Agent Carter Episode 8: Valediction

Previously: Everything.

Back to the radio show!  3 out of 4 Hollywood stars recommend Diamond soap.  Be a Diamond girl! Captain America has saved an infantry, but his plane is going down over the Sea of Japan. Betty Carver confesses her love, “face wet with loving tears” but she hears only silence.

At the movie theater, Peggy, JackOff, and Sousa are at the movie theater, where a police detective is giving them the rundown on what’s in there: 47 dead, heads bashed in, eyes gouged out, no survivors. There’s a line of white shrouded bodies in the lobby, and the detective says it looks like a monster got to them. Peggy and Sousa examine one, who has bite and scratch marks, and Peggy’s like “THE MONSTER IS WITHIN.” Okay, she’s less dramatic, but they did all kill each other.

In the theater proper, Sousa sees the baby carriage and panics, thinking he’s gonna find a baby, but instead finds the pink blanket, and the gas canister. He picks it up, and it sprays in his face. He starts coughing, and JackOff runs over to help. Sousa glares for a long second and goes for him, hands around JackOff’s neck. Peggy runs over and gets a fist to the face for her trouble, and a uniformed cop cracks Sousa over the head and knocks him out.

In the car, Shrink and Dottie are driving, marveling over the city of light, when they get pulled over. Dottie’s ready to just kill the cop and move on with her life, Shrink’s like, how about no, don’t draw extra attention to ourselves. Dottie turns on the Iowa: “Did I do somethin’ wrong, officer?” She blew through a stop sign, and with the wide-eyed Iowan girl and the dotty old man who had bad experiences from the war, the officer sends them off with a “get home safe.” As the officer goes back to his car, however, he hears on the radio that the car he just pulled over was reported stolen by an armed and dangerous female. He tightens his hand on his flash light, and turns around to find Dottie behind him, with a smile we’ve seen on Natasha’s face and her gun out.

At a hospital (or possibly the SSR), Peggy is sitting next to Sousa’s bed, where he is still unconscious and in restraints. And an undershirt. Yum. He wakes up in a coughing fit, and has no idea what is going on, except that he feels like he swallowed a bag of shrapnel. He remembers the gas but nothing else. Peggy tells him he tried to kill JackOff, and then he remembers that he wanted to kill like, everyone (I have those days) and that he hit Peggy. He apologizes profusely, and she waves it off. “How do you feel now?” He ponders.

He’s fine.

In the office, JackOff posits that the scientists have figured out that the gas induces violent psychosis, and Shrink has 10 cannisters of it.  Peggy is trying to figure out what the real plan is. Why did Shrink go to all the trouble to get brought into the US and steal the gas? Other than chaos and destruction, there needs to be a real plan, a real target. “The target is me,” Howard Stark announces, strutting in with Jarvis.

All of the SSR boys pulls their guns on Howard, and Jarvis throws his hands in the air like he just don’t care.

Sousa demands to know how Howard got in. “You know who designed the security for this place?”

“Yeah, the same people who do security for the White House.”

“Exactly.  They stink.”  Welp.

“I know,” Howard says to Peggy.  “You missed me.”

In the conference room, JackOff tells Howard he’s under arrest. Howard is unconcerned and eyes Sousa’s leg. “I could help you with that.” JackOff puts DoucheBoss and Douche Number 2’s death on Howard, along with the 47 people in the theater.  Howard’s like I know, I came back because of that, but look! He’s brought the info on the Battle of Finnow. Turns out that all the torn up dead soldiers there are on him, too. “You invented on a poison gas?”

“NO. Not intentionally.”

What he tried to invent at the request of the army was something that would keep soldiers awake for days on end. Turns out that’s unhealthy, and would cause symptoms of sleep deprivation, such as anger, hallucinations, psychosis, etc. He didn’t use it in Finnow; his lab was raided and the army else used it to help the Russians take Finnow, and well.  Chaos happened.

Sousa says that he’s experienced it, and Howard is surprised. It also can cause asphyxiation (told you). But the sore throat would explain the voiceless men that we saw earlier in the season.  Shrink is also in the files Howard brought: he’s a shrink with a specialty in hypnosis. Howard says that Shrink wants Howard, so let’s set Howard up as bait. In super public.

