Yet another week and yet another Agent Carter episode has come and gone. “The Atomic Job” probably wasn’t my favorite episode, but it let us get to know a couple more reoccurring characters a little bit better, and they were super fun to watch. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts, and spoilers are up ahead.
On “The Atomic Job”, Jason keeps feeling a pull telling him to go someplace. He figures out that it’s zero matter calling to him and that if he comes into contact with enough of it, he may become solid again. Our characters realize that some zero matter must be inside Jane Scott’s missing body, and with Jason pointing them in the right direction, Peggy and Jarvis head off to steal it. Unfortunately, Whitney Frost and her husband beat them there, and she absorbs all of the zero matter out of the body first.
Then Peggy and Jarvis overhear Frost tell her husband that she needs an atomic bomb. They quickly deduce that she wants to recreate the explosion that made zero matter in the first place, and from there the episode becomes a race to steal the bomb first. With Sousa by their side, Peggy and Jarvis team up with Rose, their operator assistant, and Dr. Samberly, an SSR scientist. And the rest of the episode is amazing. Working together, all five of them manage to get to the bombs first and steal their uranium, rendering them useless for Frost’s plans.
Unfortunately, in the process of all this, during a fight between Frost and Peggy, Peggy gets pushed off a ledge and impaled by a metal pipe. Sousa and the others thankfully manage to get her away to safety in time. They take her to Sousa’s fiancée, Violet, who works as a nurse. She saves Peggy’s life, but in the process she also realizes that Sousa is still in love with Peggy. The part of me that ships Peggy and Sousa is happy at this, but at the same time, it just seemed like a convenient and easy way to shove some tension into Sousa’s new relationship and make it not work. We still don’t know a lot about his fiancée and that makes me concerned that she only exists to create conflict for Sousa and not as a character in her own right.
Our episode ends with Jason disappearing once again and with Chadwick sneaking out of bed at night to call the other Hydra leaders to a meeting, presumably about his wife, Frost. I think it’s safe to say that he’s going to betray her.
All in all, I really enjoyed this episode. I love that Whitney Frost finally feels like she can start doing her own thing and all the opposition she still faces because of it. Agent Carter has delivered some wonderful female characters for us at every turn—they are all unique and interesting to watch, but most importantly, they are also relatable. Frost’s struggles, such as being told to smile, having to put on a front for others, and never being taken seriously because of her gender may seem inconsequential, but those are real issues many women have to deal with. The sexual harassment her director puts her through certainly comes to mind. As a woman, until this point, Frost lived in a world where everyone’s actions enforced the idea that her body is not her own, and that can really weigh on a person. While these things don’t excuse her actions, it’s still easy to see where she’s coming from, and my favorite villains are one who have clear and understandable motives. Her husband isn’t too pleased with this turn of events or Frost making these decisions, and until this point, I’m not sure he ever realized how intelligent or driven his wife truly is. I foresee their relationship blowing up sometime in the near future because of it.
Rose takes the number one spot for my favorite character this episode. We’ve seen Rose intermittently through both seasons, working as a phone operator in New York and now as dance studio owner as the front of the SSR’s undercover headquarters. Initially, Rose doesn’t seem like much of a character and she’s someone people underestimate. Not only is she a woman, she’s not a field agent and so has very little experience compared to everyone else. Furthermore, she’s also a bit overweight, which I suspect to be yet another reason people overlook her. However, as Peggy reminds Sousa, Rose not only protects everyone at the SSR on a daily basis, she also had to do the same training they did.
My aesthetic.
Rose proves to be a valuable member of the team, and for me, the best part of the episode was watching a well-mannered woman in a cute dress taking down Whitney’s thugs like it was nobody’s business. Rose doesn’t even hesitate to confront them. She sees the thugs there, smiles and says she’ll take care of them, and then she does. Rose also seemed incredibly unimpressed with the fight they put up. She was amazing and I’m in love.
I’d say my least favorite part of the episode was the memory device. While infiltrating someone’s office in order to get a key, Peggy ends up using a memory-erasing device on the owner because he recognizes her as an SSR agent. Multiple times. The show establishes that the device can cause brain damage, and yet the scene is presented as funny because the guy in question is a womanizing asshole. It all felt a little… I want to say ableist, to me, and because of that it ended up being a little uncomfortable to watch.
I hope that in the future, we won’t see the memory device used in such a way again, and I also hope that Rose gets some more time to shine. Dottie Underwood is returning to us next week, and we’re going to get a team up episode between her and Peggy. It looks like a dream come true. Be sure to check back in with us next week to find out our thoughts.
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I would concur. This wasn’t a bad episode, but easily the weakest of the season right now. I don’t think the blend of action and humor worked as well here, given that Peggy and crew essentially raced to get an atomic weapon before Whitney. The stakes, I feel, should have been bigger. And I’d agree on the memory inhibitor, if only because the joke wore thin after the first few times Peggy used it on Wise.
Also, maybe this is being picky, but it was a bit convenient that Peggy didn’t want medical attention, but Sousa’s fiance was not only a nurse, but just happened to overhear Sousa speak so fondly of Peggy, revealing that he cared for her this entire time and not Violet. I wouldn’t want Agent Carter to delve into petty love triangle stuff because I think it’s a smarter show than that, but it certainly looks like it’s possible.