Agent Carter: Time and Tide

January 14, 2015 2:23 AM - Season 1, Episode 3

Jarvis gets a tour of the SSR offices, Peggy and Jarvis go spelunking, and Krzeminski is late. Not for work or anything. Just late.

IMDB entry.
AV Club recap.

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts (59 comments total)

I *love* her fighting style. Just so very uncompromisingly vicious, particularly in comparison to the general "women fighting" sort of thing in cinema (particularly from that era) where the female lead can only have a catfight where she and a female villain slap each other.

Nevermind that - Peggy Carter will fuck you up with any convenient weapon or improvised weapon and if not then she'll kick your ass with her fists and feet. I think of her kind of hand and extended kick and groundwork and flips kind of fighting as fairly anachronistic for an American/European (except maybe someone doing French Savate style stuff, maybe?), but I'll totally buy it as someone who's been working with Captain America et al. IIRC, it's Marvel comic canon that just training with Cap will make you a world class hand to hand fighter, and training with someone who was trained by Cap will make you pretty badassed.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:56 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Much stronger episode, in that it only had to keep focus on one or more things. Very good.

Also, , hey looks like the Starks are the bastards I always suspected them of being.
posted by The Whelk at 7:12 AM on January 14, 2015

The other thing I appreciate about her fighting style is that she makes sure her opponents stay down. Pretty sure there's not going to be a scene where the villain magically recovers to assault her once more. She makes sure of that.
posted by idb at 8:43 AM on January 14, 2015

I loved the tailoring on Peggy's "sewer excursion" clothes.


Also, I predict Peggy/Angie will be the ship that launched a thousand ships.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:44 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also, new girl "Underwood" the name of a typewriter, we have a spooky typewriter, girl is so a spy.
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM on January 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Also, the whole damn women's residence is wired in some way or another, and the super is up to something.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:52 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

New girls is also from Iowa, and I'm pretty sure all Soviet spies pretend to be from Iowa, don't they?
posted by idb at 8:58 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I can't put my finger on why but I was not thrilled with this episode. There were a number of moments that charmed me - Peggy's moment at the window with the boyfriend, for example. But I found myself not drawn in the way I was the previous two hours of the show.

I can put my finger on my introvert annoyance with Angie. Peggy doesn't have to apologize to you for not being in the mood to socialize!
posted by phearlez at 8:58 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I mostly like the show, but I'm finding the plotting more than a little convoluted. I'm having trouble understanding exactly what the bad guys' motivation is. Is it to steal Stark tech, or to sell it? After this episode, we know that it's neither. Then what is their goal? We know that Peggy wants to clear Stark's name, but even then the goalposts keep getting moved in ambiguous ways.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:02 AM on January 14, 2015

EVIL ORGANIZATION AGENDA

1. Plan and execute elaborate break-in of Stark residence to steal massively powerful and incredibly valuable weaponry.
2. Leave it all virtually unguarded practically next door to the crime scene for an extended period of time.
3. uhhhh....

Did the evil organization really have NO plan for the post-heist sale? It's not like someone slipped up and they couldn't get the stuff out of town before the police set up a cordon. Please please please tell me this is part of a greater plan, that someone wanted Stark out of the picture but didn't want the weapons to get into the wrong hands, or there's competing evil organizations with differing agendas.

Maybe the shady ladies residence...
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:32 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's a Carter/Martinelli fic that I read, set immediately after last week's episodes, Should and Should Not. The scene this week where Angie comes into Peggy's room is very close to the start of that story, it was delightful.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:43 AM on January 14, 2015

I can't put my finger on why but I was not thrilled with this episode. There were a number of moments that charmed me - Peggy's moment at the window with the boyfriend, for example. But I found myself not drawn in the way I was the previous two hours of the show.

Yeah, I felt the same way. Still enjoyable, but felt off. Part of it was a slower pace and lack of the fabulous music from last week. Part of it might be a general feeling of "What's she doing here" in terms of bending all sorts of rules to...clear Howard Starks name as he runs off to do something else. I always thought of the character as handling larger tasks, i.e. the founding of SHIELD and what not. But for the moment she's wiping Stark's ass, which is less than thrilling.