Dottie and Shrink drive up to an airplane hangar, where a mechanic yells at them to scram and Dottie hops out .“I’ll take care of it.  HAY MISTER HAY I JUST GOT SO LOST.”  On the radio, an announcement comes on that Howard Stark has returned a hero, and there will be a press conference on the steps of city hall to annoucne the breakthrough in the theft of Stark Stuff. Dottie beats the crap out of the mechanic, and Shrink is like CHANGE OF PLANS, we’re gonna go get us some Stark.

Howard carefully trims his ‘stache, and Peggy and Jarvis try to convince him that this whole press conference is a terrible idea. Peggy’s got body armor for him, and he dismisses it as junk. “Where’s my stuff?” They go to the lab, and Howard is appalled at the conditions: photosensitive things in the light, things that need to be kept cool in the window, and things lying on the wrong side (It looked like a tape gun you get at Uhaul).  Peggy tries to get him to admit there could be better plans, and he’s having none of it. “Name one.  NAME THREE.”  He’s having huge piles of guilt for having accidentally invented the stuff. Peggy tries to talk him down, but he’s not having it. He finds the body armor he was looking for, and snags the orb with Steve’s blood in it on the way out when Peggy isn’t looking.

At the press conference, Howard gets JackOff to declare him innocent, and also calls him a hero and that the SSR is humbled by his brilliance. Peggy is managing the troops covering the rooftops when shots are fired. Everyone scatters, JackOff sends Jarvis and Howard to a car in a back alley. Peggy sees the window the shots are coming from and she and JackOff head for it. Jarvis gets Howard into a police car which takes off before Jarvis can get in. It’s being driven by the cop that pulled Dottie and Shrink over earlier, and Shrink would like to see Howard, please and thank you. Jarvis runs out to find Sousa to tell him that he lost Stark.

Peggy and JackOff burst into the hotel room the shots are coming from, and it’s got an automated rifle in the window but no Dottie. Peggy checks the aiming, and the gun was aimed far above the podium. It was a diversion. “Diversion from what?” JackOff asks, just as the radio announces that Howard’s been kidnapped.

Howard is trying his best to bribe the cop into letting him go: cars, planes, money, Rosalind Russell’s private number. Nothing works.

Peggy and JackOff talk through the situation, Shrink wants revenge on Howard for the Battle of Finnow, he’s got to have a fate worse than death planned, and where would you find a huge group of people in New York? Peggy notes people heading in the same direction holding American flags.  “What day is it?”

“May 8th” JackOff says, and they both get “oh FUCK ME” looks on their faces. It’s V-E Day, everyone is going to celebrate, and Shrink is going to hit Times Square.

Sousa and Jarvis find the police car and the dead cop, but no Howard. Everyone agrees this is very bad.  Dottie and Howard are in the back of another car, Dottie with a gun and Hoard trying to use his charm, as it were. She realizes that he doesn’t remember her, and he’s like “um….should I?”

“You and I spent a nice weekend together?”

He’s got nothing. “Is it Alice?”  She punches him in the face, and no one has a problem with that.

Sousa finds a witness who saw Dottie put Howard in the car, and saw that they were heading for the Lincoln tunnel. He’s called Port Authority to stop them at the tolls. Peggy wonders why they’re trying to leave the city. JackOff tried to get someone, anyone with authority to call off the V-E Day celebration, but no one will do it. There’s 100K people in Times Square already, the gas is meant to be deployed by air, so they did shut down all the airports and airfields. Jarvis realizes where they’re headed. They’d use one of Howard’s planes, right?  It would have a certain art to it. JackOff says they confiscated them all, and Jarvis is like “welllllllllllll there’s this other larger vault….”

There’s a flashback to the weekend Dottie and Howard spent, where he shows off his vault of toys. Three of them fly themselves. In the present, Howard is tied to a chair, and Dottie hits him a few times while he tries to remember her name.  Shrink begins to monologue: the gas exists only because of Howard, and Shrink only survived Finnow because he had a gas mask, but his comrades including his brother were not so lucky. Shrink has had Howard as his singular focus since then. “Whatever, kill me, just leave innocent people out of this.”

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you.”

Howard begs.  “I’m not a bad person.”

“Yes.  Yes, you are.  It’s the only way to have achieved such success.”

Shrink begins to work his hypnosis: go back to a time that held your greatest shame. Howard finds himself on an icefield with a plane, and a pilot comes running up.  “We think we got a signal for the Valkyrie!  We think we found Captain Rogers!”  Peggy appears behind him, in a blue fedora and holding Steve’s shield.  “Bring him home.”

