Agent Carter: 2.05 “The Atomic Job”

SERIOUSLY WHERE IS MY ANGIE

AFTER A VERY LONG PREVIOUSLY ON:

Peggy is asleep, and is woken up by Jason calling her name – she pulls a gun. He asks her to come down to the lab, where they have a chunk of blue-veined tissue from Jane Scott. Jason holds his hand next to the jar, and a bit of the Zero Matter pulls out of the tissue and follows his hand around like freaky mercury. He has no idea why it’s doing that. (I need Peggy’s bathrobe.) “It’s drawn to me. I’m drawn to it!” The Zero Matter breaks out of the jar and absorbs into Jason, and he goes all weird and his eyes turn black and he turns corporeal for a minute, and then he knows where Jane Scott’s body is.

Jarvis has been woken up (hair all askew) and Jason points to a map – it’s at this location, but he doesn’t know how he knows. But he KNOWS. Peggy has called Rose, who finds out that it’s a storage facility owned by one of Chadwick’s chums. Jason theorizes that if he could get the Zero Matter from Jane Scott’s body, it would cure him. “Jarvis, does Howard own a hearse?” “No… but he does own a woodie.”

Violet comes home to find her door cracked open – she enters her house armed with a baseball bat, and finds the table set for a nice dinner and Sousa snoring on the couch. He wakes up, “You scared me.” “Scared you? You broke into my house.” She had to cover an extra shift; that’s why she’s late. She goes to make coffee, chatting about the other nurse she had to cover for, while Sousa sits up and realizes that the ring (because it’s obviously the ring) is no longer in his pocket. He tries to keep up his end of the conversation while rummaging around for it, and she comes back to find him elbow deep in the couch cushions. “What are you looking for, I’ll help!” “You’ll know it when you see it.” Sousa is adorably awkward about it, and stumbles through a proposal. “None of my plans involved asking you to marry me with my hands in the couch because I lost the ring.” “Well, then let’s find it!” “Is that a yes, or….?” “OH YES.” They don’t find the ring, but she finds a quarter.

At the Chadwick’s, Whitney is talking in her sleep while Chadwick tries to sneak out. He fails to keep her from waking up, and she’s like good, you’re awake, let’s go.

Peggy is in the process of opening an air duct while Jarvis holds her up – he doesn’t want her scratching the hood of the car with her heels (great heels, btw) and they climb in like the team they are. “Me? In the vent?” “Isn’t that why you wore your recreation tie?”

In the vent, Jarvis is having a flashback to his granny’s house (“cold, cramped, and teeming with spiders”). They find the right room with Jane’s corpse, but before they can get down to it, Whitney and Chadwick come in. Whitney has Chadwick open the case. “It called me here. It wants to be let out. OPEN IT.” Whitney touches the corpse, and the Zero Matter pulls out of Jane’s body and into Whitney, whose eyes turn black. She blinks, and her eyes go back to normal, and she says, “I need an atomic bomb.” Peggy and Jarvis have witnessed all of this, so we’re well on our way to a heist.

Jason hypothesizes that she wants more Zero Matter, so she needs to replicate the original test. She’s a scientist, so she needs an atomic bomb in the same place, also the same kind of atomic bomb that’s made by the same company, Roxxon, so this is gonna be hard. Peggy: It’s not like we haven’t broken into Roxxon before. Jason: But we don’t know WHICH facility has the bombs. Jarvis: Well, actually….. Howard has had “extensive research” done on Roxxon, and there’s a facility outside of L.A. that has significantly more security – it’s basically impenetrable, so the bombs are probably there. Peggy: In my experience, nothing in impenetrable (Elyse made a crack about Steve Roger’s butt at this point, I’m certain).

Jarvis: Well, the elevator requires a key. We don’t need a key, we’ll blow the hinges. Which could trigger an explosion that would kill us all. Drill a hole? Will kill us all. Dig a hole? Kill us all.

“So, a key, you say.” Peggy ponders her next disguise.

Chadwick is aghast. “You can’t steal an atomic bomb.” Tell that to Nathan of Leverage. Whitney: If we can get more Zero Matter, we will run the Council. You’ve seen what I can do with just a small amount, and we’ll have ALL the power and fix the world and “You? You will get all the respect you deserve.” That gets his attention, and he’s like, okay, but how though? “I think it’s time we lean on my connections.”

