Marvel's Agent Carter: The Blitzkrieg Button

Mild Spoilers.

Episode 4 finally came, but I'm not at all satisfied. I only want more!

The Blitzkrieg Button saw the return of Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, and he was the highlight that saved this episode from mediocrity. Howard brought a lot of great humor to the episode, and his dynamic with Peggy (Hayley Atwell) is every bit as fun as hers and Jarvis's (James D'Arcy). I am loving the fuller fleshing-out of these characters I liked so well in Captain America.

Peggy and Howard do some catching up.

Otherwise, this episode started to stagnate. The plot is basically that Howard comes, annoys Peggy to no end, and then leaves. She gets one thing out of the "deal" that will certainly be used later, but really, everything that happened could have easily fit into half an episode, instead of a whole.

They stretched it out by including all the investigating that Agent Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) is doing, something we want him to do well in because he's a good character, but also we don't, because the end of that line is Peggy and Jarvis's treacherous antics. I like Sousa alright, but not as much as our hero trio, so all that screen time paired with so little interesting character development felt slightly like a waste of time, and plot-wise, a stall for a later episode.

The secret meeting is blown when Howard recognizes the man behind the newspaper! Who could it be?!

Chief Dooley (Shea Whigham) also got to waste and stall for some time, but it seems more worth it, since we know nothing about his character, at this point any screen time at all helps develop the character. Apparently, he's a little tricksy like Coulson, which is funny. Agent Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) had two purposes this time; to one-up Sousa, and, to say out loud, in the simplest, plainest terms possible (for the really dense viewers because there's no way anyone has missed it) Peggy's monkey; that she's kidding herself trying to find respect in a work environment dominated by men. He says it to her face in a totally unnecessary scene that left me tired, and feeling sorry for Peggy that they couldn't come up with a better plight for her to overcome, or at least put an interesting twist on the one they have.

The Hero Trio in action!

In fact Peggy gets sadly little to do this time, especially on the action front; babysitting Howard is a full-time job, and those scenes were definitely the best. Peggy being exasperated is very amusing. Jarvis also gets nudged out a bit, by Howard (understandable), but not as I feared he would be, so that was a lovely surprise. Those three, the Hero Trio, are friends in real-life, and I can only imagine that is what makes them come across the screen with so much contagious fun, easily topping the list of reasons to love this show.

This great show, which has too short a run to waste time setting up for the next week, and therefore had better increase the cool content from here on out. I'll be expecting it!

Episodes 1 and 2 review.

Episode 3 review.