Agent Carter: Episodes 2-6 Review

I did say that I won't be following this show, but I was bored one time so I binge-watched five episodes at once. It's still my least favourite among the superhero TV shows, not because the lead character is a woman, but because of other reasons. Like some obvious things that are going to happen, generic supporting characters, somewhat poor pacing and a dearth of interesting plot points. The show definitely picks up in episodes 5 and 6, and I may be a little too harsh since (a) it's still season one and (b) being absolutely tired when I reviewed episode one.

That said, I don't think I'll talk too much about each episode, so I'll just lump them all in one go.

Agent Carter, Episode 2: Bridge and Tunnel

Episode 2 is more of what episode 1 did, and I must say that the two pilot episodes were actually quite weak compared to the rest of the series. We've got way too much of 'let's put Agent Carter in funny situations to see how she acts' and kudos to Hayley Atwell for switching from Peggy Carter to her cover roles on the snap of a finger, but that doesn't really lend well for interest. She and Jarvis are the only two people that are remotely really interesting in the show, Jarvis moreso due to his wacky butler skills and generally being a fish out of water with everything that's going on which isn't what I expected. "Please stop shooting things" indeed. I think this was the episode that Jarvis notes how Carter has a death wish? Interesting, but I don't think it was explored much more in the future. Their interactions and exchanges of hilarious British dialogue is really the highlight of the show, moreso than practically anything in the episode or indeed series in general.

The blatant 'oh look sexism is bad' is still annoyingly as subtle as explosions in a Michael Bay film. And while it's definitely a great message to send out, especially in a show starring a woman, it's also absolutely distracting. Subtle ones, like the SSR agents thinking Carter can't stand the sight of some rough torturing, despite her being a WWII veteran? That is good. Ridiculously blatant ones like the 'Captain America Adventure Time' with Peggy Carter's expy being turned into a generic damsel in distress? Cute for all of five seconds before it refuses to stop. Yes, we get it. Sexism of the time. Alternating between Peggy beating up a dude and having the show on is a bit too much on the nose, especially since we had a full minute of the show already earlier in the episode. Thankfully it's never brought up in any future episodes.

The other SSR people are kind of generic. Chief Dooley is the generic 'fair but slightly sexist thanks to the time' good boss. Thompson is a jackass sexist pig. Sousa is the cripple nice guy who may be on to the picture of Peggy in a wig being, y'know, actually Peggy. As for the people in Peggy's life, Angie is the chipper friend of Peggy's that really kind of generic and sucks too much screentime. None of them are really interesting.

The Leviathan plot is... still pretty underwhelming. Green Suit, the evil Leviathan dude, kills Peggy's roommate and I must say I don't really care? We saw her for all of two, three scenes and my reaction was 'good, they got rid of the chipper but annoyingly irrelevant character'. It does let Carter get some angst, though, so her death at least serves as a point. Green Suit and Leet Brannis, the rogue Leviathan dude, both die in this episode which is great because both of them are pretty generic villains. Green Suit at least gets a couple of moments of evil-monster douchebaggery, killing off not only Carter's roommate but also a bunch of other civilians.

We get some cool action scenes, some nice CGI implosion-explosion thing that wiped out Roxxon, some nice callbacks to the greater MCU with vita-rays and whatnot... but otherwise it's a generic plot. And it's not helped with the padding of 'oh, look, Peggy Carter is making a fool of herself hiding under a desk' and 'oh look Peggy Carter is impersonating a health official'. There's too much of these moments that I'm just kind of annoyed at the rather iffy pacing.

Agent Carter, Episode 3: Time and Tide

We explore a couple of cliffhangers from episode two, namely Krezminski finding Jarvis' car plate among the Roxxon wreckage, Sousa coming ever closer to deducing Carter's 'secret identity' and the weird symbol that Leet Brannis wrote before he died.

Bute before we delve into the important plots, we get at least five full minutes just bullshitting about Angie introducing Peggy Carter to the new dorm with the super-strict-super-conservative-men-are-evil lady and holy shit do I give no fucks to this scene. It might have happened in episode two, actually. Don't care enough to check. I don't care fuck shit about the rules of this stupid dorm, and even as a location setup it could've been done more elegantly and take up far less time.

