Marvel’s Agent Carter Review – “Now Is Not The End”
Welcome to the show that bridges the gap between Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD’s winter finale and spring premiere! Marvel’s Agent Carter begins the seven-week series about Peggy Carter and the beginnings of SHIELD itself. I, for one, am overly excited for it, so let’s use the same format I use for SHIELD and jump right into the action.
Not-So-Short Summary: Ahh, the 1940s, my spiritual time. When the music was amazing big band and swing and Captain America was still a Capsicle.
Howard Stark is under fire for selling weapons to US enemies. Six of his technologies have turned up on the black market, and he’s treating everything like a joke when summoned to Capitol Hill. Now it turns out that he has disappeared, which makes him look even more guilty. Despite Agent Carter’s best efforts to stand up for Stark and all he did for the US during World War II, none of her male coworkers take her seriously.
We are introduced to Angie, a waitress at a local diner, who seems to be Peggy’s only friend in the city. She’ll pop up on more than one occasion. Peggy is summoned to the alley by a mysterious note, which turns out to be Howard Stark. He claims his vault was robbed and he wants Agent Carter to find out who it was by going undercover from her undercover job with the SSR. What does he want her to find? A piece of paper with a formula on it that can make a catastrophic weapon.
The next morning, she infiltrates the SSR rather easily. She puts Agent Sousa (her one acquaintance within the SSR) off Howard’s trail of fleeing by boat, saying that Howard can’t swim and is deathly afraid of water. Then she decides to walk into an invite-only meeting with a tray of coffee to find out what’s going on and asks for a sick day so she can prepare and infiltrate La Martinique, a club where the formula has popped up.
Agent Carter dons a silver dress, a blonde wig, an American accent, and some lipstick that knocks a person out when kissed. Her scene of flirting her way into the top office and playing men right into her hands was hilarious in how well it worked.
She cracks into the safe and finds a mysterious glowing orb. It turns out they weaponized Howard’s design. She calls Jarvis, who is now one of my favorite people on this show, and he tells her how to de-weaponize it. She smuggles the sphere out of La Martinique while nearly getting caught by her SSR coworkers and defuses it in her bathroom…
Only to find that someone has followed her back to her apartment and murdered her roommate. A fight breaks out and she tosses him out the window, where he disappears three stories below.
Agent Carter meets with Jarvis afterward where she opens up about her struggles in the post-war world, both in the workplace and in general, how she loses everyone around her. It’s a touch of humanity in a too-polished spy thriller. Is anyone else getting a Benedict Cumberbatch vibe from Jarvis? Just me? Okay, carry on.
Jarvis says he has a contact who can take a look at the diffused weapon, and it turns out it’s Dr. Anton Vanko, Ivan Vanko’s father from Iron Man 2. A quick follow-up that had me squealing was the tie-in of the Roxxon Oil Company. And we get more flashbacks to Steve! I love it.
Our mysterious badguy/roommate killer has a makeshift…let’s go with primitive AIM machine, and asks permission from higher-ups to terminate Agent Carter. He gets the call to complete his mission at all costs.
So Agent Carter infiltrates the Roxxon Oil refinery with Jarvis as her getaway driver/lookout. Turns out the nameless evil-doers with Stark’s formula have a truckful of the dangerous orbs. She blinds one and has the other at gunpoint, but he threatens that Leviathan is coming, smashes an orb, and there’s a thirty second getaway before everything erupts.
“It would seem it works,” Jarvis deadpans as they stand clear of the wreckage where the refinery once stood.
In the meantime, the SSR is trying to find out what happened at the club. Turns out someone spotted a blonde who may be linked to the owner’s murder and a photographer claims to have gotten a picture of her.
Badass Moment of the Week: Peggy, kicking a dude’s ass with a stapler. I mean, that is just impressive.
Best One-Liner: “Poor guy…heard he got his personality shot off in Iwo Jima,” says Agent Sousa about one of their coworkers.
Howard Stark breezes through his scenes with finesse and ease, stealing the spotlight. It’s wonderful to watch Stark and Carter go head-to-head, especially with their longstanding fondue-ing and friendship. Can we get more of Stark?
Hayley Atwell, what can be said about her enigmatic portrayal of Peggy Carter? She is a gem. She plays Agent Carter so well on so many different occasions that I don’t actually know if anyone dislikes her. She has had scenes added into Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Joss Whedon loved her acting so much that he has (supposedly) added in some flashback scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron. If she’s gracing my television screen for the next seven weeks, you can be sure I will be watching with rapt attention.
Jarvis is my new best friend. 8pm Benny Goodman every night? Yes please! I mentioned at the start of things that the 1940s are my spiritual time, and it’s very much true. I loved every second of big band and swing in tonight’s episodes, and I’m waiting for the moment when Agent Carter goes to another club and there’s a Tommy Dorsey or Cab Calloway lookalike running the band.
I know everyone’s focused on it everywhere, but it’s a good portrayal of women in the workplace post-WWII. With the men gone during the war, many women moved into the workplace and found how to break out of that housewife role. With the men returning, they had to go back to their previous ways of life with barely a second thought from the men. Peggy gets hit the hardest because of all she did for the country and how her male counterparts simply write it off to her sleeping around.
And as a side-note, if you have not had the pleasure of watching the Marvel One Shot on the Iron Man 3 DVD/Blu-Ray around Agent Carter, titled Agent Carter, please do. It is a delight. And it has Bradley Whitford!
Agent Carter‘s premiere is actually two episodes, so if you’re looking for the second recap, click here!