One of the many reasons that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so beloved is that its movies tend to provide heart-warming secondary characters in addition to its marquee heroes—characters that the movies aren’t quite about—resulting in a desire from the viewer to learn more about them, which adds appeal to the next marquee movie which they feature in.
Agent Coulson was the first and most powerful instance of this in the MCU, and we saw Joss Whedon utilize the audience’s fondness for him with devastating effect in Avengers. Rhodey was another, Rocket was even more so, and Falcon was as well, but aside from them and Coulson, the character MCU fans have probably wanted to learn the fate of with the greatest urgency was Agent Peggy Carter, left behind after the first Captain America film.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier eventually filled us in on her fate (again with devastating effect) but now we get to see the decades that became between those Captain America movies, the decades that consist of Peggy’s entire life. And it makes her eventual fate all the more painful, because if the first two episodes of Agent Carter are any indication, learning about Peggy’s post-Cap life is an experience of sheer delight.
Basically, can we talk about how great the debut of Agent Carter was? Because it was so great. Spoilers ahead for the aired episodes.
Viewers were treated to a quarter of this mini-series on Tuesday night, with ABC airing the “Pilot” episode [Update: Officially titled “Now is Not the End”] and its follow-up “Bridges and Tunnels” in a two-hour block, and while so far the series’ plot is fairly thin and straightforward (An organization called Leviathan stole Howard Stark’s deadliest inventions. Peggy is on the case, assisted by Howard’s butler Jarvis. That’s almost entirely it.) it still gives the viewer enough so that we see Carter in a variety of richly entertaining situations. The capable woman who wowed us in the first Cap movie is still very much present and fits so naturally within the insane normalcy of the MCU that it feels like Hayley Atwell has been playing Carter her entire life.
Part of that natural presence is thanks to how stylish the show itself is when it comes to set decoration and costuming. While Agent Carter doesn’t quite manage the effortless cool of a period series like Mad Men it still creates a wistful feeling for the style of days gone by. I know that automats are, in practice, a terrible place to eat and relax, but damn does the L&L look like a sharp place to chill out with your notebook and an egg sandwich. Even the most expected set pieces, like the Roxxon factory, are dressed with an attention towards the materials in use at the time. You don’t really know what the Leviathan/Roxxon heavies are doing with the nitrogli…nitrome…the implosives, but it’s all happening in creamy cast iron and and heavy bubbled glass, so it looks pretty important!
The decoration does more than just make you wiggly for art deco. It quite successfully creates a contained world for Agent Carter that separates it from the vast Marvel Universe just enough to let its story carry a real weight within its larger mythology, despite the fact that we know how Everything Eventually Turns Out. Watching Agent Carter is a much different experience than watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or even the first Captain America film. The boisterous color and patina of the show fashions the visuals into something more akin to a comic book. While Captain America: The First Avenger was concerned with the grit and theater of war, Agent Carter visualizes a New York City in the aftermath of that war, a civilization that is returning a sense of order and color to a world that nearly came to an end. The worldbuilding of the show is superb in this sense, providing a believable setting for a Peggy Carter who eats alone at automats only one year after losing the world’s first superhero.
The show’s struggle to assert its worth within the MCU is the same struggle as its main character. Since the end of the war and the loss of Captain America, Peggy’s own worth has been subsumed under the hurry to assert normalcy. Peggy is technically Agent Carter of the Strategic Science Institute Reserve, but hardly anyone at the SSR treats her as an equal since she’s the only female agent on staff. Agent Carter is not subtle about this discrimination but it’s also demonstrably not trying to be subtle. The show wants you to know that her peers at the SSR think of her as a remnant of Cap’s glory, because this helps form the overall tapestry of what Peggy’s life has boiled down to when we see her again in 1946.
It’s not enough for you to know that she lost Steve in 1945, Agent Carter tells us. That’s the most important bit, sure, but it’s one blow in a series of blows that Peggy has taken since the end of the war. The most worthy person she ever knew is gone, her skills are considered irrelevent by her contemporaries, her counterpart on that terrifically popular radio show is the worst, and even her perfectly sweet and supportive roommate is ground under by the mindless agendas of voiceless men. The only time we see Peggy cry is after she avenges that same roommate. Colleen’s death hits her hard, not only because of the loss of that innocent, but because it’s such a bitterly perfect encapsulation of what Peggy’s life has become. Everything, no matter how world-altering or quiet, fails Peggy Carter.
