Like father like son. This week’s episode served as a proper introduction to Howard Stark, and revealed what he’s really been up to. That’s right — he’s been trying to recover a vial of Steve Roger’s blood!
This will be my first episode review that doesn’t have a glowing paragraph about Jarvis. That’s mainly because he took the backseat this episode, and didn’t have much to do thanks to Howard being back in the picture. I do hope this won’t be an issue if Howard continues to play a key part in upcoming episodes, which I do hope happens. I will say that Jarvis sadly had one of the most cringe-worthy moments in the episode. Scratching his ear? Did he really think he was fooling anyone? Was he honestly completely unaware he was doing that? This butler keeps so many secrets that he probably has trouble keeping them all straight at times, yet he has such an obvious tell?
Like father, like son.
The SSR crew got some fleshing out this week! Let’s start with Dooley and his trip to the prison. The scene showed that Dooley knows how to manipulate a man, and it was cool to see that he isn’t afraid to ride the line of what’s wrong and right in terms of getting information. That being said, how did that Hydra Agent fall for the fake cyanide? Don’t most Hydra Agents usually already have them? I would assume he must have seen what a capsule or cyanide looks like, and it’s quite different from a breath mint. I am also very curious about this conspiracy he has unearthed, and I’m wondering how/if it will connect with the MCU and Agents of SHIELD.
Thompson proved how seriously he took his job, while also showing that he is a man of simple solutions. I really like the scene where he gets the information by just offering a bottle of scotch (or whatever alcohol it was) and a sandwich. This leads me to Sousa, the SSR agent oddly skilled with his crutch. Sousa took action this week by apprehending the man at the dock and trying to get information from him by connecting their war experiences. While his efforts were undercut by Thompson’s blunt approach to the situation, it highlighted Sousa’s nice guy character. Sousa was also responsible for the best line of the episode when he started telling the story, then paused before saying “This isn’t a joke.” His delivery was gold.
Who’s behind the newspaper?
While not the best episode of Agent Carter, the show is still on a good track by telling a consistently good, naturally flowing story that thankfully has not dropped deep into “case of the week” storytelling. Jarvis’s bad tells aside, I hope he comes back into the picture next week, and I also hope Stark comes back relatively soon. It was nice to see the SSR crew get more fleshed out, and that Dottie twist was an awesome way to keep viewers like myself wanting more.
Article by contributor Russ Millheim.
I honestly thought this episode was pretty weak compared to the rest. Yes, it did flesh out the SSR agents more, but it also felt like a LOT of filler going on. What the agents were actually doing either felt inconsequential, or too obscure to actually be interesting… I mean, Sousa and Thompson’s entire act hinged on interrogating a fucking street bum, and had no real payoff to it aside from a bit of character development.
I also felt like this episode made several of the mistakes that the early Agents of SHIELD episodes made. In which they set up several mysteries at once, but barely elaborating anything substantial about them in order to actually care. Just as Agents went too overboard with the “Ooooh! May, Coulson, Grant and Skye all have veeery mysterious pasts! And we’re not going to explain a single bit about them aside from the fact that it’s mysterious!” This episode also went too overboard with all of these questions.
Of course, I guess it helps that being only 8 episodes long, we’re going to get answers much more quickly… But then, you could also make the argument that being 8 episodes long, this show has no excuse to be so filler-heavy.