TV Round-Up - Agent Carter, Wayward Pines and Dark Matter

Symbolism!

I've been letting the TV reviews slide a little of late, so here's some catch up.

The season finale of Agent Carter, 'Valediction', delivered hard, from Howard Stark's return to save the day, through his failure and Peggy Carter's quiet triumph, defeating Dottie in combat before talking the hypnotised Howard down before Jarvis had no choice but to fire on his plane.

Stark had a lot of nice moments, playing up his own attachment to Captain America, the only good thing he ever helped to create, and finally realising that he needed to destroy his 'bad babies' rather than hoarding his mistakes. I was impressed by the doomsday weapon of choice, the rage gas proving not to be a deliberate invention but an accidental one intended to allow soldiers to operate on minimal sleep. Howard Stark is far more interesting as a flawed genius whose good intentions always end up creating weapons (which is of course a fine parallel to his son, and a family trait which culminates in the birth of Ultron) than as a father of monsters. Sousa also gets a much deserved hurrah, disabling Ivchenko while wearing earplugs.

We end with Thompson accepting all the credit, because he's a douchebag, if not without redeeming features, and Carter's recognition that what matters is that she knows what she is worth. It was also good to see the strengthening friendship between Carter and Jarvis, which has been a delight all season.

"The hell just happened..."

After a strong opening and an excellent couple of revelatory episodes, Wayward Pines sort of lost its way in the latter half of the season, leaning heavily on a contrived conflict between Ethan and Ben - engineered largely by the almost pointlessly Svengaliesque schoolteacher - and the emergence of the upperclassmen of the Wayward Pines Academy as the Midwich Militia, breaking into the Sheriff's office to execute insurgents in the name of the 'rule of law'. The Academy's curriculum is clearly short on illustrations of irony.

When Ethan reveals the truth to the people, Pilcher shows his true colours as a control freak and shuts down the fence, intending to start over with the next batch in storage. Ethan and Kate lead the population to safety and Ethan sacrifices his life to allow Kate, Theresa and Pam to build a better Wayward Pines, only for an epilogue to reveal that creepy, sociopathic youth has had its day as Ben awakens from a coma to find the town just as locked down as before, with added lynchings and a messianic statue of Pilcher; the kind of pleasant small town you hope will soon be eaten by the deformed cannibal descendants of humanity, because fuck those snotty little American Psycho wannabes.

Never trust anyone who wears a business suit on a spaceship.

In Dark Matter, it's time for a heist. Rescued by 'friendly' corporation Mikkei from a distinctly unfriendly flotilla, the crew of the Raza are encouraged to consider joining another crew for a vault job. Two doesn't trust the offer, but is overruled by the boys, because they're idiots. The heist primarily serves to establish Five as a full member of the team, rather than 'the kid', while the sudden but inevitable betrayal is used to expose Two's true nature as a largely indestructible superwoman. No, seriously; in addition to shrugging off the zombie plague and healing in hours, she can now add 'surviving in hard vacuum' to her achievements.

The poor Android, meanwhile, creates a holographic version of her default programme to monitor her for errors, and then gets ambushed and deactivated again, since she's basically too badass for the rest of the crew to be in peril if she's not out of it.

I'm not sure if Dark Matter would hold out for a second season, but it's been enjoyable enough. I am definitely looking forward to the finale of Dark Matter and a new season of Agent Carter, but honestly I couldn't care less if Wayward Pines got renewed.