Marvel's Agent Carter: Hollywood Ending

"I don't speak megalomaniac. Fortunately Mr. Stark does."

I've got a lot of TV series on the go and have started three more lately; time to finish one, I think. And the last episode of this season- indeed, it seems, the last episode ever- delivers in spades.

There are several types of season finales; this one, quite appropriately is a fun romp with lots of action, the good guys winning and Peggy finally getting the guy (Daniel) in a knowingly and delightfully cliched way. But the main thing is, of course, Howard Stark arriving like a whirlwind and, while not saving the day, becoming an indispensable part of the team with his wit and genius and, rather neatly, ending up with giving Jason a job; few others would in the racist 1940s. Even
Manfredi joins in as everyone uses cleverness to stop Whitney at long last. All this, and Howard putting golf balls into the portal to zero matter, as you do.

We end on a cliffhanger, as Jack is mysteriously shot dead and the dirt on Peggy stolen. Will
This ever get resolved? Regardless, this is a superb ending to an excellent two seasons. I'll miss Peggy Carter and co.

Marvel's Agent Carter: A Little Song and Dance

"We walk? We walk?! This is your grand plan???!!!"

It's unusual, and refreshing, that this penultimate episode begins with a little damage to the fourth wall- well, a dream sequence at least- in the form of a big song and dance number, featuring cast members past and present, culminating in Peggy's having to choose between Daniel and Jason. Then Peggy wakes up.

We still get a fast-moving, witty and fun piece of television, though, as Peggy and Jarvis first escape and then have a character moment in which they fall out and then reconcile. But here we face the fact that, for Jarvis, this has all been an adventure and that, with Ana's injury meaning infertility, this and s the first time that he, unlike Peggy, has to face the consequences.

Meanwhile Whitney tortures Jason to get the zero matter out of him and the rest of our friends, including Jack Thompson, are forced into an uneasy alliance with Masters to stop Whitney. This leads to a wonderful moment where the escaped Peggy walks into Masters' office and starts giving him a right old kicking. But soon they're all off, with yet another MacGuffin, to stop the troublesome Miss Frost. But, in amongst these scenes of action, double crossing and triple crossing, there's a heart-warming chat between Edwin and Ana Jarvis and, in a nice touch, we only watch silently through a window as he breaks the sad news to her. We end with Vernon Masters, a betrayer betrayed, suffering his deserved fate at the hands of Whitney as Jason walks into the room and explodes...

An awesome piece of television that really heightens my excitement for the finale.

Marvel's Agent Carter: The Edge of Mystery

"Lift the chorus, speed it onwards!"

It's getting close to the end now and the level of excitement duly intensifies, although not for poor devoted Jarvis at his vigil by the bedside of his injured wife. Eventually we see her recovery but not, alas, unharmed; there will be no little Jarvises.

Whitney, meanwhile, has Jason , and eventually persuades him to side with his fellow dark matter hybrid person although, after a shocking scene where he explicitly switches sides, this doesn't seem to do Whitney much good by the end of the episode. While sinister plots are being made by Masters to accuse Peggy of war crimes (is there any truth to this, though?), Jack finally realises what side he's on and joins Peggy, Sousa, Jarvis and the ever-chippy Dr. Samberley for a showdown in the desert. And we get a dramatic ending.

Amongst all this plot stuff, though, there's still room for an amusingly Sopranos style matriarchal Italian family with a drama-addicted comic relief matriarch. But we end with Jason- not Whitney- being briefly taken through the dark matter portal. What happened? Things are, perhaps, beginning to tread water a little ahead of the finale. But this is still bloody good stuff.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Monsters

"He kissed me. I indulged him."

Masters has Dottie all there and ready for, ahem, "advanced interrogation techniques" but it seems she has the upper hand. What with him now being Whitney's bitch he probably isn't a very happy male chauvinist. No wonder he's out to get Peggy.

Jason is now corporeal but still not quite stable. He's still able to snog Peggy, though, adding yet more complications to her tangled love life. She's still Peggy, though, and both she and Jarvis cheerfully walk into Whitney's trap. There follows an interesting scene with Peggy and Dottie in a cell together desperately trying to escape first while Dottie makes some interesting comments about how corrupt the SSR is; I suspect that by the end of the season we will find that she was right in every detail and that Peggy will either leave or end up in charge. That's my prediction.

