History Recap / AgentCarterS1E5TheIronCeiling

* OutGambitted: As Dottie enter's Peggy's room, she finds a string on the floor, which fell from the door latch to alert her if anyone had entered her room. As Dottie leaves she makes sure to carefully replace the string around the latch.
* ReluctantMadScientist: Ivchenko and Nikolai, two Russian professionals being held hostage by Leviathan. They're both being used to assemble the stolen plans of Howard Stark's experimental engine: Nikolai to build it, Ivchenko as his therapist. Nikolai is called a "mad scientist" by Thompson, but Ivchenko objects to that, saying that Nikolai's mind just needs help staying stable from all the abstract thinking his mind has to to do.

** By the end of the episode, Thompson has warmed up enough to Peggy that he invites her drinks after work with the rest of the guys.

* KickTheMoralityPet: In the opening, young Dottie shares some bread with a girl bunking next to her. In the next scene, though, they're forced to fight, and when Dottie wins she's ''ordered'' to snap the poor girl's neck.
* LittleMissBadass: All the nine-year-olds at the Russian school are trained in combat. Deconstructed in that they have been brainwashed and mistreated in order to become ChildSoldiers and the only one we see as an adult is still suffering the effects of it all.
* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Dooley says as much when explaining his reluctance on sending Peggy on a live-fire mission: If she gets killed, he gets blamed for letting a woman die. But if a guy gets killed, it's treated as a sacrifice he made. Futhermore, he implies that if she goes on the mission and one of the men gets killed, it will be assumed that he got killed protecting her.

** Junior Juniper is the first teammate to die in the episode. Juniper in the comics was the first Howling Commando to die and the first Marvel hero to be KilledOffForReal.

* [[OminousLatinChanting Ominous Russian Chanting]]: Background music of this sort plays while the heroes search the Black Widow facility, and while Dottie searches through Peggy's room.

** By the end of the episode, Thompson has warmed up enough to Peggy that he even invites her drinks after work with the rest of the guys.

* ReluctantMadScientist: Ivchenko and Nikolai, two Russian professionals being held hostage by Leviathan. They're both being used to assemble the stolen plans of Howard Stark's experimental engine, Nikolai to build it, Ivchenko as his therapist. Nikolai is called a "mad scientist" by Thompson, but Ivchenko objects to that, saying that Nikolai's mind just needs helping staying stable from all the abstract thinking his mind has to to do.

* TykeBomb: The Russian "Black Widow" program has been training young ChildSoldiers as enemy infiltrators since 1937, and is a precursor to the training that Natasha Romanoff underwent. Brutal, smart, equally adept with hand-to-hand, small arms, acrobatics, and evasion, these gals are quite formidable at a very young age. So by Dottie's age...

* WrittenInAbsence: Creator/LyndsyFonseca does not appear in the episode. The explanation given is that Angie didn't feel like going to work.

* [[spoiler:TheBadGuyWins]]: [[spoiler:By posing as an innocent prisoner, Ivchenko manages to plant himself as TheMole for Leviathan inside the SSR.]]

** Averted with the Howling Commandos. Ramirez excitedly calls them that, though Sawyer hates the name, despite fellow teammate Pinky thinking it up. Each member of the Commandos has their own codename, including "Dum Dum", "Happy", "Pinky", and "Junior". Dugan even offers to give Peggy her own codename, "Miss Union Jack".

* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Dooley says as much when explaining his reluctance on sending Peggy on a live-fire mission. If she gets killed, he gets blamed for letting a woman die. But if a guy gets killed, it's treated as a sacrifice he made.

* AccidentalPervert: While entering the men's locker room to deliver a message, Sousa accidentally sees Peggy in her underclothes (she was changing there because she refused to use the lady's restroom.) It's not played for fanservice, though, and tips off Sousa to something important: he sees the bullet scars on the back of her shoulder that match those of the mysterious woman who was at ''La Martinique''.

* CallBack: When Dooley asks Jarvis about Stark getting into a fight with a general, Jarvis catches himself about to rub his ear (his tell) when he tells Dooley he never heard of the man.

* BlackGuyDiesFirst: Averted. Junior Juniper (who is white) is the first teammate to die, while black teammate Happy Sam Sawyer gets nothing worse than a leg wound.

* KickTheMoralityPet: In the opening, young Dottie shares some bread with a girl bunking next to her. In the next scene, though, they're forced to fight, and when Dottie wins she's ''ordered'' to snap the poor girl's neck.

* BlackGuyDiesFirst: Averted. Junior Juniper is the first teammate to die, while black teammate Happy Sam Sawyer gets nothing worse than a leg wound.

* RememberTheNewGuy: Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Junior Jupiter, adapted out for ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'' and missing from the Smithsonian Exhibit in CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier, are seen as Howling Commandos and are implied to have been associated with the team since the war. Of note, Juniper is said to have named the team.

* RememberTheNewGuy: Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Junior Jupiter, adapted out for CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger and missing from the Smithsonian Exhibit in CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier, are seen as Howling Commandos and are implied to have been associated with the team since the war. Of note, Juniper is said to have named the team.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Pinky Pinkerton, the RP-accented, maroon beret-wearing English soldier is one for James Falsworth from CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger, a rather circular example as that iteration of Falsworth was a composite with Pinky. Downplayed with Happy Sam Sawyer, who though has been race lifted to be black, shares none of Gabe Jones' characteristics.

* BlackGuyDiesFirst: Averted. Junior Juniper is the first teammate to die, while black teammate Happy gets nothing worse than a leg wound.

* {{Expy}}: Happy, the token black teammate and Pinky, the very British teammate, appear to be counterparts of ''First Avengers'''s Commandos Gabe Jones and James Falsworth, respectively. In Pinky's case it's circular, though, as the MCU Falsworth had most of his characterization based on Pinkerton, combined with a few nods to his 616-"Union Jack" identity.

* TykeBomb: The Russian "Black Widow" program has been training young ChildSoldiers as enemy infiltrators since 1937, and is a precursor to the training that Natasha Romanoff underwent. Brutal, smart, equally adept with hand-to-hand, small arms, acrobatics, evasion, these gals are quite formidable at a very young age. So by Dottie's age...

* ShoutOut: Dottie and the other students are shown ''Disney/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs''. Later, when Peggy and the Howling Commandos break into the school, the projector that starts up is showing ''WesternAnimation/TheDoverBoys''.

* HollywoodEncryption: Peggy is able to crack a message that a professional codebreaker tried and failed to decrypt for hours in a matter of minutes - in her head.
** Not only that, but it's a one time pad cypher, which are uncrackable if used correctly.

* NeckSnap: A young girl in the cold open, after besting a fellow student in a fight.