And now we're at a two weel lull. BOOO. I was expecting this mini to not skip a week. Wonder why they showed two episodes on the opening night then?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:44 AM on January 14, 2015

Part of it might be a general feeling of "What's she doing here" in terms of bending all sorts of rules to...clear Howard Starks name as he runs off to do something else.

I had that feeling too. I wish we had any sense of what Stark was up to.
posted by mordax at 12:16 PM on January 14, 2015

Did anybody notice the footwear on the villain who shot the agent and the prisoner in the car? The heels seemed too high for a man. Then I looked at the silhouette. My guess it's the girl from Iowa.
posted by sardonyx at 1:37 PM on January 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

Part of it might be a general feeling of "What's she doing here" in terms of bending all sorts of rules to...clear Howard Starks name as he runs off to do something else. I always thought of the character as handling larger tasks, i.e. the founding of SHIELD and what not. But for the moment she's wiping Stark's ass, which is less than thrilling.

Yeah, it would be nice to see Peggy doing incredible work out in the open a bit, where there would be some recognition of her talents and skills, because she does apparently become an agent of note and importance in setting things up, right? I'm hoping it starts heading in that direction, because watching her do all the heavy lifting and having the meatheads get the credit is going to wear thin very fast. Unless what she unravels over the course of this 8 episode arc is some corruption inside SSR, and the exposure of that is what catapults her into the forefront with SHIELD.

I like her fighting style, and the fact that the show didn't shy away from giving her a large opponent who wasn't pulling punches. I also like the slow reveal of the backstory of Jarvis, which moves his wife from being some kind of jokey background character to a solid piece of motivation.

I am highly suspicious of Dottie.
posted by nubs at 2:15 PM on January 14, 2015

The one fascinating thing about Agent Carter is that there's no origin story. All I know about her is that she served in WWII, then stayed in America afterwards obviously. Otherwise, nada. That's fascinating and almost iconic.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:24 PM on January 14, 2015

Here's hoping that the short season means that they don't think they'll have time for one.
posted by dinty_moore at 3:13 PM on January 14, 2015

It was very saddening to see Peggy sacrifice her meagre credibility to save Jarvis. That's going to have repercussions.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:21 PM on January 14, 2015

I mean, Hayley Atwell is fucking awesome. I love the character. I love the look of the series. But...when do they get to the fireworks factory?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:27 PM on January 14, 2015

Yeah, it would be nice to see Peggy doing incredible work out in the open a bit, where there would be some recognition of her talents and skills, because she does apparently become an agent of note and importance in setting things up, right? I'm hoping it starts heading in that direction, because watching her do all the heavy lifting and having the meatheads get the credit is going to wear thin very fast.

If I recall correctly, the one shot had Stark recruiting her to help establish SHIELD. Also, in Winter Solider, the old SHIELD bunker they find at CA's old boot camp has Peggy's photo on the wall. And CA mentions that Peggy helped establish SHIELD. So fear not, she'll get her due.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:10 PM on January 14, 2015

Yeah, the hit man is a woman, so hi Dottie!

(The gait and cut of the suit is clearly female. It's most obvious when the shooter walks back to the car.)
posted by Kitteh at 4:27 PM on January 14, 2015

I liked the funny in this ep. Jarvis had some great lines. I'm also rooting for Dottie to be a baddie; I like her.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 5:40 PM on January 14, 2015

eep, I love this show! I know absolutely nothing about any comic book, superhero, nothing. (like, I've seen one or two Batman movies.) I was worried I wouldn't understand the lore and history of the Marvel world watching this, so I did a little bit of Wiki reading, and then was like "what the hell, it's a lady kicking ass, I'm in!"

