Agent Carter, the new Marvel TV show centering around Peggy Carter, is a gift to this world.

It is not the first Marvel Cinematic Universe (commonly shortened to MCU by fans) production to center around a woman, as I believe that honor goes to Elektra (2005).  Unfortunately Elektra wasn’t well liked, garnering a 4.8/10 rating from IMDB, and I can’t defend it because I’ve never actually seen it.  Elektra’s flop has made Marvel uncertain about producing another female led show, but Agent Carter has rewarded their faith in the name-taking heroine originally introduced in The First Avenger, with a 97% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

When Howard Stark is accused of treason he turns to Peggy Carter for help clearing his name, and after she punches his butler in the face, she agrees.  The butler, Edwin Jarvis, namesake of the later robotic butler JARVIS, agrees to help her in any way he can, which means he tends to drive the getaway car after Peggy escapes from an exploding building.

What truly makes this show great, however, is that Peggy is shown as an actual person instead of defaulting to kick-butt spy.  Spies are cool, certainly, but it is very important that your main character is well written, and Peggy definitely is.  She’s sad about her almost-kind of boyfriend crashing a plane into the arctic, she’s upset that her coworkers won’t take her seriously, she’s friends with Sousa, she’s alarmingly British at times, such as when she asked Jarvis if he was comfortable while riding in a truck full of bombs.  Additionally, she’s not a super trained super spy, like Black Widow, and she can’t do fancy backflips before snapping someone’s neck, which is a very good thing, because it means her character was very well thought out.  There is no reason, nor has there ever been, for her to be able to flip around, so she doesn’t know how.  She does know how to whack people with staplers, though, so that’s what she does.

But Peggy isn’t the only 3-D character.  Agent Thompson, hereafter referred to as “Agent Buttface,” has shown some remarkable character development since his first appearance when he was purely a sexist prick.  After Peggy continuously showed him up, he began to realize that maybe girls aren’t as weak as he originally thought, and begins to act decently towards her.  Chief Doolittle began to realize that maybe morality isn’t a matter of pure evil versus pure good.  Sousa began to suspect Peggy of keeping secrets.  Angie also suspects Peggy of having secrets, but she doesn’t really care as long as Peggy is okay.

All in all, this series is very well written.  It’s rated better than even Supernatural, which has 10 seasons, and yet Agent Carter is in danger of being cancelled.  Why, then, would ABC even consider taking it off the air?  Because it’s centered around a woman?  Because there’s a very slight chance not all the characters are straight?  Because they have to make room for an even better show?  We may never know.  What we do know is that to save Agent Carter we must keep showing our support for it, and watching it legally.  Yes, I specified legally, don’t act so surprised.  You can watch all the episodes, minus the first, unfortunately, on ABC’s website here.