's flaws without making him out to be horrible. (Something I really like about Sousa is that he's willing to change his mind. He can admit he might be wrong about something and take advice and criticism.)

[sholio]

Yeah; I thought the same, and the bad-manager thing in particular ... it's a very subtle kind of flaw, but it does seem to be intentional (I mean, even aside from the actor mentioning it; it's definitely there in the episode). I was trying to think of another instance of something like that on TV, and I can't actually come up with anything -- not quite like that, anyway. There are OTT terrible managers, of course, and there are people who are portrayed as terrible managers while they aren't really supposed to be, but I can't think of someone who's a decent, competent person but simply is a mediocre leader, in canon.