Monday 16 March 2015

Agent Carter: Valediction

"I plan a complete and total overhaul of the kitchen spices..."

It's the end of the season and, worryingly, if online gossip is at all reliable, the series. So it's time to thank a certain person for making it possible for seeing these episode. This person goes by the YouTube handle of MrVortexofDOOM and, for those of us who like this sort of thing, his missing episode reconstructions knock Loose Cannon into a cocked hat. So please have a proper look at his channel, press the "like" button, and spread the word.

As we might expect,the episode is topped and tailed with deliberately egregious examples of sexism; we begin with that Captain America radio show again, with its arse-clenching rendition of Peggy's character, and we end with a triumphant Peggy being applauded back into the office, only for official credit to fall to the much less competent, but much more male, Jack Thompson. In between these two bookends are some wonderful things.

Tony Stark gets a baptism of fire; he may now have been cleared, but he's hypnotised to do himself in by taking off in a plane and doing a Steve Rogers. It's an interesting riff on the guilt that he feels about that day, and the fact that it is Peggy who persuades him to come back from the brink speaks volumes about the mutual respect they share, forged in war, in spite of everything.

It's a feelgood ending; Dotty Underwood escapes to strike again, and both Peggy and Angie get to stay together chez Stark. Most touchingly, Jarvis trusts Peggy, and not his employer, with Steve Rogers' blood.

This is a very pleasing finale. It would be awfully good to have a second season now...


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