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Marvel’s Agent Carter Recap – “Snafu”

By Christina Roberts

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It’s the second-to-last episode of Marvel’s Agent Carter! And what an episode. Apparently this week is my TV shows saying, “Let’s throw a crazy curve ball at you in the last five minutes!”

Not-So-Short Summary: Flashback to Russia, 1943 with the Doc attempting to hypnotize a man who needs to get his leg amputated, basically showing us how his powers work. Meanwhile, in the present, Agent Carter is still in SSR custody with Sousa interrogating her. They are trying to pin the blame on her for everything, including Krzeminski’s death. Carter complains that the evidence is circumstantial, that they’re only seeing what they want to see, and there’s a bigger threat that needs their focus.

For some reason, the Doc is on the other side of the glass with Chief Dooley (playing the long-con to hypnotize him) and not even caring that Agent Yauch is nowhere to be found–until Thompson bursts in to say Yauch has been hit by a bus.

Getting nowhere on Agent Carter, Thompson, Dooley, and Sousa all play different angles. Thompson tries the personal card; Sousa attacks, feeling betrayed; Dooley tries backhanded flattery. But all Carter gives them is that Stark isn’t the man they want and for some reason, they don’t understand that. Dooley also wants to know about the Battle of Finow, but again, Carter has none of it and says the person they want is Dottie Underwood, who will have obviously gone underground by then.

It’s at this point that Jarvis shows up with a “signed confession of Howard Stark,” but they only get it if he can see Agent Carter. Unfortunately, Jarvis’s panicky plan (because he forged the confession and the signature, unable to get a hold of Stark) does not fly with Dooley. Until Howard Stark walks through the SSR doors, Jarvis and Carter remain under lock and key.

Jarvis merely wanted to buy them time to come up with a better plan. With that time, Peggy notices Doc doing Morse code to someone across the street, and she writes down what he’s sending: In 90 minutes, Leviathan is coming.

This is when Agent Carter fesses up to the SSR. She tells them everything that’s happened in the first six episodes so that they will believe her when she tells them about the Doctor. And yet, none of them can understand how she got away with conducting her own investigation right under their noses. I’m going to mash together a handful of the lines that sum it up so well:

"“I conducted my own investigation because no one listens to me. I got away with it because no one looks at me. Because unless I have your reports, your coffee, or your lunch, I am invisible… To you, I’m a stray kitten left on your doorstep to be protected. The secretary turned damsel in distress. The girl on the pedestal, transformed into some daft whore.”"

She gives them Steve Rogers’ blood and breathes the line that broke my heart: “I suppose I just wanted a second chance at keeping him safe.” While Sousa believes her, Dooley is uncertain, but sends Sousa and Thompson across the street to investigate whether anyone is there still. Dooley heads off to babysit the Doc, albeit unsuccessfully. He’s under hypnosis in a matter of minutes, leading Doc straight to Stark’s stuff to find Item 17.

Across the street, Thompson warns Sousa that if a woman comes after him, shoot to kill. If she’s like the little girl in Russia, it will not go well. And of course it’s Sousa who runs into Dottie. With a bit of a flair for acrobatics, she escapes, picking up the Doc across the street, and blends in with traffic.

Dooley, under hypnosis, locked Peggy and Jarvis in the interrogation room. For their brilliant escape, they use the table as a battering ram against the mirror, only to remember they’re still handcuffed to the table. Thompson walks in, asks where Dooley is, only to find him in his office. In his mind, he’s on a sentimental journey, but in reality, he has Stark technology wrapped around him, ready to blow.

Jarvis explains it’s a prototype for a new system of armor to keep men warm during the winter months. However, locking the armor ignites a self-sustaining battery that heats and heats and heats until it explodes with the wearer still strapped in.

Dooley realizes he has to make the sacrificial play. He turns to Agent Carter and makes her promise to get the man, the people, who did this to him. He shoots a window, jumps out, and explodes ten stories above the boulevard. Even Sousa sees it across the street (where he found Dottie’s handwritten notes and the dead denti

st), but he doesn’t know what happened until he returns to the SSR.

In the aftermath, Peggy, Jarvis, and company discover that Leviathan did not take Steve’s blood as they initially thought, but Item 17, and even Jarvis doesn’t know what it does. It’s a container of biochemical gas that turns everyone into angry, fighting monsters until they die. Battle of Finow, anyone?

Badass Moment of the Week: Dottie going down ten flights of stairs in a matter of seconds.

Best One-Liner: All I have written for this is the phrase “Mustachioed Casanova” uttered by Peggy about Howard Stark. I think it fits. I think I need to fit this into my daily lexicon from now on.

I was laughing in the first five minutes of this episode with that flashback to Russia. Why? Because the man getting his leg sawed off was Private Ovechkin. I’m only led to believe that this is somehow Alexander Ovechkin from the Washington Capitals and he’s a time-traveling Russian spy who now plays hockey in the NHL.

Part of me thought Sousa was done for with all that pre-warning by Thompson. I had a feeling that someone was going to die, but I didn’t anticipate it being Dooley.

Speaking of Dooley, when he asks Peggy about the Battle of Finow and she replies, “I never saw a battle in Finow,” was that her saying she wasn’t there? Or that there wasn’t a battle like his journalist buddy said? Which way did you guys read it? I’m torn. She did work alongside Howard quite a bit, but her name didn’t pop up on the flight manifest when Stark’s did.

I know I’ve gushed before about the Peggy/Jarvis duo, but it was at the top of its game this episode. He’s a bad liar, which makes it hilarious because Peggy can barely handle it. Their relationship, that back-and-forth annoyed banter, shows flashes of Hollywood screen couples from that era. It’s a shadow of something like Audrey Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and it works so well on this show.

If anyone has seen Kingsman: The Secret Service, did anyone else see parallels with this episode’s final scene and that scene with the church? I had a strange sense of déjà vu. (Or as I whispered to the fiancee in the movie theater, “Why does Samuel L. Jackson’s character always have an underground warehouse full of evil inventions?”)

Next week, we get reveals for every secret so far, with Howard Stark looking to be a public target. ABC is marketing it as the “season” finale, which gives me hope for another season next year when Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD takes a winter hiatus (this is assuming that is renewed as well).

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