A couple of the plots laid out in the two pilot episodes also get resolved... somewhat. Because Ray Krezminski, a bigger asshole than Thompson, kind of discovers that Peggy Carter might have been involved in the whole Howard Stark business. And this episode really lays it on thick that Ray Krezminski is a gigantic douchehole jackass, even moreso than Thompson. He's a jackass to Sousa, a jackass to Peggy, cheats on his wife, is mostly incompetent... he's basically your textbook definition of 'jackass who will get his comeuppance' although that particular comeuppance was kind of brutal since he wasn't outright evil. And then he gets killed off alongside the random thug by the end of the episode. And while I thought Krezminski was another unmemorable, two-dimensional character, I really liked how his death wasn't glossed over like many shows do, and the SSR office was actually pretty damn downcast after Krezminski's death and despite hating Krezminski I do like how Peggy Carter was actually sad for his death.

Jarvis also had some great moments. Again, his dialogue flowed really well with Carter and I enjoy their little wacky odd-couple moments a lot more than Carter trying to tone out Angie's civilian talk. I very much enjoy Jarvis' little backstory about how Howard Stark basically helped him to get together with his wife during the war, earning his undying loyalty. And I do like how Thompson's interrogation against Jarvis and pushing his buttons about deporting his wife nearly got him to snap... and while Carter rescues Jarvis by playing up the 'bumbling secretary' that the SSR men think that she is... well, she kind of trades in what little respect they have for her. Which is a lot better way to show sexism, again, than spending a sizable chunk of an episode stabbing people in diners or having that stupid radi show. And this one actually helps to show Carter's characterization too in a way, which is definitely welcome.

We get introduced to a couple of random residents in the dorm which I kind of tune out too -- not because they are women -- but since they are mostly all just generic cheerful Angie expies. Which actually worked pretty fucking well considering the big revelation in episode five, but hey.

Carter and Jarvis track a buttload of Howard's inventions to this ship, the Heartbreak, and after taking out the thug with a nice little action scene involving Howard Stark's muscle-destroying-massage-machine, I do like how Jarvis calls it into the SSR with a stupid-sounding American accent. Jarvis also acknowledges Carter's desire for respect among her peers in the SSR, which I think is kind of painfully obvious. There's also this plot point about how Green Suit and Leet Brannis aren't real names and they are names of people confirmed dead during a certain battle, which is kind of a mystery I don't particularly care about other than the nice little worldbuilding.

So overall, other than development for Jarvis and Carter, it's mostly an open-and-shut case with the SSR recovering most of Stark's inventions and there being a presumably Leviathan-allied killer around. And the SSR is naturally (and understandably) blaming Howard Stark. Better than the two pilot episodes, but it still feels like Gotham and Arrow's earliest episodes in that it is just so shaky.

Agent Carter, Episode 4: The Blitzkrieg Button

A rather oddly-paced episode compared to the first three, but also one that had less pointless padding. And that definitely wins out. Howard Stark returns and he still does his big swagger thing, except Peggy Carter isn't really interested in taking shit from him. The plot this time around is basically Howard Stark asking Peggy Carter to recover this little item he calls the 'Blitzkrieg Button' which he claims to be a city-wide EMP bomb... but plot twist, it's actually Captain America's blood! Yeah, all right, I actually was impressed by this little plot twist I didn't see coming, and it actually helps to keep the Captain America theme going on in this show. And Captain America's blood is definitely more personal and far more effective plot device for Agent Carter to fight over compared to some random energy source like the Nitramene was. That's actually nice.

But there is still a rather unnecessarily large amount of unfunny-funny moments, especially involving the dorm and Peggy Carter sneaking Howard Stark into the dorm via dumb waiters and whatnot and Howard Stark getting into trouble by fucking anyone in sight the moment Carter lets him out of her sight. Or Carter stealing food for Howard or just generic 'oh must avoid the landlady' bullshitting. Also the rather pointless opening action scene that, while funny with the little punchline that the thugs were smuggling a billiard-playing Howard Stark, kind of took up too much space. And the whole pen-camera thing? Yeah.

And Jarvis' little 'touch my ear when I am lying' quirk? Especially when he delivered relatively splendid performances for a civilian in previous episodes? That was kind of stupid.

Thankfully this episode still has several more scenes going on for it that puts it head and shoulders over episodes 1 through 3. There's the obvious Carter emotional moment when she's basically ranting at how Howard Stark is just trying to profit out of Captain America's blood and basically is out for himself and never trusting people. And really, there is no reason for Howard to not trust Carter about the information since she's proven to be anything but untrustworthy so far. Howard's little speech about how he lies instinctively while he and his parents clawed from the muck of society to be the successful people they are now is kind of a nice little speech about pragmatism, and there's a bit of a pragmatism-versus-ethics debate thing that's going on here, which is definitely the highlight of the episode.

