Agent Gym Class
We open in a compound in Russia, which I presume is the Black Widow program. The girls sleep cuffed to their beds, but when they get up, two little braided moppets share a load of bread. It's all very sweet until Moppet #1 has to go all Krav Maga on Moppet #2 in a training exercise, which involves getting her in a chokehold and then breaking her neck. Kind of makes climbing the rope in class look like a treat.
Agent Cheerful
Naturally, the head of the program is a woman who oozes maternal concern and tenderness. However, even the enemy has an on-point and coordinated lipstick game in the show.
Agent Brainwashed
Cut to her sitting up with an expression of chiseled empty coldness on HER face. Moppet #1 is clearly Dottie. Oh, RoboDottie. Whose neck will you snap next? Hopefully not that of your neighborhood skincare specialist, because that person is doing right by you.
Agent Lovely
Do not even TRY to break THIS neck, RoboDottie. Hayley Atwell looks gorgeous in this shot, also.
Agent Unobservant
So, while Dottie prattles on about sightseeing, Peggy gives her a bunch of EXTREMELY boring tips about how she should pass up all the famous New York sights and just wander around Brooklyn for a while to get the aura of the people. To REALLY feel what Lady Liberty is all about. Peggy, don't be a buzzkill. Let her go do the obvious stuff and THEN drag her to the mean streets so she can marinate in their flavors. While Peggy gives her snoozy advice, Dottie knocks Peg's purse onto the ground and then -- while picking up the contents -- pockets Peggy's room key. Peggy doesn't notice because she's too busy saying important things about The People and also gazing at Jarvis's business card and missing their shenanigans.
Agent Bootie
Well, those booties are hideous. But hark, there goes Kate Middleton's ancestor, marching across the frame in a Black Watch tartan coat. Probably read to hand Peggy surreptitiously a pair of three-inch nude round-toe pumps.
Agent Umbrella
Jarvis catches up with Peggy to try and patch things up -- Peggy is still angry that Howard used her to steal a vial of Cap's blood, and has distanced herself -- and Jarvis points out that at least in their little enterprise, Peggy was being utilized and valued for her brains, resourcefulness, savvy, and all other qualities that her coworkers believe were removed from her body so that a birth canal could be installed.
Agent Sweatervest
Souza has found the PERFECT sweater vest for this coat and tie combo. And NONE of these cretins appreciates it.
Agent Incompetence
These three and their shortie ties may LOOK like they're about to break into a musical number about how their wives are draining their wills to live, but in fact, the middle guy is trying and failing to crack a coded message that came in through the Magic Typewriter. Imagine their shock, then, when Peggy instantly recognizes it from her days at Bletchley, and translates it in a matter of seconds.
Agent Squint
Yes, CMM, CLEARLY she took an estrogen blocker before she solved that puzzle.
Agent Tantrum
Magic Typewriter spat out coordinates for a location in Russia and the implication that Howard Stark would be showing up there to do something weapons-related. Peggy wants to go on CMM's team, and CMM protests, because he doesn't want to be responsible for the safety of a woman. Peggy points out that she is awesome and smart and could think them all under the table, but no one cares until she corrals the famed rough-and-tumble soldiers of the 107th to meet them and be their backup.
Agent Men's Room
And so they have to put on their tactical clothing in the men's changing room, because Contrivance locks them out of the ladies' room, and Sousa needed to walk in on Peggy in her slip so that he could a) get the Meaningful Tinglies, and b) lay eyes on the scar on her shoulder which he's pretty sure he's seen before.
Agent Vampire Bite
And so he checks, and yes, his mysterious blonde in the photo has a matching scar. Souza sits back and scratches his chin, because he's NEVER been great at math and does one plus one equal eleven?
Agent Airborne
Peggy looks super sassy in her jump gear...
Agent Squirrelly
... and CMM looks hilarious. He is the least convincing tough guy ever.
Agent Melodrama
Here he just looks like some kind of war re-enactor for whom it just got All Too Real.
Agent Bushy
And then WHAT HO Buck Compton himself shows up, secretly alive and having left Easy Company and stuck a caterpillar on his lip to masquerade as someone else entirely. He and Peggy are going to save the SHIT out of this day, y'all. Have fun storming the castle!