I find this approach to be a refreshing and substantial way to tackle the gender issues inherent in a show like Agent Carter, making sexism just one of many injustices that define Peggy. Further, it’s a quintessentially Marvel way to do so. Where a larger-than-life figure like DC’s Wonder Woman would be expected to be a viewpoint of the role of women in societies over the course of the centuries, the story of Peggy Carter’s life is kept realistic by keeping the viewpoint on gendered expectations on how they affect her life and her actions. We see a creep in the automat continually degrade and harass the waitress Angie in the automat, but it’s the effect that this gender-motivated interaction has on Peggy that makes it more than just a stereotypical sledge lesson, putting it in context for us as viewers.
Because, as we learn explicitly by the end of the first two episodes, Peggy is a hero. She begins by wanting to do what’s right for her friend Howard, a man whom, while kind of a jerk, nevertheless asserts a heroic morality that Peggy wishes to preserve and promote. Her motivation is more than a little selfish, as well. Howard is in many ways all that she has left. But she ends those two episodes by putting her life in incredible danger to eliminate a weapon that could do more harm than the atomic bomb itself. (At first it doesn’t seem like it is but consider: The nitro is just as powerful, far more easy to construct and mass produce, has a precise radius of destruction, doesn’t make the real estate irreversibly irradiated and useless, and is ridiculously portable.) She could follow orders and let her bumbling compatriots at the SSR fail to handle the situation, or she can trust in her own skills, in her own confidence, and do the right thing before anyone else gets hurts.
The right thing is terrifically implosive, it turns out.
By the end of “Bridges and Tunnels” it’s easy to see how this mini-series will result in the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D., as Peggy echoes the same qualities that we see in Coulson in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the MCU films. (I only just realized their initials are both “P.C.” Huh.) Agent Carter has much to thank Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for, really, as my experience with AoS lowered my expectations for Agent Carter and made it easier for the latter to really wow me. And man, Agent Carter really just clobbers the hell out of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The former is everything I’m waiting for the latter to incorporate in regards to colorful surroundings, humor, worldbuilding, and characterization. Although to AoS’ credit, its characterization has improved 1000% since its inception and its plotting is far above what Agent Carter has shown us thus far. AoS also contains villains that are far more compelling than Voicebox Wormy and whatever “Leviathan” is supposed to be.
But it’s not nearly as fun as Agent Carter.
Thoughts:
- Showing Peggy repurposing Howard Stark’s sex roleplay outfits as undercover costumes was a stroke of genius.
- This show is also seriously funny. I pretty much died in the opening scene when Peggy follows Colleen’s “but you work at the phone company…” with an enormously loud “CA-CLICK” gun noise. It wasn’t the response that was funny so much as the way it was staged to show that Colleen doesn’t hear it even though she’s right next to Peggy.
- Also…DAT JARVIS. The sexual tension, the capability, the tenderness, the politeness! It is so immediately clear why Tony fashioned his household A.I. on the man.
- The Mystery of Jarvis’ Wife is one I’m eager to see unfold.
- Having the SSR that Peggy works for bumble about is one thing, but having their bumbling actually assist Peggy’s secret missions in a roundabout way is ALL the things. It’s a great way to give them characterization beyond their more insipid, antagonistic qualities. And the Chief got the very best line in the second episode, by far.
- Goodness gracious, this show hasn’t even really busted out its hole card, Enver Gjokaj, which means Agent Carter is going to get even better.
- The woman’s home that Peggy signs up for at the end of “Bridges and Tunnels” is probably going to be hilariously problematic for her secret agent duties. I could just imagine one of the episodes being titled “Enter: The Matron.”
- I’m curious to know how Peggy actually feels about methods of interrogation. The SSR’s “interrogation” of Van Ert is brutal, and while I believe that Peggy is capable of handling exposure to that kind of brutality, I had a hard time telling whether Peggy may actually think it’s necessary. Her confrontation with McPhee later on doesn’t shed any light on that.
Chris Lough reviews Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Tor.com and almost titled this review “The Milkman Implodeth.” Almost.
I disagree about the other Agent’s and their competence. The rest of the SSI people are far from bumbling, as demonstrated by their showing up within an hour or so of her finding the Milk Truck at the end of the second block. The only reason Carter is ahead at all is because she has access to extra information that they lack at the start.
That said, you are absolutely right, Agent Carter is wonderful fun. :D
Didn’t the infilration of HYDRA into SSR and then SHEILD start as early as this? Or am I wrong, and wasting brain power wondering who’s HYDRA and if Leviathan is just a mis-directing way of saying HYDRA.