The big twist, of course, it that the trap is not for Peggy and Jarvis- they're only imprisoned to keep them out of the way while Whitney jabs the real prize- Jason. Which she does. And the episode ends with a shock as she shoots Ana Jarvis in cold blood to aid her escape. This despicable act rather undermines the noble sentiments she was just espousing to Jason about racism and misogyny, but she is a baddie, after all.

We end with an infra-SSR coup as the dastardly Vernon Masters seizes control from Sousa. The season hasn't long left to go but I'm certainly enjoying the ride...

Marvel's Agent Carter: The Life of the Party

"You look terrible."

"Says the woman with the rebar through her abdomen..."

Taking a chance to catch up with Agent Carter; bear with me. My wife has already seen this and I'm not around much at home on my own these days. I'll get it all done, trust me.

Anyway, we get an entertaining episode, if a but perfunctory, as a still injured Peggy is forced to rely on the decidedly dodgy Dottie in order to get a dark matter-infused tissue sample from Whitney Frost, which is rather urgently needed if Jason is to avoid losing physical form completely. It's a funny and eventful episode, just one whose function in the arc is perhaps just a little too obvious. You can see the joins a bit.

Ominously, Peggy's boss is informed by the powers that be that he's not simply to sack her but to utterly destroy and discredit her; none too nice times are ahead. And Whitney's speech towards the council goes unexpectedly- their attempt to kidnap and use her utterly fails and she takes over, killing those who stand in her way- including her husband. The episode ends with the season's big bad looking frightfully powerful.

There's room for the human element, too, as a guilt-ridden Peggy learns why Sousa's engagement has been broken off. I suspect dark times lie ahead.

Marvel's Agent Carter: The Atomic Job

"I like pie. Pie is good."

This could be the best episode yet. The decision to up the comedy quotient for themselves season is really paying dividends, and it's mostly down to both the superb scripting and the excellent comedy acting from all involved.

We begin with the suggestion that possessing Jane Scott's body could help make him tangible and, given that we end with him less tangible than ever, I suspect that's where the next episode is headed.

This episode, though, begins with a rather sweet scene in which Sousa proposes to Violet- and she says yes. Which makes things rather bittersweet when she realises, at the end, that he moved to LA to get away from his feelings for Peggy. What will they do now?

But the episode, mostly, is a brilliantly designed and executed farce where Team Whitney and Team Peggy both race to get to some nukes, with the stakes being somewhat high. Along the way we get a nice bit of feminism from Peggy, showing that Rose, being fully trained, is better used in the field than as a receptionist. And the rather amusing trope of lab scientists with chips on shoulders continues. The best scene, though, involves Peggy, a memory inhibitor and a creepy old lecher.

The development of Whitney is interesting too; the dramatic showdown between her and Peggy makes clear that she doesn't want to be "cured", and her bullying of Cal begins to tip over into domestic abuse. Here we have an increasingly violent reaction against the tyranny of patriarchy. The themes add an extra level to an extraordinary series.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Smoke & Mirrors

"You can be whatever you want."

At last we have an episode which is directly, rather than implicitly, about the misogyny and glass ceilings present in 1947 and, let us not be complacent, today. It does this by means of a structural parallel between young Peggy (Margaret Elizabeth Carter!) and young Whitney Frost (Aggie) as they grow up as girls and young women in a man's world.

Peggy never was "ladylike" as a girl but learns to confirm, turning down the chance of a really cool job with the SOE to marry a dull bloke, be a housewife, be boring. It's her brother (Edward Seymour from The Tudors) who convinces her otherwise, albeit in large part by getting shot, and she never looks back.

Aggie grew up in much more humble circumstances, her genius-level intellect irrelevant as her mother shagged a creepy bloke ("Uncle Bud") in order to keep above watt. The harsh lesson she learns is that no one cares about women's' brains, just their looks, and she exploits this to become a Hollywood star.

Meanwhile, Sousa, Peggy and Jarvis discover that the whole conspiracy extends deep into the establishment, deep enough to (officially) stymie their investigation. Now it's just the three of them, although Sousa is justly annoyed at not being included from the start.

