Agent Carter Episode 7 Review: Hypnotism

Agent Carter, Episode 7: SNAFU

It’s a pretty solid episode, that’s for sure. I thought it wasted a fair bit too much time on the interrogation sequences and the whole internal conflict between Peggy Carter and the rest of the SSR which didn’t really seem to have much of an impact to me personally. But there are a fair amount of excellent scenes that more than makes up for it.

The most excellent one is, undoubtedly, Chief Dooley’s death. I’ve been waiting for one of the three obvious death candidates (Dooley, Sousa and Thompson) to kick the bucket, and this episode delivers with Dooley’s death and it is one of the most cruel bait-and-switch ever. Chief Dooley spent most of the episode under Ivchenko’s hypnotism, and after he helped Ivchenko lock Carter and Jarvis up, and later stole Item 17, it looks like he returns home to have dinner with his estranged family and manages to take solace that despite the fact that he ‘let the bad guy get away’ he doesn’t care so long as he can get back to his family. And indeed, Dooley’s desire to reconnect with his family and his regrets about being absent from his family has been Ivchenko’s “in” so his hypnotism could work.

And we’re brutally ripped out of that fantasy, which is apparently what Dooley has been seeing, to see him strapped onto one of Howard Stark’s failed creations, a heating vest that malfunctions and is impossible for them to remove. Dooley’s sacrifice is kind of what you’d expect. The mentor tells the main character (Carter) to get the villain, before running and detonating where it won’t hurt anyone. Granted it’s convenient that the suit went off just as Dooley jumped out of the window and not while they were talking or when Dooley hit the ground, but that was a nice and sad death scene so I won’t bitch too much about the logic of that scene. The little hope spot that Dooley was merely a failure certainly made the sadness all the more poignant as his last thoughts turned to how he can’t do anything to reverse the past – either regarding his family or regarding his failure in letting Ivchenko get the drop on him.

I also do like how Jarvis breaks his normally staunch stance regarding Howard and blames Dooley’s death squarely on ‘Howard’s bloody inventions’. And I do like the subtlety of calling the vest an ‘armour’ powered by a goobledeygonk sciency power source no one understands. Not quite similar to the Iron Man suit, but definitely nods to it.

The interrogation scene was kind of redundant, but it does give some rather excellent lines and confrontations between Carter and the three SSR men. Plot-wise it really didn’t make sense for Carter to be indignant and not just spill the beans regarding her actions and explain everything before Ivchenko puts his plans into motion, but the fact that Sousa and the rest didn’t particularly trust her at that moment probably made her guarded. I also do like how Carter lampshades Sousa’s view on women, namely how a woman is either an virtuous angel or a whore… which Sousa definitely had coming considering he basically explodes on Carter. Granted he probably felt the most betrayed among those present, but damn, Sousa, that didn’t mean you had to imply Carter was whoring it up with Howard Stark.

I also do like how Thompson, despite still retaining his jackass aura, keeps noting how the Carter he fought alongside in Russia doesn’t seem to be the type to be a traitor and kind of hints that he doesn’t want to go all Jack Bauer on Carter and later on agree with Sousa that they believe in Carter. It’s a nice little bit of character development for Thompson. I also thought that he was a goner when Dottie got away from Sousa during the little battle in the building , but Dooley is the only casualty in this episode.

Other than her finally exploding out about how no one respects her and whatnot, I thought Peggy Carter’s clincher scene was revealing Captain America’s blood to Dooley and the others, and the rather heart-breaking delivery of the line where she says she wants a second chance to keep Steve Rogers safe… which delivers rather poignantly that she still loves Steve Rogers with all her heart and definitely blames herself for not being able to save Steve before his perceived death. And that survivor’s guilt certainly explains her desire of being recognized as competent and all that. And I definitely like how Peggy’s love to Steve Rogers and dealing with his loss is explored but it doesn’t take up the entire show.