I love love love this show, I can’t wait for the next episode. The costumes and sets were one of my favorite parts, they did a really good job in making the show feel like it was happening during that era.
I agree with @1 about the bumbling. I thought the SSR officers were refreshingly competent given their plot need to be always a little bit behind.
But this review nailed down quite a lot of my feelings. The plot was… I mean, it was whatever. It was generic. It was a generic bomb being used by a generic “bigger than you” organization that employs generic assassins. Luckily, there was so much more here than the plot.
The set and costume design is great. The dialogue is snappy and old-school and sharp and funny and… effortless? Hayley Atwell is SO GOOD as Carter. Look at the change in characterization she offers when she goes undercover at the milk plant.
The depictions of sexism are loud and obvious… but, well, actual real sexists are loud and obvious, so that’s just additional verisimilitude. What makes it work is that when you look deeper into the writing and strip the sexist characters away, you see a carefully constructed sexist culture that Carter is in conflict with. Even that “She’s a slut” joke at the end, which would normally rankle, felt right in this context because the sexism within the culture was written so well it made sense why this character would so carelessly (and, incidentally, hilariously) speak that way.
And I haven’t even spoken about the fight direction. It was weaker in the second hour, but Carter’s fights in the first hour were some of the best I’ve ever seen on television. She’s believably physical, but also doesn’t just expect herself to out-muscle stronger opponents. She’s constantly using the tools in her environment, and they always land with satisfying strength.
Just really, really good stuff.
This show was so much fun to watch last night. I don’t think the other agents are necessarily incompetent just sexist and short sighted. I’d have poured coffee on them or broke their noses by now. They don’t have all the information Peggy does and don’t bother to ask her to find it out. Jarvis is going to be intersting and I just no there is something wrong with his wife. The worldbuilding is much stronger than AOS and the visuals are arresting I can’t wait to see what happens next. I’ll be astonished if Leviathan doesn’t have something to do with Hydra.
Yes yes yes this was great.
All of it.
Peggys shutdown of Sousa’s white knighting was beautiful.
The show was very careful to show Peggys shoulder scars and they are visible in the shot of her back the photographer took at the club.
McFee was Buzz from Home Alone FYI.
The juxtaposition of the radio show was brilliant.
I can’t wait for more
I had fun with this show from start to finish. This show came right out of the gates firing on all cylinders. Haley Atwell was superb in the part, and a joy to watch, as was James D’Arcy as Jarvis.
I grew up in the late 50’s, and loved all the period details that reminded me of my youth. I remember my dad taking me to automats and deli’s in the city, and all that chrome and vinyl furniture. The music, with swing giving way to the newer sound of bebop, was right on the mark. The women’s apartment rules reminded me of the dorm rules I encountered back when a lot of colleges had yet to become co-ed.
And even though I didn’t enter the workplace until the early 70’s, that blatant sense of male priviledge, and idea of what roles men and women should play, was still all around. The post-war treatment of women reminded me of my grandmother’s experience in WWI. She went from being a bookkeeper to the controller of a manufacturing firm during the war, but despite her boss praising her work, had to go back to the bookkeeping job when the war ended, and soon after was released by the company because she got married, and they had a policy against employing married women. I will never forget the bitterness in her voice as she told me that story decades later. So, while some folks might think those aspects of sexism were overplayed, I felt like they were accurate to the times.
I loved the fact that the weapon generated an out-of-control implosion. That concept is right out of the old Astounding/Analog magazines that my dad and I read, something speculated about in theories that never panned out in the real world.
I could go on praising so much about the show, and can’t wait till next week.
The lady who works at the law firm, mentioned at the apartment, would
equate to she-Hulk, if memory serves. It would be funny if Angie and
many of the other ladies had alternate identities.
@2: In The Winter Soldier, Arnim Zola said, “After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew, a beautiful parasite, inside SHIELD.” So evidently it didn’t begin until after SHIELD was founded, and that hasn’t happened yet as of this miniseries. Although it could be that a future season could feature Zola as a guest star and lay some groundwork.
@7: The main thing that stood out to me as inauthentic to the 1940s was the image quality of the newsreel — it looked like modern digital photography processed with an unconvincing film grain. And the radio show’s “Betty Carver” was exaggerated in her helplessness; the heroines in radio serials of the time may have been prone to get captured and need rescuing, but that was usually because they were pretty plucky and daring to begin with, like the Lane women, Lois and Margot. Even the less adventurous types could be smart, trusted confidantes, like Lenore Case to the Green Hornet. Also, it should’ve probably been a half-hour show, not an hour.
