The Iron Ceiling: Agent Carter Joins the Howling Commandos

This episode picks up right after last weeks really funky the Blitzkrieg button and continues the fast pace that Agent Carter is known for. While right from the title we’re getting a nice wordplay with “glass ceiling” being replaced by “iron ceiling” we get a lot more than we’re expecting in the growth of Thompson and Dooley and without giving too much away it looks like the best detective they have at SSR – Sousa – is finally putting things together and coming up with a conclusion that he doesn’t really like!

It’s a clever title too when you think about it, because it’s a play on the Iron Curtain as much as the glass ceiling, and this is the episode where Peggy actually gets to go behind it. Peggy’s been keeping her double life a secret since the nightclub in the very first episode, and with only eight episodes in the season and this being number five, Agent Carter is clearly starting to pull its threads together for the run home. That typewriter has been sitting there clacking away mysteriously since Peggy got her hands on it, so it’s good to see it actually lead somewhere, and the coded message it spits out is what finally gets Peggy out from behind her desk and onto a plane. That’s what she’s wanted since episode one, and it’s what the show has been building towards with every coffee order and every pile of filing the boys have dumped on her.

Dottie’s flashback and a school for assassins

In a nutshell the mystery typewriter starts to function and Peggy manages to decode the message sending her and Thompson on a mission with the Howling Commando’s into Eastern Europe. We get a really quick flashback (from Dottie’s point of view) at the start of the episode of a Leviathan program (although not named as such we all know this is the Black Widow program) intended to train young girls as killers and assassins and we see in the flashback that this is not a gentle training regimen as young Dottie kills another girl who wasn’t as strong as she was.

It’s set back in Russia in 1937, with rows of little girls in a cold dormitory, and the nasty part is how ordinary it looks at first. Young Dottie shares a crust of bread with the girl in the next bed, they look like they could be friends, and then during training she breaks that same girl’s neck the moment her teacher gives her the nod. That one scene tells you everything you need to know about the woman living down the hall from Peggy, and it makes all of her sweet and chatty moments at the boarding house a lot creepier to watch. The show never actually says the words Black Widow, but anyone who’s watched Natasha in the Avengers films will recognise the set-up straight away, and it’s a neat way of tying a show set in the 1940s into the films without making a big song and dance about it.

A changing room, a break-in and some old photos

When Peggy and Thompson + the other agents are on their way to Europe – they are (for some reason) changing into their gear inside the SSR building … here Thompson in his normal infantile way, tricks Sousa into going to the other side of the room where Peggy is changing. Peggy and Sousa are both flustered at finding Peggy in her undergarments but Sousa notices something which we’ll come to later. It’s exactly the kind of schoolboy prank you’d expect from Thompson, the same guy who beat a name out of Van Ert back in Bridge and Tunnel, and at this point in the episode he’s still the agent I liked least. Thompson thinks it’s hilarious, Sousa’s mortified, and Peggy just gets on with it, which is pretty much the whole relationship between the three of them summed up in one scene.

Dottie meanwhile has stolen Peggy’s keys from her purse and has broken into her apartment within the housing block – they don’t really explain why Dottie targeted Peggy … I guess you have to assume that Leviathan intelligence for obvious reason’s doesn’t discount the worth of a person simply based on their gender! – and she finds the photo’s that she took for Howard in the previous episode. So while Peggy’s off on the other side of the world, the one place she thought was safe has already been gone through, and she’s got no idea.

Peggy and the Howling Commandos

Once Peggy and the other agents meet up with the Howling Commando’s within Europe, Thompson initially try’s to take charge of the mission but he quickly sees the respect that they all have for Peggy and is forced to defer to her. Dum Dum Dugan makes it very clear to Thompson that Peggy fought alongside Captain America more than any of them, and you can almost see the penny drop on his face. It’s great seeing Peggy in her element for once, giving the orders out in the snow with the Commandos backing her up instead of rolling their eyes at her. As the episode progresses we learn that his medal for bravery earned for fighting the Japanese was actually obtained by killing soldiers trying to surrender and he’s perhaps not the poster boy for evil that we (myself anyways) first thought. He’s a significantly more flawed and humane character and while he won’t replace Sousa as my favorite SSR agent, he’s not as horrible as I thought he was.

On the mission, they find a Soviet military complex which seems to be a training site for children to infiltrate the United States as sleeper agents. Peggy and Thompson aren’t able to find any significant information on Stark, but they are able to rescue a prisoner that might have some information on Leviathan and they take him back to the States with them. And the important thing they do bring home is that it doesn’t look like Howard Stark has been selling his weapons to anybody, which is what Peggy’s been trying to prove since the start of the season.

Dooley, Sousa and my thoughts on The Iron Ceiling

Stateside, Dooley continues to investigate Finow and manages to get additional information from a reporter friend who makes him realize that perhaps Stark isn’t public enemy number one after all and that there might be more going on than he initially realized. It’s a nice change for Dooley, who up to now has mostly been barking orders and chasing Stark, and it’s the first time it feels like the SSR as a whole might actually be heading in the right direction.

In addition as I’ve already alluded to, when Sousa saw Peggy in the changing room, he noticed some scars on her shoulder. After digging into it further he learned that she acquired these during the war but taking out his picture of the blonde lady – he sees that she too has the exact same scars on her shoulder. Sousa’s the one person at the SSR who’s been decent to Peggy all along, so it’s going to be really interesting to see what he does with that, and I don’t think he’s going to like any of the options.

Well, all of the episodes of Agent Carter have raced along at a breakneck speed and this one is no exception really! Its very nice to see Peggy redeem herself after last weeks forced blunder to save Jarvis and I think Thompson at least sees her in a very different light. It’s always good to see the Howling Commando’s of course & Dottie as mentioned last time is a very, very interesting person. She has masks that she seems to be able to don based on the occasion and while there was no real shock from her this week (in comparison to last week) her development is ticking along quite nicely.

What I liked most is that the episode finally gives the men around Peggy a bit more to them. Thompson isn’t just a bully, Dooley isn’t just a boss with a grudge against Stark, and Sousa’s got a real problem on his hands now. With three episodes left and the SSR getting closer to the truth from two directions at once, Peggy’s going to need every friend she’s got.

If you were Sousa, would you go straight to Dooley about those scars or talk to Peggy first? Tell me in the comments.