Agent Carter -'Smoke and Mirrors'

Mirrors in this episode are, like, important.

Carter and Jarvis are tracking Senator Caldwell and looking for evidence of wrongdoing, which seems to be provided by the presence of a driver with the same wound Carter inflicted on her would-be assassin. In the meantime, Jason Wilkes continues to try to prevent his own dissolution and Whitney Frost experiments with her ability to absorb people using her Zero Matter powers. Eventually, Carter and Sousa are able to capture Mr Hunt and obtain a few names, but before they can move on the Arena Club, Thompson's sinister mentor swoops in and places the entire office under investigation for getting too close to the truth. Team Carter therefore play a long-odds gambit and let Hunt escape, with a bug on his back, but although they learn a little the bug is destroyed when Frost noms down Hunt to feed her Zero Matter, leaving the agents nonplussed and Caldwell utterly shitting himself.

The meat of this episode, however, is taken up by contrasting flashbacks to establish the backgrounds of Agent Carter and Agnes Cully, the woman who would become Whitney Frost, and hammering home that, like Dottie, Frost is a dark reflection of Peggy.

Born into modest wealth, Carter was a tomboy as a child, playing at knights and scrapping with her older brother, much to her mother's dismay. Early in he war she worked as a codebreaker at Station X, where she accepted the proposal of a well-meaning stiff at the Home Office; the sort of man her parents approved of wholeheartedly, but whom her brother Michael - now a Captain in the British Army - could not respect, especially when Fred pressured her to reject a transfer to the SOE for which Michael had recommended her. In the end, it was Michael's death that spurred Peggy to follow her calling for adventure, instead of living the safe life others had planned for her.

Important.

In contrast, Agnes is shown growing up in a poor Oklahoma neighbourhood, her brilliant mind unappreciated by her mother, her mother's sleazy boyfriend/landlord or the local college. "No-one cares what's inside your head," her mother tells her bitterly, at the same time hinting that their 'provider' might not have left them in the lurch if Agnes has 'been nicer' to him, which is pretty creepy talk from a mother who just noted that sleazo's new belle is barely older than her daughter. Movies provided Agnes with an escape, first as a distraction and then after she was spotted by a talent agent.

Peggy's life-altering lesson seems to be that life is short and you can't rely on anyone to be out there fighting for you. Agnes' is that you can do as little or as much as your looks let you get away with. Honestly, however, with that backstory we'd be rooting for Agnes if she were only slightly less of a mouse-devouring sociopath.