"Agent Carter" season one discussion and spoilers

[Guy Gardener]

It's 1946, why would any of these people be tolerant of homosexuals?

They have been raised/trained to hate without any sense of mercy.

There is no believable workaround to account for any mass absence of homophobia.

Oh?

What if ALL the men in the SSR we have seen so far are closet cases?

And they're over compensating?

Why they really think that Carter is useless is because they are not in the Vagina business. These lads are not genetically driven to pander and scrape to make her feel like a princess or even respected.

Every time Carter leaves a room, all the boys still there, breath a sigh of relief, start a massage train and talk about which sexy movie stars have to be as gay as they are.

 

[Christopher]

Bringing Up Baby (1938) is generally believed to be the first mainstream movie to use the word "gay" in the modern sense--although that possibly flew over the heads of most of the audience at the time.

Yeah... it was used in some contexts to mean homosexual, but it was a sort of code word that only people in the know would recognize as having that meaning, since most people just took it to mean carefree and uninhibited. But eventually it lost that meaning once the more modern meaning became common knowledge. Or so I understand it.

 

[Borgminister]

Agent Carter's a babe!

I enjoyed the setting, some directing choices (e.g., pointing camera up at the "skyscrapers"), and the story line by and large.

Reminded me a bit of Gotham... retro period pieces seem to be all the rage nowadays.

 

[jbny67]

Did anyone notice in the beginning of episode one, when her roommate first appears, that when she sneezed, it looked to me at least, she did it into the inside of her elbow?
That's something that nobody did up until a few years ago.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Agent Carter's a babe!

Welcome to 2011.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's called vampire coughing.

 

[Trekker4747]

Did anyone notice in the beginning of episode one, when her roommate first appears, that when she sneezed, it looked to me at least, she did it into the inside of her elbow?
That's something that nobody did up until a few years ago.

It's a pretty bold statement to say that no one in the history of mankind has ever sneezed into their elbow up until recently.

 

[jbny67]

It's not really that bold. If someone could give me an example of someone doing it before recently, I'll stand corrected.
Never, in my lifetime, have I seen anyone do that before this last decade. Not in life, on TV, in movies or any other medium you can think of.
It's not bold to mention that at all.

 

[Turtletrekker]

People have sneezed into their elbows for as long as people have sneezed.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's not really that bold. If someone could give me an example of someone doing it before recently, I'll stand corrected.
Never, in my lifetime, have I seen anyone do that before this last decade. Not in life, on TV, in movies or any other medium you can think of.
It's not bold to mention that at all.

Have you seen how every person who has lived for the last 70-80 years has sneezed? Because you have a pretty small sample size otherwise.

It may be more popular or recommended today but I'm sure people have sneezed into their elbow for as long as there's been sneezing and elbows.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I've been sneezing, if not into my armpit, than certainly on my shoulder for my entire life. At a minimum, it reduces the changes of my hand getting covered in snot. So, while it might only be recently popular, it's certainly a thing people have done for longer.

 

[jbny67]

I'm not going to debate this ad infinitum because, frankly, I really don't give a shit. It was something that stood out as out of place and I brought it up.
If you can show me proof that I'm mistaken about it being a recent phenomenon, I would say good for you, I was wrong and you have way too much time on your hands. But I still wouldn't give a fuck about it.

 

[Christopher]

It's common to assume that something recently trendy must be brand new, but every idea has to come from somewhere. So more often it's something that's been around for a while but didn't get as much attention until recently. Or something old that fell out of fashion and then came back.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Stan Lee to cameo in ep 1.04, "The Blitzkieg Button".

 

[RJDiogenes]

There were a few anachronisms in the dialogue, like Howard Stark's "Really?" and Captain America's "It's my choice" (which would be cringe-worthy even in a contemporary story),

How are those words anachonisms? The words existed in English, do you mean their usage? I thought people really were making choices back then.

