Another week, another glowing MacGuffin; Peggy’s on a roll, recovering these mad scientist gizmos. The ride continues, though in “Time and Tide,” it grows bumpier thanks to ghosts from the past and a near-miss with reckless ambition. But running roughshod happens to do Agent Carter a few favors in the departments of character and story, expanding Peggy’s super heroine stance to include an element or two of boring old humanity, while also pushing along her bid to retrieve Howard Stark’s bad babies and prove his innocence in their theft. (Plus, Lindsey Fonseca and James D’Arcy both get generous portions of screen time to be either sassy or sentimental. That’s a balanced comic book breakfast right there.)
Oh, and the show has already started knocking off supporting players. That doesn’t feel like a small deal, either, but talking about the when, the where, the who, and the why is obviously gauche, so let’s just say this: when a background figure’s demise matters after just three episodes, somebody’s doing something right. Agent Carter’s stakes were clearly defined by “Now is Not the End” and “Bridge and Tunnel,” but the aftermath of “Time and Tide” elevates them. The world feels dangerous now. Granted, it felt dangerous before, too, what with vocally challenged assassins knocking off potential witnesses left and right, but “Time and Tide” takes us to new categories of peril, while loudly emphasizing Peggy’s own self-doubt.
In this go-’round, though, Carter’s primary antagonist is trust. Jarvis, it seems, has a secret, and that secret winds up nearly biting them both in the ass when the SSR comes calling to interrogate him after their discovery of Stark’s license plate in the industrial plant wreckage. Of course, his transgression winds up being couched in the greatest nobility; it’s Jarvis, for Christ’s sake. His little spot of treason happens to be the kind of harmless humanitarianism most of us find admirable. Why he refuses to talk about it under the duress of investigation is sort of a mystery—he’s probably just too pissed to elocute—but when he shares with Peggy, it’s a revelatory tonic. He isn’t just the prim, prude butler we took him for. He’s a hero in his own right.