Otherwise, it rang pretty true, at least based on what I’ve seen and heard in the movies and radio shows of the period.
Ah, excellent point. I completely missed that.
Dr. Van Ert is played by an actor better known for voicing another sad-sack mad scientist whose name very nearly anagrams to “Van Ert”. Just remove the “a” and add a “u” and another “e”.
Stark’s appearance before Congress very nicely rhymes with both the testimony that the real-life Howard Hughes was forced to give before a hostile Congress (see the movie with Leo DiCaprio in it for a dramatization) and the testimony his son would have to give in Iron Man 2.
Yes, the SSR agents are competent. That’s one of the great things about the show. It would have been extremely easy for the writers to portray them as bumbling morons. But the writers take the harder road of making them actually not be morons, and in fact they are very competent investigators—especially with Peggy giving them little surreptitious assists. It’s just that they’re blinded by their inherent sexism in a way that is very believable. But sooner or later, someone is going to make that connection. (I’ll bet it’s Sousa, and he lets her talk him into covering for her.)
Why is Peggy so mad at Howard Stark in the next episode? I theorized that maybe Stark was playing her in that he was actually hiding out in Jarvis’s house pretending to be his “wife” and not being overseas after all. But now that I think about it, the more likely explanation is that he wasn’t being completely honest with her about how that hole got in his vault. Maybe he was moving the stuff himself, and someone who was helping him do it double-crossed him?
For those who don’t know what Leviathan is, by the way, it’s essentially a terrorist organization that grew out of Communism the way that HYDRA grew out of Naziism. And just as the Commies and the Nazis were at odds, so too were HYDRA and Leviathan—the symbol the dying Leviathan traitor drew in the dirt is apparently a HYDRA symbol. (I’m guessing that’s who he was working with in betraying Leviathan.)
It could very well be that the threat posed by Leviathan is the initial impetus for SHIELD recruiting HYDRA members. Fighting fire with fire, as it were.
@11: Well, the recruitment of Zola was said to be a part of the real-life Operation Paperclip, by which German scientists like Wernher von Braun were recruited by the US so that the Soviets wouldn’t get them, and to deprive Germany of the ability to rebuild its military technology. HYDRA was an offshoot of the Nazis, so its scientists would’ve been the sort of people that Operation Paperclip would’ve recruited anyway, without the need for Leviathan as an impetus. Still, it could be a reinforcing element.
@12 Who’s to say that, in the Marvelverse, the real impetus behind Paperclip (or the impetus behind a more secret subsection of Paperclip that the general public or most of the government never knew about) was not so much fear of the Soviets in general but fear of their Leviathan specifically?
(I think I have either one too few or one too many negatives in there, but you know what I mean.)
Also speaking of period accurate buildings during the establising exterior shot for the Roxxon headquarters you can see the same clockface used to establish the location of Stark Tower in the Avengers, the one the Chitauri troop snake flew over.
What I’d like to know is how the Agent Carter short from the Iron Man 3 DVD/BluRay fits in canonically with this?
I can see three options, but none of them make total sense.
1) The series takes place before the short: This is most likely, but doesn’t completely gel. The picture of pre-Cap Steve she has in her desk in the short is the same one she finds in the file in EP2. At the end of the short, Carter finally gets the recognition she deserves and leaves to go run SHIELD with Howard (who, by this point, has probably been cleared).
However, they use scenes from the short in the flashback at the beginning of EP1, which leads me to option 2) the series takes place after the short. I can see the creation of SHIELD being sidelined a bit by Howard getting robbed and then called before Congress (and also the photo in the file in EP2 just being a duplicate), but what happened to all the respect she gained at the end of the short? And what the heck happened with the ZODIAC stuff? (IIRC, ZODIAC in the comics has something to do with Nick Fury’s brother?)
Neither option really gels completely, which leads me to option 3) The short is now non-canonical. However, I really don’t think this is the case, because of the aforementioned flashbacks, but also because the pilot was directed by Louis D’Esposito, who not only directed the short, but is co-president of Marvel and an Exectutive Producer for all things MCU.
Unless there’s a fourth option I’m missing?
@15 I think that the specific sequence of events for the short is noncanonical, but some of the events might have happened individually. Interviews with the showrunners have suggested that the short is actually the “conclusion” of the first season, but I think it’s more that the short provides a generic outline that the series itself is following and expanding upon. (For example, she stopped Van Ert from getting away by body-blocking him with a briefcase, the same way she did to someone in the short.)
