Agent Carter: “Valediction”
(Episode 1.08)

To say that “Valediction” doesn’t live up to the best episodes of Agent Carter’s cardinal season is to say that it’s still pretty good television; it’s just not great, which as criticisms go lies somewhere between “observational” and “straight up spoiled.” Maybe Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely shouldn’t have done such wonderful work on the rest of the series. Maybe they just should have written more tension into “Valediction”s falling action. Or, maybe they should have just given Hayley Atwell more to do, because she’s the first billed on Agent Carter’s marquee. At least she’s paired up with Dominic Cooper for further gender-smashing shenanigans, and she scraps it out with Bridget Reagan in one of “Valediction”s highlight sequences. But Atwell remains in puzzlingly diminished form until the finale’s final half.
We’re dealing with the fallout of “Snafu” as the SSR puts itself back together and fervently tracks down Dottie and Dr. Ivchenko, who we now know as Johann Fennhoff, AKA Doctor Faustus, a member of Captain America’s rogues gallery. (Aside: how awesome is Ralph Brown? The guy has a voice so soft that it’s effortlessly mesmeric. He and Toby Jones should make a fun pairing in the future.) They have plans for Howard’s volatile effluvium, the Midnight Oil, and as anyone who has ever seen a thriller can guess, it involves dispersing the stuff over New York City. It’s up to Carter and the boys to stop their Russian rivals from dipping the Big Apple into chaos, though our English gal has a lot less to do than you might expect from a show named after her.
Atwell might not be the constant holding “Valediction” together like so much glue, but she has been the constant driving the show since “Now is Not the End.” If she’s deprived of screen time in favor of her male co-stars here, she maximizes every second she has the camera’s undivided attention. Peggy runs hot and cold, stoic and sentimental; she sails steady, keeping one step ahead of the guys (but several behind her enemies), until the question of Steve Rogers is raised for the umpteenth time in Agent Carter’s lifespan, and her seams start splitting. Atwell does, and has done, terrific work as Peggy, adding impressive robustness to the Strong Female Character outline with her performance. Carter could have fallen victim to that archetype’s worst tropes. That she doesn’t is a testament to how well Atwell understands her role.