Saturday 7 March 2015

Agent Carter: The Blitzkrieg Button

"Hey, can I borrow the sports section?"

Yes, it's the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, sitting on a park bench. He's 94, you know.

A confession: I have in fact seen the whole series of Agent Carter, having intravenously injected the whole addictive series a few days ago. Try as I might to maintain dramatic irony, I know how it ends. I shall discuss the hows and wherefores at the end, but in the meantime you may wish to look up the YouTube channel of a certain MrVortexofDOOM, especially if you're partial to reconstructions of missing Doctor Who. It's jolly good.

Anyway...

This episode is where we really get to know Howard Stark. Then again, we already do; he's a genius millionaire playboy, exactly like his son, and he does absolutely nothing that you can't imagine being played by Robert Downey Jr. Dominic Cooper is an excellent second best, though. The scenes with him "hiding" in Peggy's apartment are a hoot.

I also loved the '40s science lab, and the proto-James Bond pen. But the episode is mainly about a big plot twist; Howard's big, dangerous MacGuffin is not in fact a big bomb but Steve Rogers' Super Soldier blood. This, naturally, is not without meaning for Peggy. And the temperature is rising for our Peg, technically committing treason although, it must be said, Jarvis seems to be more worried on her behalf than she dies. Their relationship is touching; alone of all the men in this (well, besides Stark), he respects her and I'm so glad there's no suggestion of sexual attraction between them, which would entirely spoil things.

We end, though, with Peggy beginning to harbour doubts about Stark; were all the risks she ran for nothing? And what of her blonde neighbour's propensity for duffing people up? Halfway through, and this is more and more intriguing. This is gripping stuff.

This blog post was brought to you by a man with his baby daughter in one arm, so hopefully there aren't too many typos...!


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