This is what puzzle used to be like, kids. I guarantee you that "A" roughs up tons of people (I know this because it roughed me up and I already know of two confirmed other cases and the puzzle hasn't even been out that long). Most egregious: non-gun-related, alphabet-souped NRA crossing "Love Boat" actor Gavin insanely-spelled MACLEOD (I had to look at the grid twice to spell it just now). Proper nouns of yore were probably over-represented here and *definitely* were not thoughtfully dealt with.
Anyway, theme easy, overall cluing, a little less so. Also misspelled AMBIENCE (thusly), but that's par for the course. agent, informally), and couldn't figure out what the hell a was supposed to be (kept wanting NOR) (?).
Cross wasn't much help, as I had TMAN instead of GMAN (9D: F.B.I. Stared at -ER CHILD but the only thing I could imagine was (INN)ER CHILD. And I had everything *but* the corner at 13D: Archetype and still couldn't get it. I didn't know what YAKITORI was, so that took every single cross, and thus made that SW corner harder to work out ( FDA APPR(OVAL) was a doozy of a themer-probably the best of the bunch). The OVAL and (especially) the POSTER boxes were much tougher to figure out than the other two. The puzzle definitely toughened up in places. different types of offices go in the corners, and I knew this inside the first minute. NW came together fast, so the BOX corner went in early, and it was a short trip from there to the revealer, which only needed a couple crosses to become evident-plus it was a two-answer revealer, which really opened the grid right up. This theme was not at all tough to uncover. If I say you're relatively easy, that's that. Also, hey, puzzle, don't get cute with me, or wink at me, or joke with me about how hard or easy the puzzle is.