Tuesday Texture: Did I Post This Already?

Photo by Gene’O

I honestly cannot remember, my early photo stock is so disorganized, and I have published images on so many different blogs, it is impossible to say.

Pro Tip: If you start a feature and you’re hoping to generate a LOT of it, organize the drafts/images/blog categories from the start. Once you have a big pile of information, it’s time-consuming to organize it later.

I’m working on another round of “What Is It?” images for next week.

Agent Carter Episode Recap/Review: A Sin to Err, Season 1 Episode 6

This episode was about getting a chance. Our three main female characters all have this come up, and all to very different results. First we have Peggy Carter. She is questioning their Russian Leviathan expert all about the female assassins. She’s sure that this is an important angle – sure that it breaks the case wide open. So the chief stops her, and as she fights for her point, he sends her off. To follow her hunch. She proved herself last episode, and this episode, she’s shown trust. Given a chance.

The second woman to get a chance was Dottie. She had an interview! More of building her cover ID as a young professional woman, right? Oh look, and then the dentist she’s interviewing with sent the office home for the weekend… oh, he’s a predator and a womanizer, of course… surrounded by torturous dental implements… NO, DOTTIE, NO!… Yeah, that didn’t go well for the dentist. Turns out, Dottie needed the office for the view of the SSR office. She had a sniper rifle, she’s going to kill the Russian turncoat! Oh, wait, no, she’s signaling with him, and him back to her – he’s still Leviathan!

Yeah, Dottie’s sections are regularly the biggest surprises!
Found on Marvel.com

The third woman to get a chance was Angie, Peggy’s other friend from the Griffith, felt like giving up on her acting. Another bad audition. However, she gets a chance to act and save Peggy in the episode – and it rekindles that acting passion. She’ll be an actress yet, unless like so many people around Peggy she ends up dead!

We got somewhere in each of the main cases this week, so let me look at both of those. There was definitely a lot of payoff to the storylines this week, and from here I imagine we will go crashing towards the finale!

Peggy’s Case

So Peggy was following her hunch, about the Russian assassins. This didn’t get too much attention, since we as the audience already know exactly where this investigation is going to lead. Indeed, Peggy’s breakthrough observation – that the sleeping handcuffed would be a hard habit to break – is something we found out last week. Although Jarvis brought it back into perspective:

“That is immensely disturbing.”

Still, she has the bright idea that a female spy could have gotten into Stark’s vault very simply – as women are Stark’s weakness. Peggy has also figured out that it must have been a woman who assassinated their agent a few weeks back. Though they didn’t get much in Russia, they did get this piece and it was critical.

And it got Peggy back working with Jarvis, so that was fun to see, along with the montage of him getting slapped by all the women he broke up with, on Howard’s behalf!

Sousa’s Case

The main tension of the episode is actually that Sousa has finally caught up to Peggy and the fact that she has been causing all the trouble they have been investigating. Well, at least half the trouble! He starts off by having her positively identified by a witness, one who had been beaten up by Peggy. With that knowledge, he knew what he had to do. He went to the chief.

Though we don’t see it getting green-lit, Sousa gets a chance this episode too. They take his allegations seriously, and send a whole team to pick up Peggy. Of course, she sees what’s happening right away. And it’s a great callback to earlier in the episode, when they talk about why female assassins are valuable – men underestimate them, and they get inside their defenses. Which Peggy proceeds to do, and takes out the team, escapes, takes out Thompson, and talks her way past Sousa.

And so they rightly figure the place to look for her is the Griffith – where she fled to get the vial of Captain America’s blood. Another great callback – Peggy escapes out the window, like the young man who climbed his way up episodes ago. There she makes it to Angie’s window – and Angie gets to act her heart out, keeping away the “fathead male coworkers” that Peggy’s always complaining about!

The escape!
Found on Marvel.com

Peggy almost gets away, until the obligatory run-in with Dottie. Who had Peggy’s knockout lipstick! Had forgotten about that. Peggy is moments from death when the SSR find them, and so we have to ask which is better – being brought in for questioning, or facing off with Dottie?

The episode ends with the chief leaving Sousa and Thompson to handle Peggy. Next week, we’ll see how that turns out!

Final Thought:

After all the talk about the “impenetrable” Griffith, the male Agents just keep walking and get up there just fine. The running joke that keeps on giving!

Questions

Did it feel “comic book?”

One thing I haven’t talked about much was the Leviathan turncoat-not-turncoat character. He is a psychiatrist and a hypnotist, and he tries several times this episode to hypnotize people. This does end up feeling pretty comic book, especially as he does it without people noticing, by talking and spinning his gold ring. However, they mostly use it for him to get information, and not for taking much action – oh, except for telling an Agent to go play in traffic…

Did it feel like you needed to have watched the other movies and shows?

No, much like most of the rest of this show, this episode was not really tied to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That said, this episode was the buildup of a lot of the storylines, so we’re definitely at the point where to appreciate it you need to have seen the rest of the season. However, the rest of the season is 5 episodes, so that’s not too bad to catch up!

Did it matter that it was a female lead?

As I mentioned at the top, we got to see how the story went for three different women being given a chance. We have one who got trust from her male coworkers (Peggy), one who lost faith in herself and found it again (Angie), and one who turned a stereotypical bad situation completely on its head (Dottie).

Not how he thought this was going to go.
From the review on The Mary Sue.

Even if it can be argued that Sousa also has a situation like this, where he is given a chance, it’s not the point. We don’t get to see the payoff moment for him, when he presents his evidence to the chief and gets his mission green-lit to go arrest Peggy. We get to see the results for the three women!