We've got a generic villain in Mr. Mink, who has a gatling gun pistol and is out for revenge after he thinks Howard Stark didn't pay enough money for smuggling him in. He never really feels like a threat, but he acts like Green Suit does as a scary murdering man. But he gets stopped by the fucking landlady because NO MEN ALLOWED which I thought was the only point in this show that the rather pointless setting actually worked out well.

And then Mink gets absolutely taken out like a bitch by Dottie, who before this kind of blurred together with Angie and the other dorm girls as happy, chipper civilians. No, she jumps into the air and snaps Mink's neck and it appears there is more to her than meets the eye. And it's heavily implied (and confirmed by later episodes) that she is a different incarnation of Black Widow. Which is fucking awesome! I definitely didn't see that coming, and it lends credit to the point the show is making that women are often overlooked. Which is nice, because I was defintiely not expecting that.

I thought the scene with Chief Dooley talking with the Nazi on death row, Colonel Mueller (who, incidentally, is apparently a minor Marvel comics character), was pretty well done. Dooley gets deeper in the whole 'every member of Leviathan uses the fake identity of people who died in the Battle of Finlow', and apparently the Nazis wasn't responsible for that particular massacre. I thought the little fake-out with Dooley giving him the cyanide pill was clever, and fleshes out what is easily the most generic member of the SSR.

Sadly the rest of the cast doesn't get much to shine. There's the moment where Sousa brings in a hobo who saw Carter board the Heartbreak, and Sousa's appealing to his better senses gets rejected while Thompson bribing him with food gets the answers they need. Thompson is a gigantic dick and while not a one-dimensional one like Krezminski (he doesn't exactly dismiss Sousa's suspect but acts like a dick nonetheless until he gets results) he is still a dick. Especially when he basically launches a bunch of generic 'you woman you never get respect' insult at Carter again. And Sousa continues his slow, slow realization that the woman in the photo resembles Carter. The cliffhanger shows the typewriter moving, and that is how you make use of the wacky typewriter. Not showing it type every single damn word.

Overall a rather nice episode for the great character moments for Carter and the surprise reveal that Dottie is a Black Widow, and the fun little unexpected Stan Lee cameo near the end. I do like the little fallout between Carter and Howard Stark too, which was a nice if not unexpected development. It's a bit clunky, really, but this is the point when I watched the series when I don't just fast-forward through chunks of the episode.

Agent Carter, Episode 5: The Iron Ceiling

Definitely my favourite of the episodes I’ve watched so far, and the one that made me go, ‘okay, I was definitely too harsh on this show while reviewing episode one’. We get a bunch of stuff going on in this episode, starring a couple of familiar guest stars, some interesting backstory that I actually give a shit about beyond ‘ooh creepy Leviathan’, and a fair amount of progression for both Carter and Thompson, the least likely among the supporting characters I thought would get characterization.

And this episode is definitely helped in no small part with the inclusion of things that are bigger nods to the greater MCU, the most relevant being the Black Widow program… which is actually set to be touched upon in Age of Ultron if trailers are anything to go by. The Howling Commandos also make a return. Well, Dum Dum Dugan does, at least. Apparently the members that show up in this episode are people from the comics that didn’t make the cut for the first Captain America film. I don’t know anything about Captain America comics, but it’s nice to see the Howling Commandos show up nonetheless.

The most interesting part of this episode for me, however, is about Dottie, or Black Widow. The show doesn’t exactly call her that, but we get a pretty nice flashback of the Black Widow program being this fucked-up school and process where the girls are bred and chained to bed, and Little Dottie shares some bread with a fellow Widow and later kills her in a goddamned exercise. I absolutely am all for this expanding of universes. There’s also the Widow trainers training the girls via cartoons implanted with subliminal messages. It’s nice and kind of fucked up, but definitely makes the whole Black Widow thing feel like an actual threat that Leviathan really didn’t manage itself to be.

Also I kind of like how the cartoon that the Black Widows use to learn English is Disney’s Snow White. Marvel-Disney merger working to create the ideal image of psychopathic assassin-children.

We also get to see a second Black Widow in the show, a younger, unnamed one that attacked Carter and the Commandos and managing to kill one of them. I don’t think she died in this episode, which is cool. Don’t think we’ll be seeing much of her, though, since Dottie is the most prominent and most dangerous Black Widow in this series. The unnamed Black Widow managed to kill one of the two generic SSR agents that tagged along as well as one of the Howling Commandos, so good for her!

