Agent Sepia

This shot is aggressively lit for Olde Tymey Memoriese, but it's also EXTREMELY cinematic and lovely. It's not how we open the episode, but how could I not open the recap with it? She reminds me vaguely of the erstwhile Princess Elizabeth, except obviously her dress is a hundred feet less dramatic.

Agent Flashbac

This episode juxtaposes the backstories of the two female leads: Peggy and Whitney, nee Agnes, whose mothers both drilled into them that behavior and/or looks were all that matter, albeit in very different ways. Peggy, here, was horsing around with her brother Michael, until her mother scolded her for not acting like a lady...

Agent Sandwich

... at which point they smash cut to her shoveling a sandwich in her mouth and dripping the sauce on Dr. Wilkes' SCIENCE! plans. I hope this show isn't trying to imply that housing a reuben isn't ladylike, because I have one word for that, and it's spelled [INSERT MIDDLE FINGER HERE].

Agent Bletchley

We learn that Peggy used to be a codebreaker, until she was recruited to be a field agent. Sadly, she had also just gotten engaged, and really didn't think field work was for her/ladies in general. This Peggy was also the girl who makes wagers with her colleges on when her man is going to propose, and would self-deprecatingly tease that she didn't think he every would. And I know people grow into their beliefs, and often their moxie, but with Peggy Carter I just like to believe those things were innate and that she was always impossibly cool. Obviously she had SOME spunk as a kid, which I guess the mother drilled out of her? Because all she wanted Peggy to do was get married? Sigh. I wanted Mama Carter to be more rad than that.

Agent Eyebrows

Peggy's brother Michael (Max Brown, of The Tudors and MI-5 and, if you're me, season one of the CW's Beauty and the Beast, which I was weirdly addicted to but it passed quickly) (Dottie Underwood was also on that show, actually)... Wait, hang on, too many digressions. I'll come in again: Peggy's brother Michael is deeply unimpressed with her drippy and semi-sexist fiancé. Especially when he finds out that said fiancé is the reason Peggy didn't accept her opportunity to be a spy in the field. Of course, the reason they discuss it at all is because Peggy turns to Michael and says brightly, "Oh, did you hear they recruited me to be a SPY???" as if it's such a casual fancy. PEGGY. I don't believe she is the type of person who would run around giggling to everyone about the super secret assignment she rejected.

Agent Dress

Peggy's outfit is nice, though. Michael urgently tells her that HE is the one who put her up for the spy job, and that she's a way more interesting person than the budding chauvinist to whom she's yoking herself. This is, also, her engagement party, so she resents his timing. Ergo, she totally ignores him until ...

Agent Grieving

... the day she tries on her wedding gown, when she learns Michael was killed in combat. That's the impetus Peggy needs to leave her engagement ring on the dresser and head off to a life of excitement. And like... it's just a bit of a letdown to me that Peggy Carter, who is so empowered and yet wears it so naturally, as if she can't possibly fathom why it hasn't ALWAYS been this way, didn't find herself until her brother educated her about herself. It took a man to make the woman, is the essence of this subplot, and I don't like it. Peggy should not have needed anyone to tell her that she is a badass. (Which is not to say you can't be a badass and be married, but you CANNOT be a badass while married to a person who doesn't believe women have a place in Places Where Badasses Are Required).

Agent Agnes

Whitney, back when she was Agnes, was always into tinkering. Here, she's fixing the radio while her mother -- played by Samaire Armstrong -- has paid sex with "Uncle Bud," a "boyfriend" she has acquired whom she is willing to sleep with if it means she gets money and permission to live in this house. (He's played by Chris Mulkey, whom you may know from basically everything.)

Agent Sullen

Agnes, as you might imagine, hates Uncle Bud. So she's not particularly nice to him, although she doesn't seem very fond of her mother, either. Samaire waves Agnes's University of Oklahoma rejection letter in front of her face and sneers that her brains are useless and that only her face will get her anywhere in life. Which is sound advice from someone whose face, presumably, got her financially dependent on an old guy who has several girlfriends and just dumped you because the new model runs more smoothly.