The attraction between Peggy and Wilkes continues to grow ("Still, it must be very... frustrating!") as the script acknowledges, without explaining, the mystery of how he can survive without food. He feel tired, drawn to give up and be taken to... where? Meanwhile, Whitney reveals to Calvin exactly what has happened to her. This season just gets better and better.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Better Angels

"Have you quite finished fannying about?"

So Dr. Jason Wilkes isn't dead after all. Oops. He merely lacks physical substance, which is concerning. How can he eat? Does he need to? Does he get hungry or thirsty? Does he get horny? He and Peggy are certainly getting on well these days, not good news for the very married Jarvis, who holds a torch for Peggy with his employer's blessing.

Ah yes, the magnificent Mr. Howard Stark, who turns up like a hurricane and immediately takes charge. Wit, ladies' man and scientific genius, he oozes charisma and coolness, effortlessly dispelling all by himself the trope that scientist are nerds. He is, in effect, exactly like his son but in the 1940s. He's also pleasingly non-racist, bonding very quickly with Jason.

Stark's cool cleverness allows Peggy to get very sneaky and cook inside a snooty and dodgy posh club, but her and Sousa's corrupted boss isn't having it. They're being taken off the case and Peggy summoned back to New York. Whitney isn't happy either: her infection is spreading and she's just killer her well-connected lover, Calvin. Oops. Another excellent episode.

Oh, and this episode's geekgasm is Kid Colt! All we need now is the Rawhide Kid and things will be perfect.

Marvel's Agent Carter: A View in the Dark

"Good Lord! Is that a mirror?"

Jason getting unexpectedly killed at the end here is uncomfortably close to the trope of "the black guy dies first" but the fact the writers seem to have felt they had to highlights another uncomfortable truth: people in 1947 LA would have been incredibly racist, and depicting that would make the characters unlikeable. On the other hand, failing to depict casual racism- and we have a little here, although there are like bed that are not crossed- would be unrealistic. So it often happens that black characters are marginalised in order to avoid either of these two pitfalls. But that isn't ok either. It's a difficult one.

Anyway, the plot thickens with "Zero Matter" (we all know it's Darkforce, right?) and Whitney Frost, and the characters sparkle. I love Jarvis's attempt to look hard, the awesomeness of Mrs Jarvis and the fact that Daniel Soysa's girlfriend is Princess Mary from The Tudors.

Also, there are parallels with Agents of SHIELD in the hints that Darkforce can open portals- is this what happened to Simmons? I rather suspect so. But we end with the intriguing revelation that Whitney is infected by it. Are we looking at the origin story for Madame Masque? It's hood, entertaining telly either way.

Marvel's Agent Carter: The Lady in the Lake

"It's the flamingo, isn't it?"

"It is indeed the flamingo."

This first episode just sparkled; the characterisation, wit and well-placed humour are a delight. This is the best scripted episode so far by miles and, if that's not enough, the new Los Angeles setting makes things seem fresh and new. It's the Golden Age of Hollywood!

The story of the week is actually pretty damn great- a murder disguised to look like the work of a serial killer to protect the conspiracy that's really going on, a police detective with mysterious powers who dies before squealing, and behind it all is one Whitney Frost- although at this point she is far from disfigured, unless her mask is very good indeed. I wonder if Count Nefaria and the Maggia exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Jarvis is fantastic as ever: I love his comments on LA and, especially, the revelation that the thus far mysterious Mrs Jarvis (first name?) is both nothing like we expect and clicks immediately with Peggy.

Other interesting little titbits for the rest of the season are the reason for Sousa's avoiding Peggy- he has a girlfriend- and the introduction of likeable physicist Jason Wilkes who, being black, is likely to experience some very 1940s racist attitudes. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled. And then there's this strange otherworldly material he seems to have...

Best of all, though? Whitney Frost has starred in a film called Tales of Suspense, the very comic book in which she first appeared. 

Agent Carter: Valediction

"I plan a complete and total overhaul of the kitchen spices..."

It's the end of the season and, worryingly, if online gossip is at all reliable, the series. So it's time to thank a certain person for making it possible for seeing these episode. This person goes by the YouTube handle of MrVortexofDOOM and, for those of us who like this sort of thing, his missing episode reconstructions knock Loose Cannon into a cocked hat. So please have a proper look at his channel, press the "like" button, and spread the word.

