REVIEW: Agent Carter "The Atomic Job"
Welcome to the halfway mark for season two of Agent Carter. I realize that’s an odd thing to say after only five episodes, but this is the fact at this point. After this, every episode should be a race to the end, so this one should be both positive and a little slow. Then again, I think all the episodes of Agent Carter could be described like that now.
Returning from the mostly flashback last episode, Wilkes comes into contact with some residue zero matter from Jane Scott’s frozen body which makes him tangible for a few seconds and alerts him to where the Arena Club may be keeping her body. Only one minute in, and the season already tried to outweird itself. Anyway, Peggy and Jarvis conduct a new plan to steal a dead body. That should be fun. In other news, Sousa successfully proposes, and Whitney Frost also gets a call from Jane Scott’s body. This scene involves her sucking the zero matter from the frozen body and coming up with the idea that requires an atomic bomb. Again, ten minutes in, and this is definitely the weirdest episode of, well, anything.
Wilkes determines that Frost wants to recreate the experiment that made created the zero matter. Fortunately, atomic bombs even in the MCU are hard to find except for a particular location available to Howard Stark that requires a specific key. That is one thing that confounds me in Agent Carter that they seem to go to so many complicated plots and hoops to get to the basic goal of saving the world. Sure Agents of SHIELD had them too, but they usually involve superheroes as of late.
I will give it to Agent Carter for at least playing on the spy angle for the scene of stealing the key from Hugh Jones. I adore watching Peggy using a fake accent to fool people, and the addition of actual James Bond technology made it a fun scene that could only come from Agent Carter. I suppose that’s one upside to the series as a whole since the other shows are stuck in their darker-shading worlds.
The episode then changes from James Bond to Godfather when Frost and her husband make a deal with a mobster to get the men necessary to handle an atomic bomb job (ha! this title means something). Granted, since The Godfather came out in the 70’s, I can’t really judge where this comparison would even come from, but that had to be what the point was. There’s still one more movie comparison when we get Peggy’s own Dirty Half-Dozen with Wilkes, Sousa, Jarvis, Rose from the front desk, and Samberly from the lab. I guess the only thing I would fault for that group is the choice of music they used to walk out on, but I guess they have to remind us the show takes place in 1947.
Both Frost and Peggy head to the same facility in search for an atomic bomb. Inevitably with this group, things go downhill with Jarvis locked inside a room with the nuclear reactor that can destroy the entire city. Peggy, meanwhile, takes out the men and confronts Frost. Being the bigger person, Peggy offers Frost a chance to be cured. Being the crazy villain she’s destined to become, Frost fights Peggy off and pushes her off a railing, causing her TO IMPALE HERSELF INTO POLES.
Oh right, she lives up to The Winter Soldier. I have to admit, that was still a little shocking for a second. Sousa and Jarvis take Peggy to Sousa’s fiancée Violet’s house to get some patching up and, sure enough, she’s going to be fine. Also sure enough, Violet clearly determines that Sousa’s in love with Peggy. In other failures of the love department, Peggy and Wilkes have a conversation before Wilkes once again fades to oblivion. What body will they have to steal now?
As the literal middle of the season, I think this was a good middle of the way episode. I can’t help but think that the things in this episode will have nothing to do with the season finale, but there were a few highpoints of this story. I guess I’m starting to appreciate a more action-oriented Agent Carter. It’s undoubtedly more fun to put Peggy closer to the center, and it’s been exactly two episodes since we’ve seen Agent Thompson.
