‘Agent Carter’ 1.06 & 1.07 Recaps: “Focus on What Really Matters”

It seems that I missed doing a recap for ‘Agent Carter’ last week. Sadly, after one good episode a couple weeks back, the show quickly returned to its usual tedium. Nevertheless, I am determined to see this thing through. With the finale coming up shortly, let’s get caught up.

Episode 1.06, ‘A Sin to Err’

Remember the psychiatrist that Carter and the Howling Commandos liberated from a Russian prison? He’s totally evil. I thought it was a little suspicious the way he killed the scientist before the guy could be much use. I’m not sure if he’s the mastermind behind the mysterious “Leviathan” group, but he’s a higher-up at the very least.

For as friendly and helpful as he acts, Dr. Ivchenko secretly passes messages to assassin girl Dottie from the window in Chief Dooley’s office. After Dottie murders a dentist whose office is across the street from SSR headquarters, the good doctor communicates to her by tapping Morse Code hand gestures on the windowsill. One of the messages he sends includes an instruction to kill Agent Carter. Meanwhile, the doctor also works on hypnotizing Dooley by a trick he does with a ring on his finger.

With still no idea who the Russian mole could be, Peggy and Jarvis track down all the various women Howard Stark has had affairs with in recent months. It’s a daunting list. Unfortunately, Agent Sousa figures out that Peggy is the girl in the photo he’s been studying. He thinks she’s a double agent, so he tells Dooley, who sends a bunch of agents to apprehend her at the automat.

Peggy is a smart cookie, of course. She recognizes the trap and busts out her best Sydney Bristow moves to fight her way out the back door of the automat, where she also punches out Agent Thompson. Sousa can’t bring himself to shoot her, and lets her slip by him.

Peggy returns to the Griffith Hotel to retrieve the vial of Steve Rogers’ blood, but Thompson and Sousa are hot on her tail and canvas the building looking for her. As she tries to sneak away, Peggy encounters Dottie, who gives her a big smack on the lips. Of course, she’s wearing knock-out lipstick. Peggy collapses to the floor. As Dottie prepares to kill her, she’s interrupted by the SSR agents, who arrest Peggy.

As Carter is brought in for interrogation, Chief Dooley leaves Ivchenko with a junior agent named Yauch. The doctor hypnotizes him into walking in front of a truck. Youch, indeed!

Although the automat fight is a lot of fun, the rest of the episode drags what should be about ten minutes of plot into filling a whole hour.

Episode 1.07, ‘Snafu’

Sousa, Thompson and Dooley take turns interrogating Carter. This is very confusingly presented so that one will ask a question, Peggy will answer, then the next will ask the direct follow-up question as if he were continuing the first guy’s conversation until they circle around again. Dr. Ivchenko watches from the next room and diagnoses Carter as a pathological liar.

Jarvis shows up at SSR headquarters with what he claims is a signed confession from Howard Stark, which he will trade for Carter’s freedom. It’s a fake, naturally. He’s just buying time.

Peggy spots Ivchenko tapping a message to Dottie. She catches something about needing to prepare for an evacuation in 90 minutes. She tries to warn Chief Dooley, but he’s dubious of anything she says. However, he agrees to send some agents across the street to see if they might happen to run into Dottie.

Ivchenko notices the men crossing the street, so he ramps up his efforts to hypnotize Dooley. The Chief locks Carter and Jarvis in an interrogation room and walks Ivchenko down to the science lab, where he dismisses all the techies. Ivchenko searches for something called “Item 17” and also has Dooley grab a heavy vest. The doctor then slips out of the building.

Sousa confronts Dottie, but the assassin does a neat trick where she parkours down a stairwell really quickly and gets away. Then she picks up Ivchenko outside the building and speeds off in a car.

Peggy and Jarvis get out of their room and find Dooley wearing the vest. Jarvis identifies it as a prototype body armor (maybe an early version of the Iron Man suit?) with heating elements to keep soldiers warm in arctic environments. Unfortunately, the vest’s power source turned out to be highly unstable and explosive. The vest is locked onto Dooley, who can’t get it off as it grows increasingly hotter and hotter. With only seconds before it blows, Dooley sacrifices himself by jumping out a window and exploding in mid-air.

Peggy worries that Ivchenko may have taken Steve Rogers’ blood, but fortunately it’s still in the lab. A techie notices that Item 17 is missing. Jarvis has no idea what that is.

At episode end, Dottie walks into a movie theater with a baby stroller, then promptly leaves. The stroller expels a gas that causes all the other patrons to turn violent and murder each other.

This episode is the better of the two by some small margin. It has at least one really important and fairly exciting plot development (Dooley’s death). However, I still feel underwhelmed and do not hold out a lot of hope for next week’s finale to bring the pieces of this disappointing series together.

4 comments

  1. cardpetree

    Oh man, I don’t want to give up on this show. I’m two episodes behind on my DVR and when I have a little free time, I just don’t feel like watching one of them. That usually means the beginning of the end for a show for me. I ended up deleting the entire 1st Season of Agents of Shield from my DVR after I couldn’t pull the trigger on watching the 4th episode. Btw, where’s this weeks Better Call Saul recap?

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      I haven’t watched this week’s episode of Better Call Saul yet. I don’t know if that’s a show that really needs to be recapped every week.

      I watch a lot more shows than I have time to write about here.

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      That wasn’t meant as a slight against the series. However, in general, genre shows (action, horror, sci-fi, superheroes, etc.) provide more fodder to write about in recaps than a drama. At least, that’s how I feel as the guy who has to write them.

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