As we might expect,the episode is topped and tailed with deliberately egregious examples of sexism; we begin with that Captain America radio show again, with its arse-clenching rendition of Peggy's character, and we end with a triumphant Peggy being applauded back into the office, only for official credit to fall to the much less competent, but much more male, Jack Thompson. In between these two bookends are some wonderful things.

Tony Stark gets a baptism of fire; he may now have been cleared, but he's hypnotised to do himself in by taking off in a plane and doing a Steve Rogers. It's an interesting riff on the guilt that he feels about that day, and the fact that it is Peggy who persuades him to come back from the brink speaks volumes about the mutual respect they share, forged in war, in spite of everything.

It's a feelgood ending; Dotty Underwood escapes to strike again, and both Peggy and Angie get to stay together chez Stark. Most touchingly, Jarvis trusts Peggy, and not his employer, with Steve Rogers' blood.

This is a very pleasing finale. It would be awfully good to have a second season now...

Agent Carter: SNAFU

"Have you ever been hanged, Mr. Jarvis?"

"I don't think I have, no."

"It is quite unpleasant."

The penultimate episode, then, and a dramatic one, with Dooley's horrific yet heroic death as its centrepiece; hypnotised into wearing a suicide vest, he heroically defenestrates himself to his doom, and that's a phrase which one doesn't often get a chance to use. Get in.

Peggy's desperate attempts to get the SSR to believe the truth- Dotty Underwood and her hypnotist mate are the baddies- flounder on the usual casual sexism; the assumption, predictably, is that she and Stark had a "thing". Fortunately, the potentially frustrating scenes of the SSR not believing Peggy don't outstay their welcome; the episode soon becomes a gripping thriller. 

After a gripping final scene with gas being released at a cinema we are left eagerly anticipating the finale. Agent  Carter may have suffered some pacing problems in the middle but the concluding episodes have been excellent so far. 

Agent Carter: A Sin to Err

"I knew you didn't work at the phone company!"

Yes, this is the episode where Peggy gets caught by her SSR "mates", and also the episode where the plot crystallises; Leviathan (much fleshed out in this episode) are after Stark's inventions. But let's talk about Angie for a minute.

She's in the series mainly to perform a narrative function, that of Peggy's female friend and confidante, so obviously she has to find out her friend's secret, as she does here. But she's also a parallel character to Peggy, also stuck in a traditionally female job, constantly suffering the slings and arrows of sexism and misogyny. She, too, aspires to greater things, in her case Broadway stardom rather than being a spy. And which of all plays is she rehearsing? The Doll's House.

On a similarly feminist note, it's also fun to see Jarvis getting slapped by a parade of Howard Stark's exes. But the core of the episode lie in Peggy being caught just as the true baddie lady, Dottie Underwood, is about to strike. All relies on Peggy's ability to convince her former comrades of the truth before it's too late. Only in handcuffs is she finally taken seriously.

I can still why the series has been criticised for its slow pace, but things are beginning to speed up now. Two more episodes...

Agent Carter: The Iron Ceiling

"He may be an utter wanker but he is one of us."

Nice title; alluding to the glass ceiling that pretty much defines the show, but also a nod to the presence of a Stark. Nice episode, too, giving us a potted history of Peggy's new, mysterious neighbour who, it seems, is a Soviet agent with a past all bound up with Stalinist darkness; her continuing habit of chaining herself to the bedpost is nicely symbolic.

Howard Stark is still not Peggy's favourite person, but Jarvis manages to mollify her somewhat; Stark may be a git, but he's a good git. And there is still tension in relations between the series' two biggest protagonists.

The glass ceiling is exemplified, rather blatantly, by Peggy's brilliant code-breaking work not getting her anything in this man's world. And yet, when she ultimately gets her way and gets sent on a mission, Dum Dum and the other Howling Commandos, old war comrades of hers, treat her with both an affection and a respect that her colleagues will never show. Only in the heat of war can a woman like Peggy show what she's made of. It's 1946. Feminism is a generation away. But at least this time with her real friends help her to decide how she really feels about Stark. 

We end with Peggy's star on the relative rise, but Daniel is suspicious. By this point the series is beginning to feel a little too slow-paced, but the characterisation. And spectacle continues to impress.

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...!

Marvel's Agent Carter: Time and Tide

"If you wish to clear Mr. Stark's name, you must do so from the shadows!"