Peggy comes into the SSR office to find Sousa telling the boys the story of his proposal, and she’s a little sad, a little upset, and still wishes him happy, then pulls him off to tell him about the plan. Thompson has asked how many vacation days she has left. “Plenty. I haven’t had a day off since Pearl Harbor.” But the meat of it is that she needs a disguise – she’s gonna break into Roxxon. Sousa expresses reservations – she did meet the guy last year, he’ll recognize her. “I’m sure he doesn’t pay that much attention to everyone he meets.” Sousa’s like okay, but the boys at the lab might have something than can help.

They bring down a piece of celebratory pie, and the lab tech is like what’s the catch. “No catch, just pie!” But if they could see that thing…? It’s a memory inhibitor that makes the subject forget the past two minutes. Might cause some temporary brain damage, though.

At Roxxon, the receptionist sashays to lunch, while Peggy, in a red wig with bangs, sneaks in to rummage though things. Hugh Jones comes in, and smarms at her that he thinks she looks familiar, she flirts back in a wispy American accent, saying she was sent in from Accounting. He’s about to go to lunch, but when he comes back, he’ll call her in and they can “crunch some numbers.” “I look forward to it!” she giggles, and then once to door is shut she drops into her regular accent:

  

She goes into his office, and starts going through his things, and once he’s in the elevator, he goes, “AGENT!” and stalks back. “I remember you! If the SSR wants to search my office, they’ll need a warrant!” and he hops on the phone. Peggy pulls the memory inhibitor from her bag and zaps his brain. “What’s your name, darling?” “Mr. Jones, you’re going to be late for lunch!” He makes it halfway down the hall this time before remembering “AGENT.” She zaps him when he comes in, and sees the poster on the wall: “The key is in you!” “Oh crumbs. He’s WEARING IT.” He wakes up a couple more times while she goes through his pockets, and then she sees his disgustingly large belt buckle. “You are saving the world, you are saving the world, you are saving the world.” Sure enough, the key is in the buckle, and she zaps him one more time for good measure. When he staggers out to find his receptionist, she asks him if he had a good lunch. He looks down at his rumpled, disheveled self. “I must have!”

Ew.

In a classy restaurant, Whitney and Chadwick walk up to a dude in a dark suit with a bunch of suited thugs. Whitney greets him as Joseph. Joseph teases Chadwick by threatening him for stealing (stealing Whitney, it’s implied). Joseph cuts to the chase – what do you want? Whitney says that Chadwick is gonna be a senator, and they’ll get Joseph’s people some highway contracts, and she needs some dudes. Joseph is agreeable, but also would like assurances that his thugs won’t show up in the paper anymore. Chadwick is like, I don’t know….. Joseph then whips out his dick by beating one of his thugs mercilessly for looking at Whitney, and Whitney agrees to his terms.

At Stark Manor West, Jarvis, Peggy, and Jason look over the plans for the building – guards, electrified fence, etc. Jason has been teaching Sousa how to defuse atomic bombs. “Sousa has the steadiest hands I’ve ever seen, since me.” They have to be very, very careful with the uranium rods, otherwise all of L.A. could go boom. Sousa ruins the moment by predictably dropping the practice rod. Since they will be going in unarmed and mostly blind, they need some more people – Sousa worries that the Arena Club has too many fingers in all the pies, so there’s no one they can trust, but Peggy has an idea.

ROSE! Sousa mansplains that Rose doesn’t have the field experience, while Peggy is like she’s your first line of defense for all of you, so… “I don’t want to worry about protecting Rose.” “I’m seeing Agent Sousa, but I’m hearing Jack(Off) Thompson.”

    

They’re outside the front office where another aspiring performer tries to get an agent. The auditioner gets a little too annoying, and Rose beats the shit out of him. She’ll be fine.

In the lab, Rose is super excited about going off on a field mission, and Sousa is fussing with an enhanced motion detector. LabGuy finds them, and Peggy returns the memory thingie. LabGuy doesn’t like people touching his stuff, and no amount of pie can fix that. Rose is like, “Did you like my pie?” “That was your pie? Your pie was….in me?” “Can we borrow your….equipment?” LabGuy wants to go along on the mission, not just send his toys. He had eleven job offers after the war, but chose the SSR because Sousa told him that he’d have an opportunity to go on field ops. LabGuy is ready to continue his speech, but Sousa is like “FINE.” Peggy: How can you be sure that he’s not in the pocket of the Council. Sousa: EVERYBODY hates [LabGuy].

The team power walks to the car (with LabGuy tripping) to “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and then Jarvis remembers that he left the car in another alley, so…. well it was a nice try.