I love Agent Carter! I love how the script/Atwell make her tender and grief-stricken without sexualizing or gendering her vulnerability. Her grief humanizes her, and lends her complexity, rather than the entire catalyst for man-avenging or overcoming dreaded "weak lady default." She's plenty damn strong on her own, without being a one-sided "tough broad." The fight scenes are superb. Carter gets to really kick ass; she doesn't need to be rescued by a dude to finish the fight, nor is she relegated to solely using her wit to end a fight. I keep anticipating scenes where she'll daintily snip a cord to drop a chandelier on someone, but no, she's ripping off a crate top and smashing someone's head with it! Yeah, girl!!! I appreciate, too, that we see Agent Carter's drop-dead gorgeous manicure (while rigging up to rappel into the sewer, natch), and see her pinning her hair at the beginning of a scene, but the pace never lingers over these things. So often we're forced to watch a female character brush her hair through a scene to make sure we know she's soft and tender and a "good woman." Here, it's just like, yeah it's the 1940s, this is what people expect a woman to look like. Her beauty doesn't inform her character, except where she seduced-kissed-knocked-out the club guy, which made me groan.

The second I saw that "aw, shucks, y'all, I'm just a simple gal from Iowa," I was all NO YOU ARE NOT, YOU ARE HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.

I want to see this mysterious wife! Did they run out of casting money? Is she a secret goblin? I'm having trouble summoning up pathos for Jarvis when his dearly beloved is a disembodied voice.

My only complaint is that this show is so damn dark! Let me see those atmospheric sets, y'all!
posted by missmary6 at 7:17 PM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

The plot of this episode felt very Nancy Drew to me (the boat is still just sitting in the harbor, loaded down with all the loot that was stolen quite a while ago in show time? the cops who first examined the crime scene didn't think of the sewer thing?), but I love the characterization, themes, little details, and overall tone/aesthetic so much that I don't care.

I would like a little more motivation for basically any of the major characters besides Jarvis, though. I mean, Peggy's willing to put her own ass on the line trying to clear Stark's name because...? The SSR cares this much about the Stark case because...? Leviathan is trying to do what, exactly? Not to mention, where is Howard Stark and why isn't he doing anything at all to clear his own damn name?
posted by Sara C. at 11:04 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Gentlemen, our evil conspiracy is running in the red and we need to cut costs."
"Maybe we could cut more agents' vocal cords? That has cut down on long distance phone calls."
"Good idea, Boris. Any others?"
"Maybe stop payment on our fortified storage unit? I mean, we're paid up for our mooring space through the end of the year..."
"...and we spent all that money last quarter on branding! Seems a shame to waste it by removing the boat."
"Speaking of the boat, Agents K, N, and V came down with the flu. I don't think the budget has enough play for a temp..."
"But the temp is already on the train coming in from 'Iowa'!"
"Uh, well, just find a place to stash her. Somewhere cheap where she can't get in to much trouble."
"Even if we stick her in that super cheap, weirdly authoritarian boarding house, that doesn't leave a lot of money left over..."
"Look, my Uncle Sully knows a guy. We'll give him a ring."
"Uh, Boris... telephone bills..."
"Da, right. We'll send an evil carrier pigeon or something."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:11 AM on January 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm having trouble summoning up pathos for Jarvis when his dearly beloved is a disembodied voice.

It just hit me that 1940s Jarvis is always interacting with a disembodied voice and so is 2000s Tony
posted by The Whelk at 7:31 AM on January 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

I've given the matter more thought and I think what bothered me somewhat about this episode is that it seemed to me like it was sliding a bit into some noir tropes. Which normally I am a fan of, but we're not set up to expect that tone - either by the earlier episodes or by the Marvel universe in general. Plus we get the funny supertaser gadget saving the day only to have the inconvenient witness - who might reveal Peggy's secret - summarily executed. Are we the noir detective who is winning more by tenacity than knowledge/skill or are we James Bond?

I don't mind Agent Carter not being a super-competent, but it feels like trying to have it both ways. Several times we get the comic-ish last second dodge of detection (car assassination, oops-the-purse in the foyer) but we also get her flat-out taking the lumps for her "screwing up" the interrogation. She actually does get hurt because she's not super but it has to be in ways that don't reveal that it's happened. Did anyone even notice a limp from her leg wound? I can't recall.
posted by phearlez at 10:07 AM on January 15, 2015

I've been thinking some of the same thoughts as you, phearlez, and wondering - given the comment above about Agent Carter not having an origin story - that maybe that is what we are watching: Agent Carter's origin story.

