Peggy meets Jarvis at the Stark compound. She has decided that, in order to find out who broke into the Stark vault, she needs to figure out how they did it. The SSR come knocking before they can even get to the vault. Peggy hides while Jarvis handles it. They traced that license plate back to Stark, and with Stark on the run, they want Jarvis to answer a few questions. Jarvis reported the car stolen, but they still take him downtown for questioning. While in the interrogation room, Jarvis maintains his cool – until the agents bring up his treason charges. This shocks Peggy, watching from the observation room. The agents threaten him with deportation, and Peggy can’t watch any more. She goes back to her desk, grabs some papers, and takes them back into the observation room for the chief to sign off on. He does, absentmindedly, and Peggy waits around a corner in the hallway. The chief and Thompson meet, and Peggy interrupts, showing that she “accidentally” took the stolen car report. Jarvis is free to leave, and Peggy gets chewed out. The chief sends her home, and the whole agency watches as she leaves with her tail between her legs.
That night, Peggy meets Jarvis to tour the vault. She wants to know what his treason charges are, and starts off slow. They spelunk down into the hole blown into the vault and Peggy discovers that the tunnels here flood with rainwater. The thief could have easily floated in and out with a raft. They follow the tunnel, but it is minutes before Peggy decides she needs to know what the charges against Jarvis were. He finally comes clean. Before the war he served under a general with whom he traveled. They went to Budapest, where Jarvis met his wife-to-be, Anna. War broke out and things became “difficult” because Anna is Jewish. The general carried papers with him (I assume it is the kind of papers that would allow Jews to move about semi-freely in the early years of the war), but he refused to sign them. Jarvis forged them, was caught, and charged with treason. The charges were dropped almost immediately, but he was dishonorably discharged. It was Howard Stark that got both of them out of Europe. That story will have to wait until another time, but Peggy is satisfied with the story and can continue working with Jarvis.
Good thing, too, because they approach the end of the tunnel, which runs out into the river. Scanning the horizon, Peggy sees a ship in dock with that same heart symbol Brannis drew in the sand. The pair drive over an investigate. Inside they find a dozen or so crates of cargo, all with Stark labels on them. This is it. Peggy wants to call it in, but Jarvis insists it is a bad idea. To demonstrate, he starts interrogating Peggy the way her agents would question her, and she has no answers. “This won’t clear Stark; it will only put you under suspicion,” he tells her. Peggy thinks calling it in will help redeem her, especially after the tongue-lashing she received earlier, but Jarvis insists the agents will only use it to tear her down. Peggy relents and tells Jarvis to call it in to Sousa. He does so, from a pay phone around the corner, using a bad Bronx accent that gets a little British-y at the end. Sousa and Krzeminski head out.
Peggy waits with the cargo, and a beefy man, Jerome, comes in. He is not happy to see her and the two start fighting. He is not afraid to kill a woman, but Agent Carter sure isn’t going to make it easy on him. But Jerome has size and weight on his side, and he eventually pins Peggy down with an iron rod. Jarvis comes in and hits him upside the head. This doesn’t do much, other than turn Jerome’s attention away from Peggy. While he battles Jarvis, Peggy grabs a glowing instrument from one of the crates. This is what they call a Constrictor, because it causes catastrophic muscle spasms so severe they will break bones. She zaps Jerome’s arm, he drops Jarvis and falls to the floor in immense pain. Peggy knocks him out for good measure, and they leave him there when they hear SSR sirens.
Krzeminski is psyched to have found all of the Stark toys; Sousa doesn’t trust it – someone just handed it to them. More agents arrive, and it is all hands on deck while they sweep the boat, log all the Stark booty, and take Jerome into custody. He is probably just muscle-for-hire, but hopefully he will give up some information. Krzeminski is in charge of transporting Jerome back to HQ, and Jerome asks if “that dame is working for you.” Krzeminski takes interest in this and asks what the British dame looked like. They are rear ended before Krzeminski can get any info, and he gets out of the car to confront the other driver. The other driver shoots Krzeminski dead, then comes around to Jerome. He insists he didn’t tell them anything, but he is shot dead anyway.
There is a bunch of “girl trouble” in tonight’s episode. Peggy gets in a fight with Angie because she doesn’t want to share her day, but after Krzeminski is shot, she tells Angie the broad strokes. More interesting is Molly, the girl in the room next to Peggy, is kicked out for having a boy in her room – strictly against the rules. A new girl, Dottie, moves in the next day. Allegedly she is from Iowa, and she came to the big city to pursue her dream of becoming a ballerina, but I don’t buy it. There has to be more to Dottie than ballet. While we didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time with her, the producers certainly spent a good portion of the first half of the episode setting up Molly’s transgression (when beau Jimmy calls on Peggy’s room by mistake – and she greets him with a gun), showing her getting kicked out (publicly, during breakfast), and then Dottie getting a specific introduction as Peggy is trying to head out for her “night job.”
I wonder… maybe Dottie is the shooter? If not, she must be involved with the Stark theft. Either way, I don’t trust the dame with the gams. No way, no how.
You can check out the promo for episode 4 of “Marvel’s Agent Carter” in the player below. Titled “The Blitzkrieg Button,” the episode is officially described as follows:
“Peggy may be in more trouble than usual when fugitive Howard Stark suddenly returns for mysterious reasons. And Chief Dooley chases a new clue all the way to Europe that threatens to destroy Peggy’s future at the SSR.”
Written by Brant Englestein and directed by Stephen Cragg, “The Blitzkrieg Button” is set to air January 27. “Marvel’s Agent Carter” airs Tuesdays at 9 P.M. EST on ABC.
