Agent Carter and Jarvis continue their pursuit of the dangerous weaponized formula developed by Howard Stark, while Carter's superiors at the SSR develop a lead in uncovering the identity of "the mysterious blonde" (aka Peggy Carter).
Tropes:
- Acting Unnatural: After a botched attempt to get some risky files out of a coworker's desk, Peggy pretends that nothing's the matter by eating a scone with her legs up on her desk, completely at odds with her usual proper demeanor.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Peggy returns to the office, she sees her fellow SSR agents examining a bunch of photos taken at the La Martinique club, where she was undercover. When they call her over, she fears she's been discovered, but luckily it turns out they were just arguing about whether Joe DiMaggio was in one of the pictures.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Peggy claims to be investigating complaints about transportation of dairy products.
- Black Comedy: Sousa bonds with Peggy and cheers her up over losing Steve by sharing his own war story.Sousa: The chaplain asked if I wanted to send my things to my dad to remember me by. Told him I didn't think he'd have any use for a pair of green socks. Let him remember me as I used to be, when I was alive, y'know? But then I survived, which was inconvenient, because the chaplain had already gotten rid of my footlocker; lost half my stuff. Haven't been able to find my leg anywhere.
- Clipboard of Authority: When Peggy inspects the milk trucks.
- Corpsing: In-Universe, during the interview for their new apartment, Angie has to fight to keep a straight face when Peggy tells their new landlord she'll be working at the telephone company "Only until I get married".
- Darker and Edgier: When "interrogating" Zola in Captain America: The First Avenger, Col. Philips broke him like a quail egg through Guile Heroism. When the good guys need to question someone here? Just see Good Cop/Bad Cop.
- Death Seeker: Jarvis implies Peggy has a death wish and this is why she takes so many risks and refuses any and all effort at help or association.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: After a crooked Roxxon employee is nabbed, Agents Dooley and Thompson interrogate him and take on the respective roles. Dooley shows the crook a carrot and a stick, and offers him the lighter "carrot" deal where the crook spills the name of his boss and thus gets off easy. When the crook refuses, Dooley takes the carrot and leaves... and Thompson takes over, makes the crook bite down on the stick, and promptly starts beating him black and blue to confess, breaking the stick in half in the process. One of the other agents quips that he'd hate to see what would've happened if Dooley had left the carrot.
- Gretzky Has the Ball: The male agents are poring over some photographs from a nightclub and ask Carter if a man in the background of one of them is legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Carter says she can't tell - she doesn't follow boxing. This ends up settling a wager over whether or not she knows anything about sports (though she may well have just been trolling them).
- His Name Is...: Leet Brannis, while dying, attempts to tell Peggy the name of his employers, who are involved with Leviathan, but his electrolarynx has been broken. He settles for drawing an insignia in the dirt.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: "Green Suit" is fond of impaling people's hands to objects, such as tables. Peggy ends up impaling his hand with his knife to a truck full of nitromene.
- Impaled Palm:
- The Leviathan Agent "Green Suit" used this as an interrogation technique.
- Peggy does this to him when fighting him by sticking his knife through his hand and to the truck full of nitromene.
- Irony: Brannis' driver turns out to be a fan of The Captain America Adventure Hour. A moment later Peggy bursts in and promptly starts beating the tar out of him, while her radio counterpart "Betty Carver" cheers on Captain America as he beats up Nazis.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
- Agent Thompson uses a liberal dose of it to extract information from the Roxxon Oil inside man.
- Peggy threatens to use this on the captured McFee, which she lampshades the incivility of.Peggy: Whatever happened to a nice cup of tea and a civilized interrogation?
- Karmic Death: The Leviathan Agent "Green Suit" who killed Peggy's roommate had a love of nailing peoples hands to tables with a knife, Peggy kills him by nailing his hand with a knife to a truck filled with explosives.
- Kung-Foley: Lampshaded with in-universe foley effects. Peggy beats up a crook while the Captain America radio show is playing, and her punches are intercut with shots of the radio show's foley artists making sound effects by hitting slabs of meat and crushing lobsters.
- Literal Metaphor: A man being interrogated by the SSR is literally shown a carrot and a stick.
- Mood Whiplash:
- During a tense scene in which Peggy is trying to open the drawer those photos are kept in without being noticed, the phone startles her and she hits her head with the table.
- Peggy walks in on a bunch of SSR agents arguing over which angle they should view the nightclub photos (a couple of which show her carrying out one of her unsanctioned missions) from. Just as she worries that she's about to be busted, they call her over... to ask whether she thinks that an unrelated man in the photo is star baseball player Joe DiMaggio.
- After Peggy apprehends Mcfee, Leet Brannis nearly gets away with the truck behind her back, but nailing him costs her Mcfee as he sneaks away... which would have been more of a Yank the Dog's Chain if he wasn't still cuffed to the chair, and hobbling awkwardly down the road. Let's just say they would have caught up to him without the truck.
- Not in Front of the Kid: When Thompson beats up a crook for information, Dooley recommends that Peggy step out to avert her lady eyes. This word of caution hardly matters, considering she just saw someone shot dead two nights before, not to mention she's been in a war.
- Once an Episode: In the Captain America Adventure Hour, Betty Carver's role is to be the Damsel in Distress, rescued by Cap every episode.
- Outside Ride: Peggy and the Leviathan Agent "Green Suit" fight on the top of the milk truck.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Peggy delivers one to Green Suit just after pinning his hand down to the truck full of explosive nitromene with a knife, and just before leaping off of the truck.Peggy: This is where I get off.
- Running Gag: In this episode, The Captain America Adventure Hour seems to be played everywhere Peggy goes, much to her annoyance.
- Show Within a Show: An in-universe Captain America pulp radio show is popular at the time of the series, and Peggy runs into it people listening to it a few times. It's about as cheesy as radio dramas got back then, and features a heavily insulting version of Peggy herself (named "Betty Carver") as a helpless Damsel in Distress who never shuts up about how manly Captain America is - unless she's talking about how great her Sewing Machine is. Peggy can be seen giving a radio playing it a intense Death Glare at the start of the episode.
- Silent Antagonist: The two Leviathan agents had laryngotomies.
- Stylistic Suck: The Captain America radio show is hilarious in just how cheesy and sexist it is.
- Urban Legend Love Life: Jarvis seems to love playing up Stark's reputation as a lady's man.Peggy: [as Jarvis stitches up her leg] You're quite good at that.
Jarvis: Yes, Mr. Stark's zippers are under considerable strain. - Wig, Dress, Accent: Played with. Peggy co-ops some of Howard's "kinky wardrobe" for a doctor's coat to pass as a New York Health Inspector (along with a set of glasses and Noo Yawk voice).