Usually the superhero has to go through a period of time where they know they have gifts, but struggle with how to master them and use them effectively and then use them in the service of good (and possibly find someone else/a team to work with). In this case, Carter doesn't have superpowers, but her abilities (intelligence, determination, skill, etc) far exceed those of her team and her team doesn't view her as valuable/desirable. So she hasn't yet figured out how to use her abilities effectively, and she isn't part of a team, so mistakes are happening. And her actions aren't providing a solution - in fact, they are likely making things worse.

The point seems to be getting driven home fairly hard that she can't do this alone, that she needs people like Jarvis and Angie; i.e. support. But she is having trouble finding that support - Jarvis knows what is going on, but doesn't have the field skills she needs in a partner. Angie is great for emotional support, but Carter has to withhold the truth. And at the office, where she shouldn't have to hide anything and be surrounded by skilled people who can provide mutual support, she has to pretend to be the idiot girl they all believe her to be.

So I think what we are seeing is an approach to a storyline where Agent Carter is discovering that she is a hero, but that she doesn't know how to make that work yet in this post-war, new team environment. So I think we'll see SSR fold/get seriously messed up as this goes in the fight with Leviathan (and the point will probably be made that if SSR had been able to take Peggy seriously, things would have worked out better). After a Pyrrhic victory over Leviathan, in which our few survivors all realize their mistakes in the process of exposing the plot and clearing Stark's name, SHIELD will be founded with Carter front and centre, as noted above.

That's my guess this morning, anyways.
posted by nubs at 12:08 PM on January 15, 2015

Regarding the goods at the dock, the doomed grunt says something like, "He said you would come, but he didn't mention you would be a woman." I will have to watch the episode again, but at the time, it sounded to me like the minimally guarded loot was part of some plan. Though, what was the point? The grunt was killed for being captured and not actually doing anything. Right?
posted by insert.witticism.here at 1:10 PM on January 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's never mentioned and we were close enough to the end of the episode that I felt it was fair, but - is there anyone in this who knows whether that represented everything that was stolen? I don't recall mention of a manifest (or even a crate count) in the first episode and nobody says diddly about it here.
posted by phearlez at 1:29 PM on January 15, 2015

There's the implication, last week, that there's a manifest of something, but it's never been explicitly said.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:36 PM on January 15, 2015

No, it's not everything that has been stolen. In the pilot, Stark mentions that he's going to Europe because some of the bad babies have shown up there.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:38 PM on January 15, 2015

I thought that the dead bad guy who drew the heart in the dirt (the criminally underused James Frain) had gone rogue and stashed the Stark merchandise in that boat out of desperation. Wasn't he going to sell them to the highest bidder?
posted by Mogur at 4:43 PM on January 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can put my finger on my introvert annoyance with Angie. Peggy doesn't have to apologize to you for not being in the mood to socialize!

Yeah, Angie really grates on me. The slut comment from last week, and having a flounce-out because someone else says they're tired this week - not cute.
posted by Squeak Attack at 8:53 AM on January 16, 2015

It was very saddening to see Peggy sacrifice her meagre credibility to save Jarvis.

To me, what was really annoying about that moment was that it made absolutely zero plot sense. They'd already told Jarvis that they suspected he'd only phoned in the stolen car report after the explosion (and, what's more, he had only phoned it in after the explosion). And they'd moved on from the stolen car issue in any case; they were straightforwardly blackmailing him to get him to spill the beans on Stark. The existence of that report was absolutely irrelevant to the situation. Why merely seeing it in Peggy's hands was supposed to give Jarvis the magical ability to get up and, in effect, say "screw you guys, I'm outta here" is impossible to fathom. Peggy's boss should have just taken it from Peggy and said, "yeah, here's that phony car report you called in after you drove Mr. Stark away from the implosion. So...back to your dishonorable discharge and your impending deportation..."