In the real world, Howard takes off as Peggy and Jarvis drive up.

Peggy, Sousa, JackOff and Jarvis work out a plan. Someone needs to take a plane up to shoot Howard down if they can’t talk him down in the next 12 minutes and Jarvis is the only one who’s flown a plane before. He’s willing to go up, and he’s willing to shoot down Howard if that’s what it takes. (He’s never looked hotter.)  (HEY JAMES D’ARCY HEY)

Peggy finds Shrink and Dottie in an office on the radio; she’s got a shotgun. At her command to put their hands up, Dottie reaches for a gun and Peggy isn’t having it. “Lose the gun.”

Dottie turns, “Peggy, it’s so swell to see you” and kicks the shotgun and it’s on.

The brawler and the dancer go head to head.  “Isn’t this fun!”

Jarvis is ready to go, but needs a minute to say that he’s never shot a man down. JackOff says that if Peggy can find Shrink, Jarvis won’t need to.

While brawling, Peggy tries to yell for Howard to snap out of it.  Dottie sends Shrink away, and finds a baseball bat. “I used to be so jealous of girls like you. I would have done anything to walk like you, to talk like you…. but now I can be anybody I want!” They fight more, and it’s vicious.  Peggy gets knocked into a chair, and Dottie sighs. “I thought you’d be better.” Peggy was just taking a second to rest, and ducks as Dottie smashes the window down into the hanger, and then Peggy uses Dottie’s momentum to send her out the window and smashes her head on a plane.

She radios to Sousa and JackOff that she’s got control of the radio room, but the Shrink is still at large.  Peggy then tries to get through to Howard that he needs to come back, but he’s stuck in the delusion that he’s going to find Cap. “Don’t worry Peg.  There are no civilians where I am.”

JackOff gets smashed in the head by Shrink, and Sousa sees him across the hangar.  He’s got his gun out, and crutches across, while Shrink is blathering about focusing on his pain and war damaged us all, blah blah blah. Peggy keeps talking to Howard. “I’m bringing Cap back, Peg!”

Shrink keeps talking, “I see how you look at Agent Carter, but she will never value you.  You can fix all that, though, if you aim at Agent Thompson and pull the trigger.” JackOff wakes up at this statement and shits his pants. Sousa holds the gun on JackOff, then pistol whips Shrink across the face, and pulls ear plugs out.  “Was he saying something?”

Jarvis tells Peggy that he’s got Howard in his sights, and asks if he should take the shot. They’ve got a mile before land.

Peggy keeps talking. Howard thinks he’s found Cap, “I can fix this!  Project Rebirth was the one thing I’ve done that’s good.” Peggy says that she knows Howard loved Steve, and so did she, but she needs Howard to stay, as he’s the only person on this earth who believes in her. “Steve is gone, we have to move on, all of us.  We have to let him go.”

Howard asks if Steve was “good before I get a hold of him, eh?”

“Yes, yes he was.” Howard wakes up and realizes that he’s en route to Manhattan, and he and Jarvis turn for home. Peggy comes down from the office and Dottie is gone. JackOff and Sousa have Shrink gagged, and Howard tells Jarvis that shooting him down was the wrong call. Howard hugs Jarvis, who Britishly tolerates it. Everyone wins!

Howard remembers that Dottie was Ida when he was banging her.

Dawn over New York. Peggy walks into the office to a round of applause from the men, and JackOff says that he assumes that means she’ll be staying with the SSR?  “Haven’t decided, actually.  Just came to pick up my paycheck.”  Sousa tells her they’ll keep the desk free.

A bunch of dudes swagger in and demand to know which one is Agent Jack[Off] Thompson? They are a senator and crew, and have the personal thanks from Truman.  “We need more men like Agent Thompson fighting for freedom and security!” JackOff holds true to his character and accepts the thanks.  Everyone sorta looks at Peggy awkwardly.

Sousa is pissed and is about to go tell the Senate what really happened. And Peggy’s like no.  I know my value, and no one else’s opinion really matters. Sousa then sacks up and asks Peggy out for a drink, and she says demurely, that she’s got to meet a friend and maybe another time. He accepts this with obvious disappointment, but good grace, and she looks at him speculatively.

Jarvis opens a door into a large, wood paneled room and Angie (YAY ANGIE) only doesn’t drop a bunch of f-bombs because this is a network show. Peggy enters behind her and Brithses that “it’s a bit a small side, isn’t it?”