If the events of the short had happened the way they played out in the short, the rest of the SSR agents wouldn’t believe the only reason Carter was in SSR was that she’d slept with Captain America (and who knows how many others). Or else she wouldn’t still even be in the SSR at all, she’d have been fired for insubordination. It doesn’t sound like SHIELD is even a twinkle in Stark’s eye yet.
I suspect the only reason scenes from the short were in the opening montage were that they showed Carter being all actiony, and they wanted to collect together all the actiony Carter scenes they could to sharpen the contrast between what she’d done then and what they were allowing her to do now.
@1 and 4:
I agree with this as well. I thought it was genius how the creators were able to make Carter’s coworkers both competent and incredibly sexist. It makes them feel so much less competent because you hate how sexist they are being, but they are always just barely a step behind, and they are very clever.
I think this is great, because it doesn’t show sexism as the domain of just bumbling buffoons, but it shows that it’s a cultural problem that infects all kinds of people. Furthermore, if her other agents would just not be sexist, they would be able to enlist her help much more fully, and they would be more successful. Even though they are very good, they are limiting themselves because they don’t realize just how exceptional Carter is.
This show was just so well crafted. It didn’t feel like I was just watching another action show; it felt like I was watching a real art film that just happened to be about spies and superheroes. Like, I think the two hour Agent Carter pilot is just one of MCU’s best films to date, and it is just a TV show.
It really makes me wish that they would make a Black Widow film already.
@17 Hear Hear!
I think they show is walking that fine line perfectly. It shows that the sexism of the men of the SSR makes them less effective but not totally ineffective.
I haven’t seen the One Shot but my opinion is that the triumphant walk we see at the end isn’t a walk of “Im gonna run SHIELD yo, Later” but instead just one that demonstrates that regardless if it was recognized she realized her own self worth.
This makes the events canon and fits them into the timeline.
Also if this Leviathan got wind of Starks plan to supplant the SSR then that gives them motive for trying to compromise Stark and any allies he may use to try and clear his name.
So IMO the one shot still can work as part of the timeline.
I’ve only seen the first part so far, but it was nice to see Andre Royo, aka Bubbles from The Wire. Shame he’s dead already.
I’m gonna say the three words, concerning Carter’s homefront, that might jinx the whole works, or make it the most glorious amall-scale adaptation of Marvel work possible: The Bletchley Circle.
The seed stock for that narrative expansion’s located in that hotel for women, whose matron has to strenuously distinguish it as not a place of prostitution (no men past the first floor!) or a hotbed of lesbianism (you *will* give up your job for marriage, won’t you?). Most homo-local places for single women had to make those distinctions, just to exist without harassment, so at least that rings true.
If the (female) showrunners decide to use the richness of the entire workforce that got canned postwar — the women who ran factories, cryptographic Slan shacks, logistics, and, yes, drove tanks and airplanes — they could use the hotel’s residents to illustrate that Agent Carter’s not alone in being a patriotic woman trying to carve out a purpose during an era of offically-enforced sexism, designed to create consumers of postwar goods.
The world they could tackle in future seasons could be so vast, and yes, I know they have to take it one personal story at a time — but I’m in, for the potential alone.
@15 I think I remember reading an interview with a show runner that said the one shot takes place after the Agent Carter series. The result of the series lead to the events of the one shot. Can’t remember where I saw it though.
@13: Making Operation Paperclip a reaction to Leviathan would require changing its timing, because historically it began in 1945, and the show is set in 1946.
@14: I believe the clock face you’re referring to is the one on the facade of Grand Central Terminal. It’s directly in front of the MetLife Building, which has been replaced by Stark Tower in the MCU.
It has a very Rocketeer vibe to it. I love the 40’s semi noir setting.
Someone please tell me who James Frain offended as to get NO LINES at all as well as killed off so soon. This keeps happening to him, too good not to use but so easy to kill off.
@24: He got lines, he just got them using an artificial voicebox thingy. The device was generating the tone in place of his vocal cords, but it was his own mouth shaping the words from it.
@25 And that, to me, was one of the more interesting features of the show, because those things are real-life gadgets that are used by people who’ve had to have laryngectomies, for cancer or other reasons. They work in about the same way as Peter Frampton’s vocoder does; they conduct a tone into the throat that the person can then shape with his lips and tongue into words.
It’s such a fun little bit of world-building. It immediately makes the agents creepy and different from everybody else, and it makes you wonder why. Was it a punishment? A way to make sure they couldn’t ever talk about what went on inside the organization? A way to keep them from being identifiable by their voice? I almost hope we never find out the answer.