I don't mind the "Peggy has to look incompetent to save the day" plot line (it's a standard Clark Kent trope, after all), but in this case she looked incompetent for no reason at all. She might just as well have stood outside the interrogation room saying "I'm a duck! I'm a duck!" and Jarvis could have stood up and said "A duck, eh? Well, so much for YOUR little game!" and walked out. That would have made exactly the same amount of sense.
posted by yoink at 10:42 AM on January 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't mind the "Peggy has to look incompetent to save the day" plot line (it's a standard Clark Kent trope, after all), but in this case she looked incompetent for no reason at all.

I did not find that to be the case, personally. Jarvis has stood up and been useful and a little stronger than Peggy initially believed but it's a slow build and he's not over the hump yet. At this point she's still got her doubts and Bettany is a good enough actor that he does a very good job of looking like he's scared here. I found it very reasonable for Peggy, faced with this treason & dishonorable discharge surprise, to worry he's going to fold.

That said, I found it a little less her looking incompetent to save the day than her choosing the lesser worry - short term chewing out versus potentially getting ratted out by Jarvis and being fired and possibly arrested. I think it worked well enough, though I think it could have been better and clearly they didn't sell it for you.

I think it's a bigger problem that there's no good reason for Jarvis to have been as flighty and useless and come across as unreliable before now. We're to believe he was thrown out of the service where he was doing a perfectly acceptable job and is useful to Stark but sound like he'll let Stark hang so he can catch his radio program? There's room in Bettany's performance for this to be a bad read on Peggy's part but I don't feel like it meshes. It's as if we have two very good performances from the leads that work well... but they don't line up right with each other.
posted by phearlez at 10:56 AM on January 16, 2015

I found it very reasonable for Peggy, faced with this treason & dishonorable discharge surprise, to worry he's going to fol

That's not my point. I agree, entirely, that she has every reason to think he's about to fold. My point is that showing Jarvis that they do, in fact, have a copy of the stolen car report shouldn't change that situation at all. There's just no reason for Jarvis to stand up, on seeing the report, and say "if there's nothing further, gentlemen" or whatever he says. They have no reason to let him go, no reason not to continue to threaten to pull the trigger on the deportation threat. The deportation threat has no relationship whatsoever to the stolen car report and the stolen car report doesn't even get him off the hook with regard to the implosion inquiry. As I say, they've already said to him in so many words in the interrogation "you know what I'd do if I was involved in something like this? I'd report my car stolen the next day." In other words, they've seen through the ruse of reporting the car stolen; the fact that he actually did report the car stolen doesn't put him out of the frame for the implosion at all.

There's another problem, in fact, with that scene, too--which only becomes apparent when Jarvis finally tells the story of his dishonorable discharge--which is that his response to the blackmail threat is utterly inexplicable, and designed solely as a plot motor to force Peggy's hand to do something drastic to spring Jarvis (that is assuming he told Peggy the truth about the case, which he may well not have). That is, while it's certainly true that they might be able to deport him over the issue, it makes no sense for him to look all downcast and shamefaced and have his face turn white when they threaten to talk to his wife and so forth. I mean (and, again, this all might get explained if the story turns out to be a fib), there's no reason for him not to simply tell the agents there and then what he did and tell them they'd be pretty scummy to use that as a reason to try to get him deported. The threat of calling his wife should have made him laugh "yes, do please remind my wife I'm the hero who saved her from the Nazis!" The whole thing of him slumping further and further into his chair and looking cornered is--unless the story he told turns out to be untrue--just a completely transparent contrivance, as is his later reluctance to "clear his name" by telling Agent Carter the truth.
posted by yoink at 11:06 AM on January 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

The general sloppitude of the plot of this episode makes me think it's got to be setting up a much more complicated story. Both in the boat loot sense and also in the Jarvis' treason sense.

Because, while they were sweating Jarvis over his past, he looked genuinely uncomfortable. Later, he tells Peggy that the treason charges were dropped and it was all for totally understandable and even altruistic reasons. If that's true, then why did he need to get saved by the bell in the interrogation?