Also Carter is fired from the SSR… which honestly we all know won’t stick because we have seen multiple times in the Captain America movies and Agents of SHIELD show that Carter will go on to be a member of the SSR for quite some time.

Jarvis also shows up, faking a confession by Howard Stark to attempt to barter for Carter’s freedom. And he’s bloody fun! His little exchanges with Peggy Carter, their little comedy scene with using the table as a battering ram, Jarvis’ awkward confession that the confession was a fake… and I do like how Jarvis isn’t just a bumbling yes-man and acknowledges Howard Stark’s bloody inventions as being rather fucked up.

The best character so far, however, is probably dr. Ivchenko. We start off this episode with a flashback of a younger Ivchenko helping to hypnotize a young soldier as his leg was amputated, and we see how Ivchenko’s hypnotism works, by putting the patient in a ‘happy place’ in the past and talking to them so they wouldn’t want to leave despite realizing what’s happening in the real world. I had thought this was a bit of a redundant scene until it finally ties in with Dooley’s death.

Ivchenko seems to be shaping up to be the final villain and mastermind for this season, though he’s definitely not the leader of Leviathan or whatever. At this point I don’t think we’re even going to deal with Leviathan at all, only Ivchenko and Dottie… and that kind of makes the big foreshadowing with the typewriters and whatnot just a rather large red herring or just building it up for season two. Oh well. Ivchenko is too entertaining not to like.

Also, as a final note, it appears that Ivchenko is not his real name, but rather a pseudonym based on the soldier he saved in the flashback, namely Ovechkin. His real name, established by the flashback, is dr. Fennhoff. He’s apparently MCU’s version of a Captain America enemy, Johann Fennhoff, otherwise known as Doctor Faustus (and he was reading that same book in the flashback, too). Not being a big Marvel comics reader, I know absolutely nothing about Doctor Faustus, but I thought this yet another in a series of ‘this seemingly-original character is actually an actual guy from the comics using a fake name’ after Skye, Skye’s Father and Dottie. Not that it’s a bad thing, but really all the multiple names is kind of confusing.

A nice little nod is that Doctor Faustus has, as someone informed me, been mentioned before in Agents of SHIELD’s second season, where Daniel Whitehall briefly mentions the ‘Faustus method’ of hypnotism while doing his whole compliance thing. And with Fennhoff (I guess I’ll call him that from now one) display of his hypnotism skills, it’s a rather awesome little tie-in between both shows.

Fennhoff’s big plan is to steal Item 17 from Howard Stark, and I can’t decide if he was working with either one of the Leviathan agents from the first two episodes and I don’t particularly care, to be honest. Item 17 is apparently a gas canister which Dottie unleashes upon a theater using a baby stroller which is darkly humorous. The gas is basically the Hate Plague from Transformers, amplifying anger and causing people to tear into each other and all that. Except since it’s happening on real people biting and tearing flesh instead of robots in an 80’s cartoon, it’s kind of more horrific. No idea why Dottie and Fennhoff are unleashing it on a random theater beyond being evil, but I guess they have a final endgame in play for the next, final episode.

Dottie is also pretty cool in this episode and busting out all her Black Widow moves. She did fail to kill Sousa, which sucks since Sousa is a cripple (a cripple with a gun, but she’s a goddamn Black Widow)… but I guess it’s another subtle exploration of the ‘don’t underestimate people who look weak’ theme running alongside this series. The scene with her just parkour-ing down those stairs is pretty awesome, though.

It’s not really an original plot by any means, and I’m slightly disappointed regarding the whole Leviathan thing and lack thereof, but I do like the smaller scale direction that the show is taking. The threat feels a lot more concentrated and localized with only two villains – Fennhoff the hypnotist and Dottie the Black Widow – and I really did like the whole concept about hypnotism. I thought the episode was slightly oddly paced, but it did help to illustrate just how hectic the situation is and everything. I also do appreciate that they cut down on the jokes significantly this episode, concentrating it to the rather sparse but hilarious Jarvis/Carter moments so as not to distract.