Dottie gets some nice moments this time around, poking around Peggy Carter’s apartment and bypassing her string-on-door security system and searching for… stuff, presumably the Captain America blood vial. She gets her hands on Peggy’s knockout lipstick from episode one, which is nice. Also she talks to a mirror with an English accent about how she is Peggy Carter, which is unnerving. It’s definitely jarring how she is just so happily talking about seeing all the sights in New York in the opening and being a klutz (I do like how the show doesn’t zoom in on her swiping Carter’s key, but eagle-eyed viewers will notice that she does that) and then when she’s alone she’s this creepy emotionless human thing. It’s a nice little switching of roles in that Peggy Carter now falls for the ‘bumbling woman’ act she often puts up earlier in the season to get what she wants.

Carter also gets to absolutely flaunt her competence in this episode. First by decoding a crazy Russian cipher code thing from the typewriter cliffhanger last issue basically on the go. Kind of impossible I think especially since she does both decoding and translating together, but eh, nice to see that expression on Thompson’s face. Carter also calls in the Howling Commandos with what amounts with an offscreen call lasting less than a minute, bonds with the Commandos and treated as one of them, and takes charge of the shootout while Thompson freezes up. I definitely like how Dum Dum Dugan and the rest of the Commandos basically treat Carter as an equal, especially at the end where Dugan lets Carter be the one to cover their escapes.

Thompson, though? Thompson gets the biggest brunt of characterization this time around, as he gets absolutely destroyed and deconstructed. His attempted swaggering and trying to discredit Carter being useful and being a war hero gets being outed as him killing a couple of Japanese soldiers who snuck into camp and the Commandos basically only want to follow Carter… though Carter isn’t that big of a jackass to make use of this and halfway through they kind of go ‘let’s hear your opinion on this mission’. He also freezes the fuck up during the final shootout and Carter had to bail him out. And he reveals that the Japanese soldiers he killed were trying to surrender and he didn’t realize, so his tough-guy thing was a sham. Well, Thompson, you just sunk into a lower level of douchebaggery. And at the end he kind of warms up to Carter and brings her along with the boys for a drink. I still dislike Thompson, but nevertheless I do like how his character is absolutely expanded upon.

Dum Dum Dugan is still a gigantic rowdy guy and he is absolutely a blast to have around, being a boisterous partner to Carter while she’s on cold terms with Jarvis, and I absolutely love the two of them just hanging out and gossiping and reminiscing about Captain America and whatnot. Their friendship feels really genuine and I absolutely love the jokes they crack with each other. Dugan also brings up this excellent point: why doesn’t Carter join the Howling Commandos, where she is respected and even adored? Well, it’s her choice and she wants to make a difference. Kind of inefficient, but hey.

The other Howling Commandos, Junior Juniper, Happy Sam Sawyer, and Pinky, uh, something, are kind of generic, sadly. Junior gets killed off by the Black Widow. No real explanation to where the rest of the Commandos went, although it isn’t too unbelievable that they are divided up into several teams. Jarvis gets a short scene where he talks to Dooley, and while refusing to entertain him, apparently realizes that Dooley is at least fair. He also remembers not to rub his ear, which thankfully he does because that was kind of dumb.

Despite some sexist comments on his part, Dooley gets the whole ‘I am fair’ treatment, as he acknowledges that despite Howard Stark being their target, he might not be the actual responsible one. Sousa slugs even closer to the whole ‘Carter is the mystery woman’ shebang which is really taking its sweet time. And he did that by accidentally peeking on Peggy changing clothes in the men’s locker (although her underwear was, true to the time period, basically fully clothed anyway). So I guess Carter gains Thompson's grudging respect only to shortly lose it from Sousa.

Carter also recruits the Russian psychologist Ivchenko into the SSR after liberating him from the prison, which is kind of nice that their hard work was rewarded with some information regarding Leviathan. (Oh, if only). We get a bit of them kidnapping other engineers to try and replicate Stark’s creations, including this crazy dude Nikolai who dies at the end of the episode.

It’s absolutely nice to see Carter actually taking it into the field and actually showing her stuff instead of just going with pointless espionage and pretending to be health inspectors. And she’s an absolute badass too, fighting next to the Howling Commandos and generally outing Thompson and the other SSR people as incompetent idiots. And the world-building with the Howling Commandos and the Black Widow program is absolutely cool, and will make watching Age of Ultron somewhat different now than if I didn’t catch up to this show. Which is something, at least.