This is either the sloppiest plotting ever, or there's more to all of the various stories in this episode.
posted by Sara C. at 11:23 AM on January 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know. People get ashamed of all the wrong things, and the whole Captain America movie that led us into this beat the drum pretty hard about how badly people wanted to be a part of the fight even if it was implausible/impractical. I don't think it's too much to ask us to believe that people would have such a strong, visceral reactions against a treason charge that someone would want to keep it covered up - even if they were entirely in the right the whole time.
posted by phearlez at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Let's face it. I think Howard Stark might be in cahoots with Leviathan.
posted by Sara C. at 1:09 PM on January 16, 2015

Yeeeep. He can follow the Stark family tradition of being the Worst until the actual last second
posted by The Whelk at 2:03 PM on January 16, 2015

I'm also rooting for Dottie to be a baddie; I like her.

FWIW the actress had an arc on White Collar last season where she was introduced as sweet, charming and innocent and turned out to be a crazy/scary/smart/intense villain, and she did it really well so, as much as typecasting sucks and all, I am definitely also rooting for that here.
posted by mstokes650 at 5:49 PM on January 17, 2015

Hey this was a good episode, I may stick with the show. I liked that it was a tidy little story package. I also really like the sense that Agent Carter will get caught out, she has no hope maintaining her cover at SRS while working with Stark. It's just a race for her to do justice.

Jarvis really stepped up this show. Although I'm bummed they put his wife's voice in, I was much happier with the idea the wife was entirely fiction. Also wish they'd left the question about him being accused of treason open for an episode or two more. They don't have a lot of room for ambiguity with only 8 episodes, but a little bit would be great.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 PM on January 17, 2015

I'd say the treason/dishonorable discharge issue is still potentially open. All we have to go on is Jarvis's otherwise unsupported testimony to Peggy. I agree that it seems most likely that we are meant to take that as the truth, but there is nothing to stop the writers from complicating that issue.
posted by yoink at 10:47 AM on January 18, 2015

This weekend is the Arisia science fiction convention, and - unsurprisingly - there were a bunch of Agent Carters roaming the halls. I approve.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:17 PM on January 18, 2015

I like the (largely established, I think?) idea that Howard Stark can't help but make weapons. "I made a backscratcher- WAIT IT WILL HURT YOU!" That alone is a huge plot engine that could drive a series.
"Uh, I got drunk last night, Miss Carter..."
"What did you do..."
"I might have sketched out a MIRV system on a napkin and used it to tip a, uh, lady with a distinct Russian accent?"
"Right. On it."

Which could lead to a Carter makes Stark Senior SHAPE THE FUCK UP which then explains why he was so controlling of his kid ("Little Tony's just like me! We need to keep a tab on him or he might make a nuclear tire swing!").
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:43 PM on January 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

The idea that a bazillionare war profiteer WASP like Howard Stark would name his kid Tony is laughable to me.

This comment tailor made for The Whelk and brought to you by the fact that I've been watching Gilmore Girls all weekend.
posted by Sara C. at 9:13 PM on January 18, 2015

His wife picked out the name, of course, and you know he insisted on calling him "Anthony" at every possible moment.
posted by The Whelk at 11:36 PM on January 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Besides his middle name is Edward, which seems like a compromise)
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 PM on January 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Did anyone else think that maybe it was Jarvis who popped the witness? I guess if the silhouette was definitely feminine, it probably wasn't. But for a minute I thought they were setting him up to be very ruthless indeed.
posted by lollusc at 5:04 AM on January 19, 2015

rmd1023: I *love* her fighting style. Just so very uncompromisingly vicious, particularly in comparison to the general "women fighting" sort of thing in cinema (particularly from that era) where the female lead can only have a catfight where she and a female villain slap each other.

Yes! This has been one of my favorite things about the show. She's just a down and dirty brawler and it is awesome.

GhostintheMachine: Did the evil organization really have NO plan for the post-heist sale? It's not like someone slipped up and they couldn't get the stuff out of town before the police set up a cordon.

My first thought was that the heavies (Leviathan?) left it there as a red herring or trojan horse. That their end game isn't simply selling stolen tech. Although if that's the case they relied on someone finding it, which wasn't at all a sure thing.
posted by brundlefly at 10:30 AM on January 19, 2015

No, Agent Carter, Krzeminski was not good at his job. Not a bit.

