Agent Carter 1x08

[psocoptera]

Mehhhh. Okay, I am usually one to love parallels and you'd think I would have been all over Peggy Carter on the radio with another dude flying a plane. Except, look, the first dude was the title character of his movie and *Peggy* was supposed to be the title character of her show here and instead this episode totally centered Howard's guilt and Howard in the plane. Peggy on the radio telling him he's the only one who believed in her made me sick, when a) we saw the Howling Commandos believing in her just fine, b) Howard doesn't believe in her at all, he thought he could use her as his patsy and c) I don't know, Angie? Jarvis? Sousa and Thompson, at that point? Fucking Dooley, who told *her* to go get his revenge? Also, Peggy, you had the back of Dottie's head in your rifle sights. WTF with this "hands up" business, you should know better. I know from a Doylist perspective we want to see them go hands-on, but I would have loved to see Peggy take the shot and miss for some plausible reason - a sudden noise outside makes Dottie turn at exactly the wrong second - and *then* they could have had their fight. Also, wait, so was Leviathan and the telegraph typewriter and the whole thing just this hypnotist guy out for revenge on Howard Stark? I kind of thought there was something more going on there.

Comments

[sildra.livejournal.com]

I agree that Peggy should have taken that shot.

I think there is more to Leviathan, since it's tied to the Black Widow program, and that's Soviet government, isn't it? (Wikipedia's article on Natasha Romanoff says yes.) I think the hypnotist guy was just a relatively high commander in Soviet special ops, so he got to be in charge of the mission for wreaking havoc on NYC, including all the creative planning phases, and decided to use it as an opportunity to get revenge on Howard Stark. There was a flashback about recruiting him to Leviathan, after all. I don't know whether he's the one who recruited other veterans of Finow to Leviathan, or whether the higher ups liked his plan and gave him the Finow vets they already had, figuring they'd be the most motivated for this particular mission. I think it's the latter, though, because I get the sense that Leviathan saved those people missing their vocal cords from Finow, and hypnotist guy was recruited later.

I'd like to think Peggy was just saying what she had to say to snap egomaniacal Howard Stark out of his hypnosis. That's probably not what the writers intended, but oh well.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

Hypnotist guy = dr Fenhoff = dr Faustus = Faustus method.
Aka mind control used on Bucky Barnes in Winter Soldier and by Whitehall in SHIELD.
Leviathan = soviet head of hydra

I think Peggy's point this ep was that she didn't need the attention/recognition - she knows who believes Iin her - her - and based on that she does what needs to be done. And if that means taking advantage of "a woman's place" or other misperceptions of her she will. Makes Dottie all the better foil to her. Because she does the same but in a completely different way and for all the wrong reasons.
Tl;dr I didn't have a problem with the Peggy/Howard plane situation in this ep and didn't feel it deminished her agency.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

The plane thing didn't bother me *too* much, though now I want to rewatch it -- I had very much read the "you're the only one who ever believed in me" as all or mostly just saying what she thought would snap Stark out of the hypnotism.

I was completely boggled by the whole "oh, I don't need their recognition" thing, though. No, she doesn't need shiny medals and handshakes from the mayor, but she does need their *respect*, which she clearly doesn't have yet even when the higher-ups aren't in the office. That's been a huge theme for the entire show, and then it just gets dismissed with an "oh, but SHE knows her own worth!" platitude. It wouldn't have bothered me nearly so much if it had come in the middle of an episode, in the middle of the season, since she certainly takes advantage of being able to fly under the radar to get stuff done, but as wrapup to the whole season, in an episode that was all about Howard Stark and Captain America, it left a really bad taste for me.

The rest of the show has been so consistently excellent that I really hope the second season happens and will redeem the finale.