Later, Agnes ends up in Los Angeles at the movies, fascinated by the escapism of it all, when a creepy stereotype tells her she's Such A Pretty Girl and Hey I Could Put You In Pictures. But he insists she needs "a name as pretty as your face," and grins that the great thing about Hollywood is that you can be whatever you want. So we still don't know why or when Agnes ditched the homestead, but the nut of it is that she and Peggy both discovered new sides of themselves, and found ways to take authorship of their own fates, but in very different ways. Peggy diverges from what her mother wanted for her, and Agnes trades on it -- she DOES use her face for success.

Agent Rats

And now, Agnes is using her face for MURDER. She has ordered a bunch of lab rats, and spoiler, she is COMPLETELY in favor of animal testing. PETA is going to be so angry at Isodyne.

Agent Journal

On the next page she wrote, "Mrs. Whitney Zero Matter," and then "Mrs. Whitney Frost-Zero Matter," and "I Heart Black Goo." It's important to take the time to write down our feelings.

Agent Ew

This facial expression is EXACTLY what mine would have been, had someone handed me a script and said, "Good news! You get to pick up a rat two times, and hold it, and have it walk all over your hands and then glare at you!"

Whitney is trying to figure out how and why she can dissolve people, but it doesn't work until the rat nips at her hand -- at which point it turns black from the inside out, and then goes poof.

Agent Horcrux

And the Voldemark gets larger.

Agent Tranquilizer

Peggy and Jarvis -- who notes Hedy Lamarr's impending divorce, a cute nod to the science-minded actress on whom Whitney Frost is clearly based -- stake out Chadwick's senate, where they notice Hired Goon and his injured hand. Peggy puts two and two together that he's the one she shot at last week when he tried to strangle her, so they follow him home and plan to drug him to high heaven. ("I assume you've used a tranquilizer gun before," Jarvis says, at which point it's revealed he is skilled at them because Howard owns an ornery koala.)

Agent Bum

This shot was supposed to be an exploration of Peggy's pants, but it accidentally turned into an opportunity to ogle James D'Arcy's butt. I'm not sorry. NEITHER ARE YOU.

Agent Oops

The tranq doesn't knock out Hired Goon right away, so Peggy has to engage in a little hand-to-hand combat. Eventually they get him wrapped up and in the trunk, but he yanks out the dart in his side and sticks it into Jarvis. They lock him up anyway, shortly before Jarvis gets all squiffy. "Are you all right?" Peggy asks. "Jarvelous," he slurs happily before passing out face-forward. And because I'm a worrier, all i could think of was, "Oh, JARVIS, don't fall forward or else you'll drive that dart right up into your chest."

Agent Squint!?!?!?

One thing I find sort of endearing is this show's REFUSAL to put Sousa in sunglasses. Why is that? Were men in this era less prone to them -- like, were they considered a woman's accessory, or something? Or is he just stubborn? Did they have a brighter sun that day than the director expected? It somehow, some way, lends this show an odd authenticity. People DO sometimes not have sunglasses, and that DOES sometimes mean they have to look at you as if they have pinkeye.

Agent Gotcha

Sousa is not fooled by Peggy's attempts to get rid of him, especially when he sees Jarvis conked out against the window (forgive me, Biggledank Collywibbles fans, but Jarvis kind of looks like him here). Sousa is understandably not DELIGHTED that Peggy drugged and kidnapped somebody, but it turns out he's mostly just upset that Peggy isn't treating him like a teammate. He wants IN, dammit, and I don't think he just means "on the capers."

Agent Trousers

I told you every week she has to wear a HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE pair of pants, and here is this week's. That Hayley Atwell can still look gorgeous goes to show she was born in the wrong era and should purchase a DeLorean immediately (they're making them again!).

