Agent Carter - 'Better Angels'

It's that man again.

Peggy Carter is feeling bad for not being able to keep nice Dr Wilkes safe, which visiting SSR chief Jack Thompson naturally interprets as a surfeit of womanly feels when she argues that the sudden glut of evidence against him - Russian passport under the floorboards, Russian pistol under the bed - are as obviously planted as they are. Thompson shows up, rewrites Carter's report to implicate Wilkes and tells the West Coast agents to drop the case.

With official channels temporarily clogged with testosterone, Peggy turns to Howard Stark for scientific support on the Zero Matter question, which means we are treated to another round of the truly marvelous (no pun intended) three-hander between Hayley Atwell, James D'Arcy and Dominic West. As the retroincarnation of his son, there is the danger of Stark running roughshod over the regulars, but once more he's worked in perfectly, rocking his science mojo and getting our unsuitable leads into the "strictly pale and male" Arena Club, not by pretending to be one of them but by dragging a crowd of girls into the masculine preserve as cover for Peggy planting bugs.

When evidence proves hard to come by - the bugs are shorted out by the Club's security protocols and she can't swipe the future newspapers that the club uses to lean on people - Thompson locks down on further investigation and orders Peggy back to New York. He also hands over the Zero Matter film to his dodgy mentor. Interestingly, he does this because Peggy comes at him hard, pushing his frustrated masculinity into a corner, and it will be more interesting still to see how he reacts to seeing that her accusations were true in the closer. Sousa points out that this is no way to handle Thompson, although he later turns down a drink which might have been a good way to get inside Thompson's armour.

Original science bros.

On discovering that Peggy is being stalked by a manifestation of Zero Matter, Stark uses a special photographic emulsion to make the manifestation visible (and audible)... as Jason Wilkes. So far intangible, he none the less bonds with Stark over shared technical language as they work on his... condition.

Elsewhere, we see Whitney Frost manipulating her husband into ordering a hit on Peggy after Carter questions her, then Zero-Matter-eating her touchy-feely director. It comes as little surprise to learn that Frost is the Hedy Lamarr of evil, a brilliant scientist whose work during the war hasn't prevented her being serially undervalued afterwards (when she suggests retiring from acting, her husband promises that after the election she can retire and have 'all the babies you want.') Like Dottie, but in a completely different way, Frost is a dark reflection of Peggy Carter, choosing to embrace instead of fighting her invisibility.

So, Season 2 now has a clear binary antagonist: The Arena Club, striving to maintain their white, male deathgrip on power (it's so sad that we basically know they'll get their way) and Whitney Frost, who is using her husband - and through him the Club - to further her scientific work, and her obsession with Zero Matter. With Thompson teetering between antagonistic ally and part of the problem, the season is shaping up well.