The third episode, then, and things are moving into place for some serious alteration of the status quo. It's suddenly clear that Peggy can't keep getting away with her supposedly treasonous activities for much longer. I predict an upcoming episode will consist of her getting caught, swiftly to be followed by a massive reversal of fortune. After all, we know she founds SHIELD, and this series looks suspiciously like a "Secret Origin".

Oops. Sorry. Wrong comics company.

Anyway, we get more espionage, more sexism, more awful '40s clothes and cool '40s cars, and the overall movie serial feel continues. Jarvis acquires a bit more depth, with the unearthing of a minor scandal from his past, but I hope he doesn't acquire too much depth; it doesn't suit him. And I hope we never actually meet his wife; that would ruin a running joke.

We end with a significant death (which Peggy, once more, blames on herself) and a redoubling effort against Stark. Big things are going to happen now...

Marvel's Agent Carter: Bridge and Tunnel

"What's your first name?"

"Agent."

"That has a ring to it..."

Two episodes in and I'm rather enjoying this. Hayley Atwell is great, and I'm loving the mockery of 1940s social attitudes, objects and fashions, although 1940s suits looked awful. Really awful. '70s awful. Still, the fetishisation of 1940s is a delight, as are the constant reminders that this is the Atomic Age. And the framing device of the Captain America radio drama is the icing on the cake. The constant juxtaposition of the simpering Peggy from the radio show to the kick-ass reality is a delight. Plus it reminds me of going to see that Round the Horne thing in Leicester Square several years ago. And I bet very few of my readers will get that reference.

It's a delicious contrast; Peggy is so very kickass yet again, going undercover with aplomb and fighting a baddie on the top of a van, yet at work she's expected to do the filing and answer the phone, and if she gets caught working for Stark she's in deep doo doo. 

There are lots of other nice touches; I loved the literal carrot and stick. And the '40s fashions and radiation aspect- in fact, the plot itself and the heroine put in frequent peril- make this feel very much like a '40s movie serial. I suspect that's intended.

Only at the end do we find a chink in Carter's stiff upper lip armour; Jarvis, who admires her and sees her for who she is, sees that she's afraid of letting people get too close to her unless they get killed- like her last flatmate. So we end (after a jaw-dropping interview with the landlady) with Peggy agreeing to live next door to her friend Angie. Let's hope Angie lives...

Loving this. Can't believe there are just six episodes to go.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Now Is Not the End

"You're an agent. They treat you like a secretary."

First impressions count for a lot, which is fortunate, as first signs are great here. Like Mad Men, this miniseries hangs a lot of its charm on recreating the look and feel of the middle of the last century, and succeeds magnificently with the cars, the (awful) clothes and the social mores. There's also more than a little influence from Raymond Chandler, and many of the action sequences look like a film that could star the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

This isn't, despite the presence of Enver Gjokaj, a Mutant Enemy production, and Joss Whedon's involvement is even less than it is with Agents of SHIELD. The writing, though, is excellent, even if I haven't ever heard of the writers. It's fun seeing the Marvel Universe in 1946, with Howard Stark being just like his son (albeit on the run from a thinly veiled HUAC), and names like Roxxon and Abraham Erksine. We also have, of course, Jarvis, an engagingly Giles-like character.

Hayley Atwell, though, is magnificent as a kind of stiff-upper-lipped River Song for the 1940s, engaging in setting-do with the best of them and, in a nice little scene, giving a sexist, groping bastard in a diner a bit of a shock; this woman has balls. And yet she is, privately at least, devastated at the death of her flatmate, a death that happened because of her.

This is a splendid opener, much more so than the pilot for Agents of SHIELD. This series promises to be good. So let's have a UK screening please!

Dollhouse: Epitaph Two- Return

"I can bring back the world!"

What a very strange ending. Things are still a bit post-apocalyptic, and there are many individual tragedies (for me, the fact that Priya and Anthony split up us more heartbreaking than either Paul's or Topher's deaths), but Topher manages to unwipe everyone in the world. That's... A bit of a cheat. Yes, this means all of the Actives get reset, and "die", but still, the world is saved, however post-apocalyptic it still looks.

