Agent Carter - 'A Little Song and Dance'

Wait... What?

The unconscious Peggy Carter dreams of a black and white SSR office which segues into a dance hall version of Season 1's diner set for a song and dance number about her love triangle, which is charming, but ultimately reinforces the slightly unfortunate drift towards a focus on her love life. Still, on the plus side it's a neat little period appropriate original number played by actors who turn out to be really rather talented in the musical department; at least good enough for one show (with choreography and backing dancers courtesy of Dancing with the Stars, the USA's version of Strictly Come Dancing.) It's also nice to see the all-too brief return of Angie from Season 1.

Freud would be doing his pieces over this image.

Woken by Edwin Jarvis - apparently appearing in the role of Howard Stark in Peggy's dream, flanked by Dottie Underwood, Ana Jarvis and Whitney Frost - she finds herself in a truck on her way to bad places. They escape, but the tension between them boils over as the walk through the desert, with Carter absolutely furious with her erstwhile partner's attempt to assassinate Frost, until she learns that he did so because Ana can never have children, and because he is too much of a coward to tell her. It's a nice scene, although I hope Ana will get some quality screen time and development in the last few episodes to keep her from taking up residence in the fridge. So far she's been great and I don't want her to suffer a tragic and traumatic injury just to move Jarvis forward.

Welcome to the desert of discomfort.

Meanwhile, Jack Thompson bluffs for America, converting a death sentence for himself, Samberley and Sousa into a fighting chance to talk Vernon Masters into letting them set a trap for Whitney Frost. Thompson sells this to Masters and later a different line to Frost by letting both believe that he is after a spot on the Council, but it becomes clear as the plan goes into action that the truth is that he is setting both Frost and Masters up for a fall, intending to take them both out and become the hero. Even on the side of the angels, he's a dick.

Frost and Wilkes have a bad week. Bereft of her role as prophet of Zero Matter and unable to extract it from Wilkes, Frost descends into babbling supervillainy; a sorry pass for a character originally shown as a strong, brilliant woman to be demanding power from a man, and for the series' only black man to be overshadowed by an unfortunately hued sinister force. Both, along with Masters, are seemingly killed when the Zero Matter overtakes Wilkes, although I suspect that his asplosion was more in the nature of a metamorphosis and hopefully Frost will have survived as well.

I really hoped to see Peggy running a slightly stronger hand than she plays in her confrontations with Thompson and Sousa this week, and she genuinely seems to be letting her feelings for the now less-than-innocent Wilkes control her in just the way she criticised Sousa for last episode and Jarvis early in this. This is currently the MCU's flagship female-led production - nuff respect to Jessica Jones, but TV still just about trumps streaming for exposure - and it needs to do better.

Also, can Marvel stop hating the black man? Please? I'm... 90% sure they don't mean it, but Daredevil and Jessica Jones both featured the brutal murder of a highly principled black supporting character in a largely white cast, and now Agent Carter's mostly principled black character has exploded after a substantial lapse in principles, and possibly been possessed.