Agent Melancholy
But first: Chad Michael Murray gets to emote. Peggy is wildly respected by these dudes, whom she's fought alongside before (Buck knows Captain America), but they don't give a fig for CMM. NARY A FIG I TELL YOU. So she asks him about his Navy cross that he earned, and CMM turns on his flashback eyes and haltingly tells us that he woke up in Japan to see six enemy soldiers infiltrating their barracks and about to slit his CO's throat. So he shot the bastards ONE BY ONE all by himself and now whenever he thinks about it he breathes in sharply through his nose and widens his eyes and dreams of Emmy.
Agent Kidbot
The gang arrives at the Magic Typewriter's special place, and it's a dormitory and classroom facility with handcuffs still swinging emptily from the headboards and crazy propaganda built into the slideshows. And then this kid sobbing in the corner. Obviously Buck Compton and everyone else underestimates her until she shoves a shiv into his ribs. Don't worry, he lives. NOBODY kills a mustache that vibrant.
Agent Exposition
Let's get this over with: The Chief has talked to Nazis far and wide and concluded that Howard Stark might NOT be entirely evil, and PROBABLY didn't orchestra a massacre on a remote Russian battlefield. So he tells Jarvis to relay to Howard that he wants to hear that side of the story without judgment. Jarvis is like, "We can't afford him until about episode seven so hang tight."
Agent Sociopath
Dottie breaks into Peggy's apartment and snoops around. She looks everywhere. EVERYWHERE. She snoops into Sweet Dreams 102 lipstick, she finds all kinds of photographs underneath a false bottom in Peggy's panty drawer, and she even imitates Peggy's accent in a way that suggests she wants to climb inside Peggy's flesh just for fun. She even replaces the string Peggy had put in her deadbolt as a way of testing whether she was the last person in or out. Dottie is thorough.... except: In all this, somehow she neglects to look behind any of the wall art, so she doesn't find Cap's blood. The metiulousness with which she searched doesn't add up for me with the fact that she didn't wonder if Peggy has A FREAKING WALL SAFE or any kind of cubby. They really don't teach their black ops Russian spy killers the way they used to, eh?
Agent Scientist
This dude was imprisoned in the gulag Peggy has invaded, as the therapist for a brilliant scientist tasked with building a Stark invention from a stolen blueprint. Blah blah blah they rescue him and he agrees to work for the Americans, all because Peggy's uterus is NOT, it turns out, any kind of job impediment.
Agent Squint
Yes, Chad Michael Murray, Peggy IS super fearless while she's shooting up bad guys and helping everyone break their sorry asses out of this trap. And yes, you're a wuss for freezing up and hiding, and yes, she darts back through flying bullets to smack some sense into you -- only verbally, sadly -- and save your life. Yes. To all of it. Have fun furrowing your brow over that one.
Agent Emoting
And then, on the plane home, Peggy notices that CMM is in the mood to monologue. So she absolves him of his cowardice in the field, and he confesses that his Navy cross story is a semi-crock: He shot the enemy soldiers before realizing they were carrying a white flag, and had come to surrender (OR HAD THEY? Maybe it was a TRAP, CHAD). He buried the flag so nobody would know, and took his cross, and now it's poking him right in the heart. Peggy is very polite to him about it, when she should smack him in the face and say, "I'm an ACTUAL hero. I can't believe you've been such a DICK to me this whole time YOU ARROGANT MANHOLE."
But then later, he invites her out for a drink with the lads, so he might sort of respect her now.
Agent Handcuff
And then I guess in case you forgot that Dottie is insane, and neglected to make the connection between the Leviathan facility and Dottie's backstory: Here you go. She hooks herself in for the night and dreams of snapping bones.
Agent Slooooooooooow
This guy. He's very nice and not as sexist, and we're all comforted by his sweatervests. But seriously, before Peggy went to Russia, he matched her scar to the blonde's photo. And now she's back and apparently he's spent THE ENTIRE TIME staring at the evidence and scratching his head and wondering what it all means. I am beginning to think the filament in his particular brain bulb is hanging by a thread.