I don’t remember if I mentioned Dr. Ivchenko’s hypnotic ring last week. My apologies. It’s kind of important to know about due to how “SNAFU” opens. It begins with another flashback. This one with Dr. Ivchenko (Ralph Brown) in a sick tent during some battle. A soldier lies in need of medical attention. The problem is the army has a lot of injured, but limited pain killing meds, which are simply the best kind. Dr. Ivchenko is asked to employ his tactics so they can operate on the injured man. Turns out Ivchenko’s mood ring doesn’t just hypnotize, it creates an all-encompassing mental reality.
I so want one for myself.
[Editor’s Nerd Note: In the flashback Ivchenko is called Fennhoff and introduced reading a copy of Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, making Ivchenko the villainous Doctor Faustus from the Captain America comics and the creator of the Faustus Device used by HYDRA in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season!]
Skip to the present and Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) is getting the 3rd degree from her former co-workers, including Agent Sousa (Enver Gjokaj). Carter’s semi-rant about how she got away with a personal investigation sounded a tad bitter. Not that I wouldn’t have been pissy myself, but you expect better from such a strong character. Or maybe she always secretly desired he respect of her peers and that’s the real reason she took her traitorous mission to begin with. Ooh, subtext. I like it!
Just before the beating part of the interrogation, Jarvis (James D’Arcy) arrives with a signed confession from Stark, giving himself up in trade for Jarvis and Carter. If that seems kinda uncharacteristically altruistic of him, well, it was. Jarvis forged the confession in a rather disparate gambit. Oh well. Props for trying bro. Carter then sees Dr. Ivchenko signaling someone from the window and correctly deduces that he is signaling the sleeper agent Dottie Underwood (Bridget Regan). Carter tells the other agents that the confession is fake, so they will believe her about Ivchenko.
Unfortunately Dr. Ivchenko has mind-raped Agent Dooly (Shea Whigham), and he locks Carter and Jarvis to a table in the interrogation room before locking the door, and just for good measure breaking the key off on the lock. Because if they get the cuffs off, there’s no chance of kicking the door down. An ounce of prevention I guess.
What follows is a hilarious exchange between Carter and Jarvis about her plan to use the table to smash the two-sided mirror. You just have to see it yourself.
Agent Dooly under Ivchenko’s mind spell goes shopping for Stark tech, and find a couple of things. The first turns out to be a vest that locks on and get super-hot. Then Agent Dooly wakes from his fantasy world to see he is wearing said vest. And it can’t be turned off. Or unlocked. Or removed. Well shit, Marvel. I was really curious how they were going to save Agent Dooly. I mean, they wouldn’t let him die. No way. Nope. Nu uh.
Then it happened. Agent Dooly grabbed someone’s gun and began waving it around like a drunken uncle. He leaves a message for his family, and asks Carter to get Ivchenko for him. Then he sprints toward a window and jumps out just as the device explodes and he is killed.
What the hell?? Yes he was a character archetype, the gruff boss with family issues and married to his job, but he was OUR character archetype, dammit!! I really did like him, even if I did forget his name occasionally. He was like Oscar the grouch. Surly but huggable. I miss him already.
And no, I’m not going to make an Agent Coulson comparison. Even I’m not that persnickety.
Lastly we see what Ivchenko was after all along when he meets up with Underwood: a device that apparently contains the chemical from The Crazies. Or close enough. Underwood delivers the device in a baby stroller to a movie theater and sets it off, making the movie patrons become extremely violent and crazed. One has to wonder if this wasn’t just a distraction for something even bigger. After all, Leviathan is coming.
[Editor’s Nerd Note: I think that was a variation on a Madbomb, again from the Captain America comics!!]
One last thing I need to mention. The upcoming episode was promo’d as the season finale. Season, as opposed to series. I get chills just typing it. Could there be another season of Agent Carter? I sure hope so.
One episode left, true believers.