I would bet that some actors relish the chance to do something interesting with a character who can’t speak–whose acting and personality has to come from physical acting.
Can we also agree that it is great that Howard Stark has a vault full of doomsday weapons like Professor Farnsworth?
Unrelated, I spent the last month watching Season 1 of Agents of SHIELD on Netflix again. My attention span is a bit divided on Tuesday nights, so even though I had seen most of the episodes this was the first time they really had my full attention.
It’s a good show. Reviewers talk casually now about how the first season was uneven or just plain bad, but… I think that was more a product of expectations. Taken just as what it is, it’s a solid season of television, and sometimes better than that.
Maybe I just missed it, but how did Creepy Voiceless Assassin Man identify Peggy so quickly as SSR Agent Margaret Carter after such a brief and passing encounter at the nightclub? Anybody else find this potentially important, or at least odd?
@@.-@ Yes – EFFORTLESS is probably the bes towrd to describe som much of why Agent Carter (both the show and the character) are so great. None of this feels forced, it all feels so natural.
@28 He saw her get in a cab and followed it. Then he killed Colleen because all he knew was that SHE was blond and Peggy was defusing the bomb in the bathroom.
@30 Or because she would have been a witness. That guy doesn’t tend to leave folks alive.
Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure he didn’t get killed in the milk truck implosion. Being pinned to the van as it went over is a classic serial cliffhanger scenario, so naturally he has to escape. (That, and IMDB lists the character as being in four episodes. :)
@31 Oh yeah his body is no longer atop the truck when it hits the water.
It was so good… I wasn´t especially excited about the show at the beggining, of course that change after watching the One-Shot movie, witch is really cool. An excitement that kept growing as we get closer to the air-date. I still wasn’t sure what to expect but oh boy, I have to say they delivered! The main character was simply amazing. Agent Carter is remarkable. So witty and funny, just lovely in every aspect. And of course as we all knew and expected… a real Bad Ass.
The ambientation is superb, they totally nail the whole retro aspect/feeling. The story is promising as well as the show´s dinamic wich is quite different from your usual Marvel project, but you can definitely feel their seal on it. Action and Intrigue with a Marvel touch.. I´m already hooked!
Were my wife and I the only ones who thought Carter was dressed like Carmen Sandiego? We both really loved the show.
@34: Nope, I’ve heard a number of Carmen Sandiego cracks. They’re not quite accurate, though, since Carmen’s fedora had a much wider brim and a yellow band, and she wore a red trenchcoat rather than a blue jacket and skirt.
BTW, anyone who missed it and doesn’t have Hulu, it’s going to be re-aired on Saturday. Check your listings.
Knowing what a sodium acetate solution is, I knew when it was mentioned what two household ingredients were needed. I watched Peggy grab the baking soda… and the vinegar… and initially wondered why she needed the third ingredient. Nice touch.
( if you’ve ever made a baking soda volcano, the residue, known as sodium acetate, is the primary flavouring in salt and vinegar potato chips. It is also known as hot ice, and has some fun properties which allow it to be used in reusable hand warmers)
Loving it.. but having a problem with the music selection.. I know it’s period specific.. but I still find it annoying as all hell when they go into the big band music for some reason..
I thought the music was spot on. I liked the use of the bebop to bring a lighter tone to the scene where she pretended to be a health inspector at the milk plant.
No mention that it seemed to pass the bechdel test with flying colours? I mean a show built around a female central character is no guarantee of that as we all know and the way they framed it all around that radio drama was neat. I enjoyed it immensely though, really strong start and i agree with the seemingly over the top sexism to our modern sensibilities but women really were treated like that so it’s bound to look exaggerated – as others have more eloquently put it.
Missed the first episode originally, only managed to watch it when ABC allowed free viewing online the week after. (And missed the episode last night, darn it, due to it being earlier than usual. Caught the last 10 seconds.) My question is, though, from the Thoughts section: ”
Showing Peggy repurposing Howard Stark’s sex roleplay outfits as undercover costumes was a stroke of genius.” Where was that mentioned? I went through the episode twice looking for a reference to it.
@42: There was no new episode last night; it was pre-empted for the State of the Union. You must’ve caught the end of the rebroadcast of “Time and Tide.”
And IIRC, the roleplay outfit was the nurse’s coat that she found in the wardrobe in Stark’s guest bedroom, then used as a lab coat to pass as a factory worker.