“Agent Carter”, Ep 1.06, “A Sin to Err”: The circle of danger widens
The farther Agent Carter moves past its initial stage of world building and character expansion, the more its confidence increases. These bravado storytelling shifts not only allow the show to expand Peggy’s world of espionage and danger, but make the characters around her more vivid. Last week, Agent Carter finally found the time to make Peggy’s coworkers interesting and even gave them a reason to care about her in return, prompting them to start viewing her as something more than a secretary. This week, everything is turned on its head as the SSR proves Peggy is the mystery woman they are after and takes action to detain her. The episode capitalizes on the agents’ only recently established compassion towards Peggy and flips it, with Sousa and Thompson far more betrayed by her presumed actions against the SSR than they would have been a few weeks ago (Thompson’s is a more drastic shift than Sousa’s, of course). Thompson allows himself to be caught off guard by Peggy’s fighting skills in the alley even though he’s heard what she is capable of, still underestimating her willingness to knock out a fellow agent. Sousa (foreseeably) falls prey to his feelings for Peggy and lets her run away. The fight in the diner between Peggy and the federal agents sent to detain her is as stylistically elegant as anything this season and a rollercoaster to watch. It is telling of how far the show has come from that her ability to evade capture is believable, instead of feeling like the other agents involved are incompetent and Sousa and Thompson only allow her to go for the sake of plot machinations.
