Just as Peggy starts getting respect, it all falls apart.
What They Say:
A Sin to Err – Peggy comes to a shocking realization but isn’t aware her true enemies are closer than she thought; Sousa narrows in on the truth about Peggy.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Agent Carter felt like it hit a different kind of stride the last time around by shuttling her and Thompson off to parts unknown where they had to work together alongside the Howling Commandos. That gave us the Peggy we knew from the film side, where she was in her element, people she knew who trusted her ability, and a real sense of purpose to be pushed forward with. There was a lot of great character material, some welcome revelations about Thompson that helps to make him a bit more human, and changes back on the home front with Sousa figuring out what’s going on with Peggy. But at its heart, we got to see the Peggy that she wants to be. In command, assured and confident, and acting in the interests of right to do good things. Though she goes back to New York easily enough, and you know that’s where she feels she belongs right now, you also know that there’s a good part of her that wanted to stay with Dugan and figure out how to make it all work from there.
The opening sequence here is an interesting one as we see Dottie with Fyodor with four candidates being invited into Leviathan, which is pretty much an invitation that you can’t refuse. An exploration of the origins of Leviathan is kept simple as we get things going here with the debriefing back at the SSR, but it gets kind of complicated as it goes on as Peggy is really intense in getting information out of him about the training going on with the young girls. She has plenty of reasons to do so, but it rubs Dooley the wrong way in a big way which is why after chewing her out, even thoguh she provides some reasonable suspicions to follow through on, he sends her off to follow her hunch. It’s better to get her out of the office, so to speak, so he can focus on getting the Leviathan intel he needs. But we see through Ivchenko that it’s certainly true in how women can go by unnoticed when it comes to the world of espionage and assassination.
Peggy’s investigation is one that has some rather fun humor to it since she’s trying tie things together with what Stark was up to all this time in thinking that one of the spies ended up bedding him to get what they needed. So that means getting a list of everyone he’s fooled around with since he’s actually given a lot of them parting gifts in a way. They’re not all that pleased when Peggy and Jarvis start coming around asking questions, but it plays out in a great way that makes you grin and laugh. While we get that, what plays in contrast to it is seeing Dottie make her way to the building across the street from the SSR where she eliminates a dentist in order to get a good shot at Ichevno, who is hanging out with Dooley as the two men shoot the breeze a bit while taking a break from it all. It’s cute in its own way at first until you realize the trick of it all with what’s really going on, which is great to see it twist like that.
While that’s moving right along as Ichevnov has his own plans, Sousa’s discovery has him setting things into motion to capture Peggy since they’re viewing her as a spy or enemy now. The SSR moves fast, which is fun to watch, as they try to corner her at the automat while she’s meeting Jarvis there to figure out what they’ve learned in their separate investigations. It turns pretty chaotic, though she’s able to hold her own well enough, as we see her dealing with several agents and even knocking Thompson out cold in order to get away. When Sousa confronts her, she tries to reason a little with him, but the truth is that she just needs to get back to her apartment as she knows that the SSR will be going there and she refuses to let Steve’s blood fall into their hands for a whole host of reasons. It all plays out fast, but it sets things into motion that lasted longer than it probably should have already.
The pursuit of Peggy moves in a decent way and having a group head to the Griffith leads to the expected fun of the woman who runs the place getting quite flustered by the agents making their way to Peggy’s room. Her room may not have a lot in it, but there’s bound to be interesting things they find from it. Though not the blood as she’s managed to grab that and has bolted out the window of the third floor of all places, which obviously puts her in a real pinch. Peggy’s pretty resourceful in general so seeing her trying to deal with this, but it’s when Angie ends up helping that it goes in a really hilarious way that fits in with the time period and the way many men just couldn’t handle women in certain states. It may be too much for some viewers, but it’s the kind of silly play that works really well for me.
While things go better than expected for her escape, it all goes to hell when she comes across Dottie in the hallway during her big escape and Dottie uses old school tricks to knock her out by giving her a pretty solid kiss. Of course, you wonder why Peggy would go out the way she was going, but Peggy’s able to figure out that Dottie is the spy she was hunting for quickly before things go to a complete blur as she passes out. Amusingly, Dottie doesn’t get to finish her off as Sousa and Thompson comes across her and Dottie plays up the simple side as best as she can while trying to figure out what she can do to go after her target. Peggy getting a perp walk is comical when you get down to it considering all she’s done over the years, but the confusion here is certainly working well to alter perceptions of her.
In Summary:
Peggy doing so much in secret without getting caught for so long could go on only so far, so seeing the change here works well to change the direction of things going forward for her now that she’s in the hands of the SSR. And SSR agents that want real answers at this point, which she seems like she wants to reveal. There’s a lot of things going on here and while it’s not as action focused as last week, it provides a good balance of it along with the tension while also doing a few well placed reveals along the way to keep it moving. The dynamic change is definitely here where it’s altering its course, since Peggy can’t hide what she’s done anymore, and with a few loose cannons out there overall, it could take some really fun turns in the final two episodes coming up.
Grade: A-
