TV Review: Agent Carter “The Iron Ceiling”

Carter crosses paths with the Howling Commandos.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

Agent Carter started so strong. After so many comic-book-derived shows presently on the air have proved to be stodgy chores, this one came out of the gate feeling alive and vibrant, with a lead character that was easy to get behind. Yet in the last couple of airings, the show has lost the zip that initially seemed to set it apart from its contemporaries. It’s becoming yet another snore-inducer in a TV subgenre that should never contain anything of the sort, yet seems filled with nothing but.

After turning her back on Stark and Jarvis, Carter immerses herself back into her work, which immediately sucks her back into the same damn caper. The mysterious self-typing typewriter has hammered out a message in code and Carter is the only one able to interpret it, a remarkable feat that the men in the office give her astonishingly little credit for. The message reveals map coordinates and a drop date for a Leviathan operation in Russia. A mission is quickly put together led by the arrogant bully Thompson, and Carter wants in on it, but is denied by Chief Dooley because (surprise, surprise) she’s a woman and their expectation is that she will need to be babysat. Carter promises she can deliver the assistance of the storied 107th if she can participate, a proposition to which Dooley agrees and Carter makes good on.

When the team touches down near the Russian border, they rendezvous with the 107th, which is comprised of Dum Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough) and the Howling Commandos, whose friendly and respectful interactions with Carter are a world removed from those of her SSR teammates. The team finds that the coordinates lead them to a seemingly abandoned boarding school that was used to indoctrinate young girls into becoming assassins, one of whom is still lurking about and attacks the soldiers with frightening dexterity. Carter and crew locate two men locked in a cell, who claim that they were being used by Leviathan to create a weapon using schematics stolen from Stark, indicating that Stark was not willingly colluding with the enemy after all.

Meanwhile, Dottie (whom, the episode suggests, was trained as a child at the boarding school, or one like it) steals Carter’s apartment keys and snoops around, stopping to eerily imitate Carter in the mirror. Then, strangely, Dottie returns to her own apartment and handcuffs herself to the bed frame before hitting the sack. Also back home, Souza, who notices that Carter has two bullet-wound scars on her shoulder during a Thompson-initiated locker-room prank, pieces together that the mysterious blonde photographed weeks earlier also had those same marks, forcing him to confront the notion that Carter is involved in this quagmire to a much greater extent than she has let on.

The appearance by the Commandos is certainly welcome, and it’s especially nice to see McDonough again, but it’s largely extraneous. They show up, banter a bit, exchange fire with the bad guys and say goodbye. Anyone hoping that these characters would play a larger role in this series will likely be disappointed, unless of course they come back into play later on. But what’s becoming dispiritingly clear as Agent Carter moves forward is that its central storyline concerning Stark and the Russians isn’t shaping up to be that terribly interesting. Honestly, it’s difficult to become invested in what happens or to even bother trying to keep all the threads straight. Instead of gripping the audience with forward momentum, the series meanders along, garnering shrugs for its efforts. Given its abbreviated length, there really shouldn’t be any opportunity for boredom here, and yet here’s boredom. Maybe when Carter’s cover is inevitably blown with the SSR, things will spark back up.

The area where Agent Carter does continue to thrive is with Carter’s constant pushback against sexist dismissal by her colleagues. She continually needs to prove herself to the men around her, and each amazing feat she performs is almost immediately discarded by those around her, even as they reap the benefits. It’s a battle that she constantly has to fight and seemingly can never win, and that is a poignant angle to give to a protagonist. The frustration the character has to deal with ceaselessly makes her endearing on a level greater than heroes generally reach because she not only has to grapple with the villains, but also her peers. It’s a thankless lot in life, and Atwell sells the character’s sad struggle without ever hampering her steely exterior.

But the series needs to shift into a gear more rousing than the boilerplate cloak-and-dagger fare it’s offering of late. Atwell continues to nail the role effortlessly week to week, but the narrative she’s immersed into is dully working against her efforts. As if the poor woman didn’t have enough on her plate, now she also has to fight waning audience interest. She just can’t win.

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