At the facility, Rose and LabGuy hop out of the car, while Sousa (“This is a bad plan”), Jarvis (“This is a horrible plan”) and Peggy (“It’s a solid plan!”) hide in the trunk. Rose babbles that she and her husband are lost – “YES HUSBAND WE ARE VERY MARRIED”-  and they need directions. The guards say this is a restricted area, and they need to leave. LabGuy burbles more about his delight at his wife, and Rose hauls him away. He tosses a thingie that knocks out all the guards and the electric fence, and the trio emerge from the car. The guards are wearing expensive shoes and Rolexes – not something one would normally afford on a security guard’s salary.

In the elevator, Peggy tells everyone to keep their eyes and ears open, and the elevator door opens to drop a security guard’s body. Whitney is already there. Sousa leads them to the utility room that has a very convenient display of where the locks on all the doors are. LabGuy fusses with the wires and unlocks all the doors. “Good work….but now they’re open for Whitney Frost, too.” The display also indicates that one room has double-thick walls. Double-thick to keep in all that uranium.

Whitney stalks around with her hired thugs. “WHERE ARE MY BOMBS.”

LabGuy notes that the motion detector is saying that there’s someone forty feet away. Rose strides off to deal with it. The boys and Peggy head for the bombs. Rose finds a thug, and she beats the shit out him, even when he pulls a knife. GO ROSE GO. (Peggy, if you don’t bring her along when you create SHIELD, you’re wrong in all the ways.)

  

The crew finds the bombs, and Jarvis goes in to unpack Sousa’s equipment (DIRTY!) while LabGuy tries to lock doors between them and the bad guys. Instead, he locks Jarvis in with the bombs, while Peggy and Sousa are outside. Whoops. So Jarvis has to defuse the bombs with Sousa talking him through, and Peggy goes to handle Whitney. Jarvis demonstrates his total lack of chill.

Sousa has Jarvis begin with a deep breath, and begins the process: “Remove bomb from crate.”

Peggy brawls.

The bomb is now out of the crate – it’s bomb shaped – and Jarvis opens the panel, and Sousa says this is just like taking a souffle out of the oven. Jarvis looks dubious. LabGuy is grumbling that it’s not going well at ALL. “I finally get a chance to get out into the field and look at me! My father was right, I’ll never amount to anything.” Sousa does not have time for emotional labor for TWO people with zero chill. Rose appears behind him (with the knife) and delivers a pep talk. LabGuy is game, and then is like, “Rose, after all this is finished, I think you and I…” “AFTER YOU OPEN THE DOOR.”

Jarvis carefully gets the rod out of one bomb and into the case they brought (I assume it’s lead-lined so no one will give birth to a three-eyed fish or anything later). “Thank god.” “You can do that later. You still have one more rod to get.” Sousa turns to labGuy: “How’s the door coming?” “How’s the not-blowing-us-up coming?” “…fair enough.”

Peggy brawls more, and hears Whitney. Whitney is still yelling about not knowing where the bombs are, and Chadwick is trying to convince her to go home.

Rose offers to go back Peggy up, but Sousa says that no, the bombs are the priority, and once LabGuy gets the door open, they need to get the bombs and Jarvis (and Jarvis’ probably soiled pants) out, then they can go get Peggy. Rose nods like the fucking professional she is.

Chadwick says this whole thing is insane. “I NEED THEM.” “You won’t be getting them.” Peggy says that they might be able to fix Whitney, and Whitney doesn’t want to be fixed. “I’ve never felt more powerful in my entire life.” Whitney goes to grab Peggy, and Peggy ducks out of the way and punches Whitney. Whitney smiles. “I thought that would hurt more.”

LabGuy gets the door open, and Jarvis comes out. “That was NOTHING like taking out a souffle.” Sousa tells Rose to get Jarvis and LabGuy to the car, and if Sousa isn’t back with Peggy in ten minutes, they are to leave. “Yes, chief.”

Sousa reports they got the rods into the walkie talkie, and Whitney gets rull mad: she grabs Peggy and tries to Zero Matter her, but Peggy manages to break her grip and then is flung through a railing. Whitney finds her hanging by one hand and smirks. “Not everyone is cut out for Hollywood,” and peels Peggy’s fingers off the edge.

Peggy falls, and impales herself on some rebar. Sousa happens to be in the right place to see her. Chadwick hauls Whitney out, and Sousa pulls out a handkerchief for Peggy’s wound. That’ll help.

Sousa pounds on a door – it’s Violet’s house, and they have Peggy. Everyone has agreed that a hospital would be a terrible idea, so Violet is it. Violet sizes up the situation, and issues orders – Sousa is to get linens for bandaging, Jarvis needs to boil some water. Violet rummages through her bag – Sousa hasn’t moved, and Violet snaps at him to get moving. Violet begins by disinfecting the wound.