Agent Malaria

Peggy's rather brilliant plan to get this man to talk -- a man who has been tortured by the Japanese on the Pacific front of WWII -- is to inform him that he's been injected with a virulent malaria, and has twenty minutes to live. Unless he talks, at which point she will give him the antidote. What she has ACTUALLY given him is a nasty cold Howard was using to try and develop a cure, but it works, and he sings like a canary. He names a couple names, and then tells them to search the Arena Club. Apparently the Death Eaters from the secret back room record all their conversations. Because, what, they're narcissists? I guess this means they always have blackmail material on each other, so it'd keep them all honest. But it seems like bad vanity and REALLY careless planning to create a record of your evil schemes.

Agent Smarm

Just as Peggy and Sousa are awaiting a warrant to search the Arena Club, Kurtwood Smith with the War Department arrives and tells them that they're being audited. No warrant, no Arena Club raid. He then privately threatens Peggy and Sousa -- separately -- that they must cooperate or all their loved ones will be BURNED ALIVE WHILE WEARING UGLY SUSPENDERS WITH DUCKS IN FUR BOOTS ON THEM. (Not really. It was more of a vague threat, but zzz. S I embellished.)

Agent Bug

Peggy and Sousa, feeling handcuffed, then decide to "cure" Hired Goon's malaria and then let him think he's escaped. They track him to Whitney Frost's house, where they listen in via a bug they attached to his suspenders. It looks like a tiny speaker. It is SO OBVIOUSLY a device of some kind, and with weight to it, that I am not sure when we are supposed to think they put it on him without him noticing. This would be cooler if it was two-way and Peggy could talk through it -- like an Intercom -- and mess with their minds. That was my favorite thing to do with the video baby monitors when the beans were two and three. We'd watch them demonstrably NOT being asleep and then call out very specific things about their misdeeds, and watch them on the monitors going, "OMG HOW DID THEY KNOW HOW DID THEY SEE US WHAT IS HAPPENING." Ah, good times. Please do not allow anyone to use this as Exhibit A against me as a parent.

Agent Sadface

So, Dr. Wilkes is still trapped in some sort of hexflargical state of metatarsistolic nonfluency. He and Pegs are still totally hot for each other, though, and Sousa looks up and sees them trying to approximate touching each other, and he's SO JEALOUS. JUST KISS HER YOU MORON. Except for your very nice girlfriend, but I don't care about her, so KISS PEGGY FAST.

Jason is also starting to hallucinate some kind of vortex, which he doesn't really tell anyone, although he does hint to Peggy that he feels like he's being called away somewhere and it'd be much easier if he just went with it. She tells him not to, and then, the longing and yearning and touching. Sousa can't kiss her because he's almost engaged, and Jason can't kiss her because of his jangovestibular spectroscity. SOMEBODY EFFING KISS HER THEN.

Agent Dead

While Team Carter listens, Hired Goon tells Whitney and Chadwick all about his ordeal. He immediately reveals himself to be stupid, because he TELLS THEM that he gave up names. Whitney responds by going all Avada Kedavra on his ass. Chadwick is like, "Um, we're wizards now?"

Agent EVILLLL

And Whitney gives him a sultry smile, and we see that the Voldemark is big enough now that she clearly vaporized a few more rats as well. "[I'm] whatever I want to be," she purrs, echoing the sleazy film producer of her past.

So, you know. Not much new. Whitney is still a one-woman Zero Matter wrecking crew, Peggy still can't put her tongue anywhere she would like it to be, and Kurtwood Smith is still having an easy time putting obstacles in their path. Peggy is onto that malarkey, though. She can smell a rat. Although I guess not the rats Whitney offed, unless they left behind an odor trail.

Fug the Show: Agent Carter recap, season two, episode 4

Plot momentum stalled a bit -- the horcrux is powerful! Sousa has Peggy-flavored love regrets! Trousers remain questionable! -- and the backstory is a tiny bit banal. But whenever I watch this show, I picture Robin Williams' face in Dead Poets Society when he grins, "Not a bad way to spend an evening, eh?" Not bad indeed.