Agent Carter, Episode 6: A Sin to Err

 A bit slower than the past two episodes in my opinion, but that’s mostly because plot threads culminate. Some scenes run a fair amount longer than they should, especially the scenes with Ivchenko. Apparently, like the ditzy country girl Dottie, the bubbly funny Russian man Ivchenko is also a double-agent! And Ivchenko is in league with Dottie, and he displays a pretty realistic version of hypnotism by giving suggestions and repetitions instead of the more Hollywood-y ones with spinning things and pendulums. Of course, this also meant that the scenes he spent with Chief Dooley took a fair amount of time longer than it should.

Sousa outs Carter’s possible working with Howard Stark to Chief Dooley, and a good chunk of this episode is basically Sousa and Thompson leading the manhunt for Carter. We get Carter and Jarvis beating up a room full of government agents which is absolutely fun, especially Jarvis’ brief ‘hey, I took one out!’ which is a nice little moment especially since we’ve been seeing him struggling to keep up with Carter and basically playing a supporting role and nothing much. Carter is also forced to take out Thompson (who at least acknowledges her abilities after last episode) and run out on Sousa without the opportunity to really explain the reasons she’s been doing things. Which is a nice bind our heroine finds herself in, and by the end of this episode the SSR manages to capture Carter. Of course, there really isn’t much tension on this part because we know Peggy Carter will be remembered as a hero so next episode or the following one (which is the finale) she will be cleared of all charges. Which really is the biggest problem with these flashback shows. It’s kind of cool to see it play out after being built up and kind of dragged along for the whole season.

That action scene was pretty great, though, I must repeat.

I did think her sneaking around in the dorm took too long, though at least Thompson nicely shut the annoying landlady up by absolutely ignoring her. Angie finally gets to do something by putting her acting skills to use and basically clearing her of suspicion by crying about her grandmother and whatnot, allowing Carter to seek refuge in her room. That was actually quite cool and kind of gives Angie’s constant presence throughout the series some payoff. And now I actually care enough about her to kind of feel tense since she wanders into Dottie’s room at the end of the episode. Won’t particularly be sad if she died, but it would suck.

Sadly, Dottie the Black Widow is still in play and she takes Carter out with the knockout lipstick… although I wonder why she doesn’t just stab her from the get go. I do like the scene with Dottie and the sniper rifle was a ‘oh, which one is her target’ moment until it’s revealed that Dottie is actually using the sniper’s viewfinder to communicate in Morse Code with Ivchenko. Cool stuff. Dottie taking out the pervert dentist by stabbing him in the eye with a drill is a lot more relevant to the plot, allowing Dottie to gain the vantage point the needs to communicate with Ivchenko and showcases more Dottie psychopathy. Far more well-done and elegantly done than Carter stabbing some random pervert with a fork for no good reason.

Ivchenko’s little hypnotism session with Dooley is pretty fun and gives some backstory for Dooley regarding his broken marriage, and while it’s interrupted, we see Ivchenko managing to get this random agent, Yauch, to face his insecurities and manage to manipulate him to basically let him go and walk into the path of a moving truck. There is definitely a theme of ‘overlooked competent people’ with Carter, Dottie, Ivchenko and Angie in varying degrees.

Peggy and Jarvis’ little outing isn’t quite as fun as it was earlier in the season, even if I do find the ‘Howard Stark bangs a lot of women’ kind of funny. Basically Jarvis serves the role that Pepper Potts served in the first Iron Man movie pre-love-interest, except Howard’s former lovers are prone to slapping the ever-loving shit out of Jarvis.

We get a couple of call-backs, like Sousa talking to the one loose end, the one man not affiliated with Carter who saw her face and is still alive. Or the knockout lipstick. And there’s the nice acknowledgement that Dottie most likely used Howard Stark’s womanizing habits to get the information she needed out of him.

Kind of a tense episode, and while not quite as strong IMO as the previous two, still a lot better than what I initially gave Agent Carter credit for. The shorter season definitely helps it out to not feel dragged along, because as much as I enjoy the later episodes I still feel like a large part of this show is kind of redundant with the foregone conclusion. Though with two episodes left to it, I will admit that Agent Carter does deserve its great reviews. It’s a great show with its problems (but what show doesn’t?), just not for everyone and not a particularly geeky one, and is definitely not for everybody.