Yes, specifically their usage. She said "Really?" with that touch of "Srsly?" snark that is completely contemporary-- the kind of trendy remark that triggers the laugh track on a sitcom without actually being funny. "It's my choice" is also a modern, post-EST kind of thing, like "Don't judge me, man," or something. People in the 40s wanted to make choices and didn't want to be judged, but they wouldn't express it in that way. Somebody in the position Cap was in wouldn't say "It's my choice," as if he were defending a lifestyle preference, he'd say something like "I've got no choice" or "There's nothing else I can do." It just didn't ring true to speech patterns of the day.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I still don't see it, particularly for "it's my choice." You said it's used today as if defending a lifestyle preference. But he simply didn't do that. He used it in an entirely natural way that's exactly equivalent to "it's my decision" with fewer syllables.

"I've got no choice" and "There's nothing else I can do" are simply not equivalent sentences. They have an entirely different meaning. He's saying he evaluated the options and made a decision. No one else can make that decision. I assume you aren't going to argue people didn't make decisions for themselves before the 1960s.

ETA:

Here is how the phrase "it's my choice" has trended over time in books. Here it is phrased as "it is my choice" (since we're talking books, it makes more sense to avoid contractions compared to every day speech). Note that the phrase was more popular in 1835 than it is today.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"It's my choice" is also a modern, post-EST kind of thing

Eastern Standard Time?

 

[Gaith]

Overall, I really liked it - but oh my god, WHO THE F**K IS SHOOTING THESE SHOWS?!

First Agents of Shield looked awfully vanilla with some painful FX in its first year - now Agent Carter, a show set at the dawn of the pulp/film noir era and it looks like a soap opera?! WTF?! My brain cannot comprehend how other shows like Breaking Bad can have some jaw dropping visuals set in parking lots and residential homes, yet a show that features a secret spy office hidden in New York and a disused factory thats making super weapons looks like a daytime soap. Maybe its my TV, but everything looks flat with no contrast whatsoever - and that just robs the show of any extra jazz it should have, being about a femme fatale spy in the superhero world of the 1940s!

There isn't much contrast, no, which probably stems from CA:TFA's quasi-sepia, faded look and a desire for visual continuity. And though Carter can play at being a femme fatale, as we saw in the first ep, that's definitely not her character, so it'd be silly to light her like that throughout. (Does all this sound like her to you) As for the noir angle, first, it's really hard to do noir in color (and even if one succeeds, the result is often very highly stylized), and second, the film noir style is rooted in cynicism and moral ambiguity - not exactly the thematic milieu of a show about an apparently squeaky-clean heroine in a world that, comic-book baddies aside, is far more good than bad.

Now, I agree the show is a bit drab-looking, but that does fit NYC and its surroundings for a significant chunk of the year. AoS' visuals have also drawn some entirely fair criticism, and I agree there also to an extent, though one could argue that, as likeable as Coulson and Co. (and Carter, for that matter) are, they're not exactly very colorful or eccentric personalities, and the visuals properly reflect that.

That said, I'd be all for Carter spending a season investigating a threat in Hawaii next year...

 

[Guy Gardener]

I learnt English from watching Black and white movies.

If the change was that extreme, I should have noticed.

Mallspeak was an unusual blip.

But the language was mostly unchanged until texting became verbalized, but those people are being drowned one at a time, and we should be back to normal in a couple years.

 

[Marsden]

I'm not going to debate this ad infinitum because, frankly, I really don't give a shit. It was something that stood out as out of place and I brought it up.
If you can show me proof that I'm mistaken about it being a recent phenomenon, I would say good for you, I was wrong and you have way too much time on your hands. But I still wouldn't give a fuck about it.

I saw it, too. Thought, "huh" for a decisecond and forgot it.

There were a few anachronisms in the dialogue, like Howard Stark's "Really?" and Captain America's "It's my choice" (which would be cringe-worthy even in a contemporary story),

How are those words anachonisms? The words existed in English, do you mean their usage? I thought people really were making choices back then.

Yes, specifically their usage. She said "Really?" with that touch of "Srsly?" snark that is completely contemporary-- the kind of trendy remark that triggers the laugh track on a sitcom without actually being funny. "It's my choice" is also a modern, post-EST kind of thing, like "Don't judge me, man," or something. People in the 40s wanted to make choices and didn't want to be judged, but they wouldn't express it in that way. Somebody in the position Cap was in wouldn't say "It's my choice," as if he were defending a lifestyle preference, he'd say something like "I've got no choice" or "There's nothing else I can do." It just didn't ring true to speech patterns of the day.

Ok. Thanks for explaining. Disagree, but appreciate the clarification.