I thought the grief at the SSR offices afterward was heavily oversold. I didn't expect popping champagne corks, but the switchboard operators all being heartbroken? Nope.

As for the Jarvis' report of the car being stolen, he'd been told that there was no report. The SSR guys had grabbed the report and were going to make it disappear. So the whole scene involved the SSR agents tampering with evidence and with the previous references to Jarvis lawyering up...

I'm also starting to suspect the head of the NYC SSR office of being some sort of mole or plant (Hail Hydra!) with the way he keeps going back to the well of slandering Howard Stark. Of course, we've seen the entire office other than Carter and and maaaaaaabye Souza, going off half cocked and adjusting the evidence and their perceptions to match their pre-established conclusion, so he may just be bad at his job, too.
posted by ursus_comiter at 1:44 PM on January 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

As for the Jarvis' report of the car being stolen, he'd been told that there was no report. The SSR guys had grabbed the report and were going to make it disappear. So the whole scene involved the SSR agents tampering with evidence and with the previous references to Jarvis lawyering up...

Yeah, he'd been told that, but there was no reason to tell him. The fact that the report existed, made no difference to his situation. And yes, they'd talked about him lawyering up, but no lawyer had put in an appearance (that, by the way, is the plot device they should have used; they should have done some business with the lawyer being at the offices but being given the runaround, and Agent Carter leads the lawyer to his/her client.

At the point where they're threatening to blackmail him to force him to spill the beans, it really doesn't matter, from Jarvis's p.o.v. that he is suddenly empowered to say "ooooooh, you nasty men LIED to me about the report being stolen!" It certainly doesn't give him magic powers to shame them into letting him go and giving up on the blackmail threat.
posted by yoink at 3:26 PM on January 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: A duck, eh? Well, so much for YOUR little game!
posted by Naberius at 10:25 PM on January 20, 2015

ursus_comiter: but the switchboard operators all being heartbroken? Nope.

Given that he was a known philanderer, I sort of assumed he'd dated a bunch of the switchboard operators, which is why they were particularly sad. I have no idea if this was supported by the show at all, or if it was just something my brain randomly inserted.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:01 AM on January 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

Maybe the switchboard operators think they really work for Ma Bell and are shocked and saddened that someone they work with could just be mowed down like that? I mean you'd think SSR operatives would be more hardened to the realities of what a job like this entails.
posted by Sara C. at 8:23 AM on January 21, 2015

Maybe the switchboard operators think they really work for Ma Bell and are shocked and saddened that someone they work with could just be mowed down like that? I mean you'd think SSR operatives would be more hardened to the realities of what a job like this entails.

You'd think the switchboard operators would begin to suspect something was up when none of their calls had to do with phonelines being down or crossed wires etc.

But, yes, I found the general "We lost an agent, ALL WORK STOPS FOR THE DAY!" thing to be a bit odd, in that it didn't seem to comport with the dangerous nature of their job. I'm not really sure what they were trying to do. Maybe the idea was to try to humanize everyone in a kind of wholesale way: "look, these are real people whose lives really matter" kind of thing. With a short run they might have felt that they didn't have time to build someone up that we genuinely care about before bumping them off.
posted by yoink at 11:03 AM on January 21, 2015

But, yes, I found the general "We lost an agent, ALL WORK STOPS FOR THE DAY!" thing to be a bit odd, in that it didn't seem to comport with the dangerous nature of their job.

I don't see why not. It's small office, clearly people are going to get attached to each other.

Maybe the switchboard operators think they really work for Ma Bell..

Doesn't everyone have to walk right be them to take the "secret" elevator to the offices?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:40 AM on January 21, 2015

I don't see why not. It's small office, clearly people are going to get attached to each other.

It's not that I expected them not to care, I would just have expected it to be played more like a man being killed in a war movie (a lot of tough-talk-that-masks-the-obvious-emotions-underneath and a certain amount of if-we-lose-our-focus-every-time-one-of-us-buys-it-the-bad-guys-win morale boosting from the leader) and less a kind of "OMG, he died? Fuck it, the game's not worth the candle" helplessness.
posted by yoink at 12:00 PM on January 21, 2015