“One of Mr. Stark’s quainter residences.  6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, library has an adequate collection for first editions.”  Peggy and Angie can stay there as long as they want, since their home and jobs have been messed up by Howard.  Angie runs off to call her mother; there is a phone in every room.

Jarvis is going to reorganize his kitchen spices, but should Peggy ever need him again, please call.  Howard is negotiating for his stuff back, and then he’s going to take Elrond’s advice and destroy it. Jarvis then gives Peggy the vial of Cap’s blood, which is from Jarvis, not Howard. Howard doesn’t know that it still exists. Jarvis feels sure that Peggy will know what to do with it.

And she does. She takes it to the Brooklyn Bridge, and pours it into the water.  “Goodbye my darling.”  And she looks off into the sun, into the future.

Shrink is brought into a cell with a horrid mask on his face that keeps him from talking.  In that cell is Toby Jones, who wants to hear Shrink’s thoughts on hypnosis.  “I know things seem bleak, but you are in fact a fortunate man. I know you are in prison, but it is an American prison, and America is the land of opportunity.”

RHG:

And there we have it.  No word yet on if Agent Carter will be renewed, but I’m hopeful.

I am disappointed in JackOff. I ain’t surprised, and I ain’t mad, I’m just disappointed.  The show runners described him as not learning anything, but I think in the end he has. He learned that Peggy is the shiz-nit and that she’s more capable that he is.  I honestly believe that at the beginning that never occurred to him, but now he knows, and he’s actively made a choice to not give her the credit she deserves. There’s willful ignorance, and then there’s active malfeasance. JackOff should watch it, because Peggy can kill him and make it look like an accident.

Haley Atwell is a gift, and she deserves the BEST career. She’s game, she’s talented, she has chemistry with everyone, and she gets mad when cake isn’t real.  Peggy gave us a heroine who is vicious and ANGRY and uses all of that to her advantage.  She isn’t an elegant weapon like Nat or Dottie.  She isn’t all ruthless efficiency like Melinda May. She’s the pit bull that charges in, takes a grip, and won’t let go.  Given the climate that working women found themselves in once WWII ended, this is a survival tactic.

I really loved this show.  It wasn’t perfect, but if it gets picked up, I hope there’s more representation of PoC and that’ll go a long way.  I think Marvel can suck it up and do more female-led things.  WE WANT OUR BLACK WIDOW MOVIE DAMMIT.

CarrieS:

I loved this episode but was also a bit let down by it.  So many great lines and moments:

Dottie:  “Just since I left the car?”

Howard rearranging stuff in the lab.  Also, “Ida!”  (Never change, Howard).

All the snark from Thompson.  Oh, Thompson.  I was just about to get a teensy crush on you but you are still a jerk, so…no.

“I still want to kill Thompson, but no more than usual”.  Also, ear plugs.

Hello Black character – and goodbye.  Before the Internet starts raving about the historic impossibility of a black cop in that day and age, allow me to indulge in a historical interlude.  The first African American police officer in New York City was Samuel Battle, who signed on in 1858 and retired in 1951.  Brooklyn had African American police officers on the force before Battle, including Battle’s brother-in-law Moses Cobb, but Battle was the first to join after the police force of Brooklyn merged with that of New York City (http://www.blackpast.org/aah/battle-samuel-james-1883-1966).  See, show?  That wasn’t so hard.  Next season, maybe you could even include a PoC who lives for longer than one episode.

I liked it that Peggy found a way to say goodbye to Cap, and that everyone in the office knows that she’s capable of great things.  It makes me optimistic for the next season, because I want a show which addresses sexism and grief without being permanently, endlessly mired in sexism and grief.  Clearly, Peggy still has to deal with sexism, but at least most of her co-workers respect her now, so yay.

I was disappointed that Peggy had almost a supporting role in this episode; it was so much about Howard.  How many times does Hayley Atwell have to beg a guy in a plane not to do something heroic/stupid?  And her speech about knowing her value was terrific, but also pissed me off, because Peggy, it’s not all about you, OK?  I’m not saying you are solely responsible for creating gender equality in the workplace, but when you just fade into the background because you know your value and you don’t need credit, it means a lot of other women don’t get credit either.  I’m tired of knowing my value. I want to actually get equal pay/respect/rights/credit.

My wish list for the next season:

More storylines revolving around women, less in which Peggy’s story serves as a support for the various angsty problems of men around her, and more people with color.  And gadgets.  I love gadgets.  The more the better.