Not that it isn't a good episode character arc-wise, mind. It's just that the Miracle ending seems a bit if a cop out, however large a price is paid. It's impressive how well planned out it all is, though- this must all have been planned out from at least Epitaph One.

2020... Not too far in the future now, and not much further into the future back when this was made. And that's the point: this is the sort of science fiction that extrapolates from current trends and grounds the sci if concepts into present day reality.

Dollhouse has been an unashamedly political series, with a strongly pro-civil liberties and anti-corporate agenda. It may, as we discussed last time, end with a bit of a whimper in this episode, but that doesn't matter. It was magnificent, and this episode is just a postscript to last episode's brilliant season finale anyway.

We end with Echo, the worlds last Active, going to sleep in her old pod. And there's the temptation. I'm as guilty as anyone, writing this on a smartphone that can track my every movement, but our generation is choosing convenience over liberty, and we know it.

This is an extraordinary series. It knocks everything else Joss Whedon has done into a cocked hat. And that's saying a lot.

Dollhouse: The Hollow Men

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper."

For the first time ever (as far as I recall) I've broken my iron rule, and not used a quite from the episode. Instead I've quoted the end of T.S. Elliot's poem, The Hollow Men, as it's obviously a deliberate allusion and particularly, I suspect, with this being the season finale, to those final lines.

Interesting, then, that the imications should at first glance be so self-deprecating; personally, I think that this episode is a stunning triumph of a Seadon finale. Where, then, is the "whimper"? I suspect the answer lies in the fact that our heroes' victory is temporary, and the death of freedom is inevitable. This is the season finale, but it isn't the last episode. As with Season Four of Buffy and, more to the point, the first season of Dollhouse, there's another episode to go.

We begin with the inevitable flashback which has to follow the revelation, at the end of the last episode, that Boyd was the big bad all along. It's five years ago, and we see Caroline, in Boyd's office , being presented with a choice that is not a choice: life in prison for terrorism or five years as an Active? She's "special", apparently, and Boyd wants to be her handler himself. This makes sense of past events, but it ain't half creepy.

An unexpected pleasure is that we once again get to see Enver Gjokaj's performance as Topher, although it's also cool to see Anthony imprinted with ninja skills. Nice that they have time for such touches in this of all episodes.

I have to stop and praise Harry Lennix here, something I've shamefully neglected up till now. It's such a novelty to see him as an openly moustache-twirling baddie, but we can now see all his other performances in a different light. Like the actor who played Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects (I shall name no names. Spoilers, as Rover Song would say!), I'm sure that, if I was to research those earlier episodes, his performances would appear in a very different light.

Horrifyingly, we discover that quietly, in Tucson, Rossum has been developing Topher's technology so that anyone, anywhere, can be wiped and imprinted. There are no longer such things as freedom or individuality; we are all Rossum's hive mind slaves. This is a concept rich with political overtones, and it's not hard to see a dig, here, at those right wing American "Libertarians", many of them in the so called "Tea Party", who fatuously cast "freedom" in terms of the state versus the private sector, and see corporate entities as "people" who must be protected from state oppression. In fact, as we are shown here, the concept of "freedom" only makes any sense when applied to individual human beings, not fatuous and overly abstract binary divisions into public sector and private sector. Corporations can, and do, assault people's liberties, and the truly libertarian thing is for the State to protect us from this through regulation.

There is, of course, no hope here, whatever temporary victory our heroes can bring about. The technology has been invented. It cannot be uninvented. It will be used. We are all doomed.

Still, we can at least hope for that temporary victory, and for Boyd to get his eventual comeuppance. It seems he controls Dr Saunders, and has done for some time. This means it wasn't really here who killed Bennet, which takes some of the poetry away. Still, this is a minor point, and these are the only words of slight criticism that you'll hear from me about this superlative episode of television.

Adelle, only a few episodes from appearing to be an utter bitch, is stoic and brave, refusing to co-operate even at gunpoint and willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Other characters are unfortunate: Mellie's death is truly tragic. And Topher's realisation at what he has allowed to happen seems to be a sort of harbinger of the broken Topher we see in Epitaph One; "I did all this. I'm the one who brought about the thought-pocalypse."

Langton gets his just desserts in the end, being wiped and ending up as a suicide bomber.  But, just as we think we have a happy endng, the epilogue skips a few years into the future and tells us that no, we don't...