TV Review: Agent Carter ”The Blitzkrieg Button”

The Marvel show slows its roll this week.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

After taking off like a rocket with its first three episodes, Agent Carter hits the brakes in its fourth outing. ”The Blitzkrieg Button” is a draggier outing than the show has quickly made us accustomed to. There are notable happenings to be sure, but the overall impression of the episode is that water is being treaded big-time.

The biggest development here is that Howard Stark has returned, having been smuggled illicitly back into the country, where he’s intercepted by Carter and Jarvis from a couple of goons working for the shadowy Mr. Mink. Stark, still the most wanted man in the country, is forced to hide out at the Griffith, the all-female apartment complex with strict rules against male visitors. The rooster-in-the-henhouse humor from Carter continually having to track Stark down in various tenants’ rooms is very effective. The show truly gets a boost out of Dominic Cooper’s playful presence, so here’s hoping he sticks around for the remainder of its run.

Most of the SSR characters spend the week trying to piece together the events at the docks from the previous episode, with no inkling that Carter was the central figure behind it all. Chief Dooley heads all the way over to Nuremberg to try to glean information about the dead Russians from an incarcerated man named Mueller. He doesn’t get much, though he does employ a nifty scam concerning breath mints doubling as cyanide pills. Meanwhile, Souza hauls in a belligerent hobo whom he believes witnessed the battle at the docks and attempts to use their shared war experiences to get him to talk before the more callous Thompson gets better results simply by offering the man booze and a burger. None of these threads are very intriguing, especially since nothing that comes out this week puts any of these guys closer to realizing Carter’s involvement, beyond hearing of a mysterious woman being in the thick of it all. It’s just a lot of whistling in the dark about events we in the audience are already privy to, which isn’t going to prove interesting until the noose begins to actually tighten around our heroine’s neck.

Carter herself is tasked not only with stashing Stark, but with investigating his recovered invention cache, which the science team at the SSR are trying to wrap their heads around, with disastrous results. Stark singles out a particular item, the eponymous device, which functions essentially as an EMP and could send New York City into the Stone Age if activated, and asks Carter to retrieve it, replacing it with an identical fugazi. In the course of making the switch, Carter finds that the device actually contains a vial of blood, which Stark later admits is the blood of none other than Captain America. Carter is outraged by this, Steve Rogers still being an open wound for her, and presumes that Stark is using her lost love for financial gain, though Stark claims nobler intentions. Carter then demands that Stark leave her home. It isn’t surprising that Agent Carter would try to incorporate something Captain America-related into its proceedings. After all, Cap was the focal point of this era of the Marvel Universe and even though he himself is unavailable to participate, being frozen and all, getting his name in there is clearly important to those involved.

Carter also experiences something of a rift with Jarvis this week, as she realizes, due to his obvious tell when lying, that he knew about Stark’s ulterior motives without cluing her in. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that her neighbor Dottie is a deadly assassin, who takes out Mr. Mink when he attempts to infiltrate the Griffith to find Carter. Dottie’s loyalties are left shrouded in mystery this week, so whether she’s friend or foe will have to be determined at a later date.

The thematic through-line of the series continues to be the unabashed sexism Carter faces on a day-to-day basis. From the nanny-state policies of the Griffith to being reduced to gathering lunch orders for everyone at the SSR while they do more substantial work to Thompson’s stone-cold assertion that no one at the office will ever view her as an equal, Carter is constantly reminded of her perceived inferiority. The plight of this hyper-capable agent in a world that’s all too eager to reduce to her a second-class citizen at every turn is hugely resonant and gives the series something greater to chew on than merely spy shenanigans and period costuming.

One hopes that “The Blitzkrieg Button” stands a quick breath-catching respite for the series before it gets its swing back soon. I would suspect this is indeed the case, as the series is already at the halfway point of its eight-episode run. Can’t spend too much time running in place when the race is this brief.

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