Sunday, February 28, 2016

Marvel’s Agent Carter 2.09: “A Little Song and Dance”

“Unlike you, I’m not a murderer.”
“And yet everyone around you dies.”
- Peggy and Jarvis

Much like the last episode, this one has a lot of emotion in it, too. It’s kind of like all hands on deck as we round the final bend to the season finale. Before we get into the real meat of the episode though, we get that great dream sequence. It starts off in black and white and Peggy has a chat with her dead brother, Michael. He says he wishes he could be by her side and then things take on a green tinge as Peggy winds up back at the coffee shop in New York with Angie. The dream sequence then transitions into a big song and dance number about Peggy choosing between Wilkes and Sousa. I have to say I laughed pretty hard at this bit. It was a great bizarre way to kick off the episode and address the lingering romantic issues. Sure, Wilkes kind of betrayed them but he also sort of didn’t have a choice. When Peggy wakes up, she and Jarvis are in the back of a truck and tied up. Peggy is also extremely cross with Jarvis for what he did. He’s not apologizing though. Once they make their escape, they do get to have some very harsh but needed words with one another. It was almost as emotional as when he was pleading with Anna to wake up. Some of what he’s feeling is clearly related to the fact that he and Anna no longer can have children and she doesn’t know yet. Once that little chestnut is revealed, some of Peggy’s anger disappears. But they don’t have time to hug it out because Whitney and her boyfriend have realized they’ve escaped and have sent goons after them to kill them. Lucky for our heroes, Peggy is a badass and a quick thinker and gets the jump on them. She’s off to try and stop Whitney but she tasks Jarvis with being by Anna’s side in the hospital. Anna is touched that he would show up and pamper her so much but she insists he needs to go help Peggy see the mission through. She really is a remarkable woman. He also gets to tell her the truth about their childbearing issues. We don’t actually hear the scene but I’m sure it was emotional.

Elsewhere in the desert, Jack, Sousa and the scientist are in similar dire straits with goons. These ones were sent by Vernon though and are supposed to kill all of them. But with some smooth talking by Jack and a strategically timed gut punch to Sousa’s belly, they all get back to the SSR alive. And thus begins the plan with about six different layers to it that carries us through the rest of the episode.

At first we think Jack is playing just Vernon and that he convinces Vernon to let Sousa and the scantiest fix the canon to deliver to Whitney so they can kill her. Since they all kind of have dirt on each other, they will all stay quiet so no one has to get shot in the head. Lucky for the boys, Vernon buys this plan. Of course things are a little touch and go when Peggy gets back and starts pounding on Vernon. Girl’s got some swing on her! They kind of fill her in on the plan before Jack heads out to get Whitney to agree to some more time to fix the canon.

She’s running out of time, or rather Wilkes is. He can only hold back the Zero Matter for a little while longer which annoys Whitney because she has been trying for hours to extract it from him. He’s concerned that he’s kind of a nuclear weapon now and will take out everyone but she doesn’t care. She just wants what she think she’s owed. Which lets her buy into Jack’s lie about Vernon double crossing her. He claims he wants a seat on the Council and he’ll deliver Vernon to her. And that’s not even the biggest double cross going down on this plan!

Peggy and Sousa find out through the scientist that Jack wanted him to turn the canon into a bomb with a remote trigger that runs on radio waves. He says Jack said it was Sousa’s idea. I suppose this is one way to take out Whitney and Vernon in one fell swoop. But it also potentially kills Wilkes and Peggy isn’t okay with that. So she and Sousa demand the scientist build a device to jam the signal. Peggy isn’t going to sit around and wait for him to get the device working. She needs to rescue Wilkes.

But it turns out that she’s not going to be able to save him. He says that all the things he did (including holding a gun to her head) were of his own volition, not the Zero Matter talking and he ends up locking himself in the facility and forcing Peggy to leave before he goes boom. Also trying to get out before things go boom is Jack. He pulls a gun on Vernon after they show Whitney how to use the device. He tosses Vernon under the proverbial bus and then ducks out. Whitney is going to kill Vernon so that solves one problem. But when Jack goes to blow the place, the trigger doesn’t work. After much shouting and arguing by the SSR team, the trigger is made active again. But it’s unclear whether Jack actually gets to press the button. Because just as Whitney realizes that Jack did, Wilkes stumbles into the room and all of the Zero Matter comes pouring out of him almost like Venom from Spiderman.

I must admit that’s one hell of a way to end the penultimate episode. I honestly can’t imagine how they are going to wrap everything up in the final hour. There’s so much left to be dealt with that I almost wish it was another two hour episode. But we’re only being gifted with one so they writers had better do a bang up job.

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