Whitney is on plan B – Chadwick (who I should have named Chad-dick four weeks ago) needs to convince Hugh Jones to run the Zero Matter test again. Chadwick has had enough – he throws a glass (not at Whitney – that seems important to specify) and he’s done with all this craziness. “You need to calm down. You are overreacting.” He’s mad that he’s in debt to an underworld thug and the Council doesn’t deal well with pleas for mercy. Whitney finally grabs him by the throat. “You watch your tone.” He gets what she means and probably pisses himself.

At Violet’s, Sousa is on the phone to Rose, and says that Peggy will be fine. The uranium rods are secure and Peggy sits up. “You really scared me there. Please don’t do that again.” Sousa is looking at her tenderly, and Violet can see him. “Get impaled? Yes, chief.” Peggy says. Violet bustles in, talking fast. The rebar very politely missed everything vital, and she’ll be fine, but Peggy needs “to be boring for a while.”

  

Jarvis brings the car around, and Peggy is ready to go. Violet offers to let Peggy stay there for a few days – she shouldn’t be moving around that much – but Peggy insists and Jarvis half-carries her out to the car.

Sousa thanks Violet (“so much”) for all her help, and Violet is like, look. You should have told me. Not about the mission. “You said you moved her because you wanted a fresh start, but that’s not the whole truth, is it? You were running away. Running away from Peggy.” “That’s not how it is!” “I think you’re in love with her.” Sousa can’t deny it.

Chadwick makes a phone call, and calls an emergency meeting of the Council.

At Stark Manor West, Jarvis tucks Peggy into bed with many blankets and fluffed pillows while Jason watches (not in a creepy way, he’s just there). Peggy just wants some sleep, and Jarvis should get some as well. “You did disarm an atomic bomb today.” “Two. Two atomic bombs.”

“You know, these adventures, they’re only enjoyable if you return from them.”

Jason asks if it hurts. “Not compared to the pain I felt when she touched me.” Jason: “The place where Zero Matter comes from – it’s dark. Painful. It’s not a place you want to be.”

“How do you know that?”

It’s a conversation for another night, but maybe tonight they can just listen to music? Peggy turns on the radio, and “I Wanna Be Loved” is on. They smile at each other – “Don’t we all.” Then Jason basically phases out of existence, leaving Peggy alone.

Carrie:

PEGGGYYYYY
ROOOOOOSSSSSEEE
NEEEEEEERRRRDD DUUUUDDDEEE

Do the showrunners have electrodes in my brain? Am I the subject in some sort of TV experiment? Because this episode was another example of the showrunners handing me everything on a platter that I didn’t even know I wanted (and next week we have Dottie OMG but where are Angie and Ana?). I did so much squeeing during this episode. And when Whitney said, “I need an atomic bomb!” my response was THAT IS SO HOT. Because apparently my sexual orientation is “men, and all the women in the Marvel franchise but especially the one who wants an atomic bomb for her birthday or for any day, really, any time is fine.”

It’s actually quite difficult for me to articulate anything about this episode because of all the squeeing. I love Violet, and I think she’s a better romantic partner for Sousa than Peggy. He needs someone who will cheer him on but also call him on his bullshit, which Violet does, and I much prefer Sousa and Peggy as supportive coworkers. Be as that may, I’m so glad that the show hasn’t demonized her and if they kill her or make her a villain, I’ll be super pissed. Her pragmatic reaction to the missing ring, her delight in finding the quarter, and her jumping into nurse mode were beautiful.

Rose is my everything.

This season has been so fun largely because where last season involved a lot of guy angst, this season has focused on how people respond to being undervalued and oppressed. Sometimes it handles it in a funny way. Sometimes, it’s tragic. Sometimes, it’s horrifying, and sometimes it’s inspiring but it’s always interesting, and because all the characters face variations on a common theme the season feels coherent and important even when it bounces between characters or shifts in tone. I also love the high degree of competence porn. The characters have different skills, but they are all incredibly intelligent which is sexy as hell. My one wish was that there be more room in each episode – I’m always missing someone. And I always miss Angie.

RHG:

ROSE IS EVERYTHING. Thank you show, for giving us a larger woman that isn’t mocked for her weight and beat the shit out of a dude and handle herself. She’s smart, and competent, and I adore her.

I am kind of disappointed that while we started the season acknowledging that there were black people living and working in L.A., we’ve drifted from that. I wish the show could have stuck with that through the season.