Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Marvel's Agent Carter 1.02: "Bridge and Tunnel"

“Your line of work requires support, people who care about your well-being and who are there to stitch up your wounds.”
- Jarvis

Things pick up pretty much right where they ended in the pilot. Well except that we get some pretty funny bits with the “Captain America Adventure Hour” radio program where we see the voice actors reading the lines and such. It’s pretty ridiculous and Peggy is rather annoyed by the portrayal of herself. Elsewhere, the creepy green suited guy with the throat scar (who is apparently not in fact Leviathan) gets orders to track down James Frain’s character and the bombs. He ends up killing the guy from the diner who was being really rude to one of the waitresses. Meanwhile, Peggy’s in the market for a new apartment and Jarvis and Stark insist she uses one of Stark’s non-primary residences. It’s quite swanky and she agrees to stay one night but she’s not letting Jarvis join her on her missions to search for the milk truck full of explosives. She’s quite good at doing different accents I must admit and she snows the milk distributor guy into letting her look at all the trucks. She’s got one missing and I’m betting it’s the one she’s looking for. Meanwhile, Thompson and his boss get what is left of the facility where the bomb exploded and one of the lesser agents is assigned to pull it apart. Back at the office, Peggy is heading out to find the driver of the missing truck when photos come back from the party she was at (pretending to be blond). Seems like she might get caught after all.

She gets a reprieve when said lesser agent order Sousa to go pull the wreck apart. He locks the photos in a desk drawer and so now Peggy has to find a way to get to them (via a lock pick hidden in a broach) before anyone notices. Unfortunately, Sousa comes back and the chief calls after a meeting with the owner of the facility that imploded. They want Peggy to test the female employees to see if any of the radiation is still lingering on them. Of course that means that it’s still lingering on Peggy. But at least she’s gotten Jarvis to get rid of Stark’s car that also has radiation still on it. She scans herself in the bathroom and finds her watch is what’s still radioactive so she ditches it. In the process of the scanning the employees she comes face to face with the guy who was making the bombs and after she points out that they should check the clothes the people wore to work that day, he bolts and Thompson gives chase. Quite calmly, Peggy heads down to the lobby and knocks the guy down as he’s running with a briefcase. We then get a rather stereotypical good cop, bad cop routine completely with an actual stick and carrot. Kind of ridiculous really.

Peggy heads to the diner to wait for Jarvis to pick her up and the waitress, Angie, insists that Peggy move into the vacant apartment in her building. But knowing how dangerous her profession is and still reeling from her other roommate getting shot in the head while she slept, she’s hesitant to take the place. Understandable, really. Peggy gripes a bit more about the Captain America Adventure Hour as they head out to find the milk truck driver. It seems to be a race now between her, her SSR colleagues and the man in the green suit working for Leviathan. She gets there first and after telling Jarvis to go home, she knocks the truck driver around a bit. She’s barely had time to partially handcuff him to a chair when the thief tries to steal the truck full of bombs. But Jarvis didn’t go home and he sabotaged the engine. Peggy orders him to fix it while she tries to get some answers and she learns that Leviathan is an organization that he used to work for but he double-crossed them. Before she can find out what they were really after, Jarvis reports the truck driver is missing and once on the road, the guy hunting the thief jumps on top of the truck. Well, damn. Things are heating up quickly. Let’s hope those bombs don’t go off!

Peggy gets into quite the fight with the green-suited guy and she eventual stabs his hand to the top of the truck before diving off along with Jarvis and an unfortunately dying thief. The truck goes into the water and explodes because in the commotion one of the bombs came loose. Peggy tries to get answers on what Leviathan wants and all she gets before the thief dies is a weird drawing in the sand. Thompson and their boss arrive on scene shortly after Jarvis and Peggy get away (they picked up the truck driver still cuffed to the chair). They are still trying to figure out how Stark is connected and they think the blond from the club is their next link. Lucky for Peggy she was good at dodging the cameras and never showed her face. Unfortunately, during the scuffle she dropped her hotel key and got shot. As Jarvis is stitching her up, he suggests that she needs to be more reliant on people because no matter what she thinks, she can’t save the world herself. Even Captain American couldn’t do it. In fact, according to Jarvis, Cap relied on Peggy for his strength and support. How touching. And, given that she needs a place to live, she ends up taking the vacant apartment at Angie’s building. The landlady is kind of obnoxious but Peggy gives all the answers that mollify her into offering the place.

As the episode comes to a close, one of the SSR agents who is pulling apart the wreck that was once the facility, he finds the bumper form Stark’s car (which is likely now stolen after being left in Hoboken with the keys in the ignition) and the license plate. Peggy was right to ditch the car but it isn’t going to look very good for Stark going forward. I have a feeling that this is going to be the running theme of the remaining six episodes. I think with such a short episode order a more serialized element is a good thing. We’ll see if the ratings agree going forward and if ABC decides to bring it back next year to bridge SHIELD’s hiatus.

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