Agent Carter, Season 1, Episode 5, “The Iron Ceiling”
Written by Jose Molina
Directed by Peter Leto
Airs at 9pm (ET) on Tuesdays on ABC
“The Iron Ceiling” is the episode Agent Carter has been building to all season, and the kind of hour it needs most at this point in its run, now that the show’s world is mostly established. The episode more than makes up for the minimal forward momentum in the Howard Stark/Leviathan quadrants, with increasing character depth and backstories for multiple auxiliary players that until now have been given short shrift. A big problem that the show needs to work around is that everyone besides Howard, and maybe Jarvis, exists only to support Peggy or expand on her as a character. Some headway is made with this during the team’s trip to Russia to intercept the transfer of blueprints between Leviathon and a mystery seller who the SSR is led to believe is Stark. It’s only enough to hint at what the show is capable of doing rather than completely break down the walls between Peggy and her icy coworkers, but a hint of steady character building at this stage is worth much more than an endless stream of exposition about secret organizations and deadly weapons.
Peggy standing up for herself with Dooley and asking up front to go on an important mission is a long time coming and finally lets the audience see what it looks like when Peggy Carter operates within the full force of the law instead of skulking around back alleys in service of Stark-sponsored espionage. Jarvis calling out Peggy on how her coworkers treat her almost directly spurs her insistence on being included with everyone else, so it will be interesting to see how Jarvis responds to her similar comments about his relationship with Stark. The adventure in Russia is a bunch of rollicking fun, from the introduction of Dum-Dum Dugan and the Howling Commandos to the race through a mostly-empty barracks after a child assassin (the beginnings of a major Marvel tie-in). Based on the partial reveal of Dottie’s backstory (more on this later), the audience already knows what the crying little girl is capable of, even if the team doesn’t, which adds the requisite layer of tension and excitement to her interaction with Dugan. Reprising his role from Captain America: The First Avenger, Neal McDonough is a perfect outward representation of the Dugan from the comics and his performance doesn’t fall far behind his appearance quality-wise. His admiration of Peggy’s abilities as an agent is clear and his relatively outsized reactions to each development bring a much-needed level of camp to the dour winter landscape.
Peggy handling an automatic weapon like an action figure during the shoot out is a great sight and the fact that she doesn’t freeze up in the middle of a showdown, unlike Agent Thompson, is icing on the cake. As might be expected, his reaction to the firefight is a result of lingering PTSD from the war and the accidental killing of Japanese soldiers at Okinawa. Chad Michael Murray gives his best performance of the series in his confession to Peggy (which, admittedly, is a very low bar), effectively selling the pain and regret that he walks around with on a daily basis. They may not be fast friends just yet, but at least Peggy and Thompson thaw their relationship slightly so they won’t keep repeating the same beats. Thompson knows Peggy is more than just a coffee girl, even asking her for drinks after they are back in New York, and in turn she gets a glance at his more vulnerable side.
With most of the team on assignment, those left at home are free to be up to no good without the supervision of Peggy. Some are enemies, like Peggy’s not so innocent neighbor at the Griffith, and some are friends who are simply too curious for their own good, like Agent Sousa. Dottie’s backstory is a disturbing look at what the pigtailed girl in Russia has gone through in her training. The cold-bloodedness of one child snapping another’s neck under the watchful eye of what seems to be a Russian agent is chilling and further illustrates what Dottie (whose name presumably is not actually Dottie) is capable of when pressed. The most unsettling part of her breaking into Peggy’s room in her absence isn’t even that she finds photos of Peggy’s real career and means to use the knowledge for not good things, but the moment when she imitates Peggy in the mirror. It demonstrates a particularly dangerous level of psychopathy, further cemented when it is revealed she still needs to be attached to her bed frame with handcuffs in order to sleep soundly. Sousa’s discovery that Peggy is the blonde woman from the club is not quite as horrifying but is still sufficiently foreboding, in relation to Peggy’s continued ability to pull one over on her bosses. His affection for Peggy probably isn’t enough to stop him from taking action in defense of the agency and his country, so he’s just one more wall closing in on Agent Carter and her double life.
Random thoughts:
- Dooley and Jarvis don’t get much to do this episode with everyone out of the country, but their few scenes have so much carefully worded language they must be setting up something big down the line.
- The show is only suggesting a direct connection thus far but it seems that Dottie is a member of the Black Widow program. Until more of that Marvel crossover is overtly included in the main story, any further mentions will stay in the notes. Honestly, it probably won’t be long.
- Amazing guest star alert! John Glover (recognizable to most as Smallville‘s Lionel Luther) liaises with Dooley as the latter tries to unearth information about Stark’s past.
