Warning: Spoiler Alert
Jarvis stands in front of two lackeys attempting to broker a deal of some sort. One would assume its to buy back one of Stark’s “Bad Babies”. It quickly becomes a shakedown. A shakedown that Jarvis is not pleased about.
Jarvis: Your manners never cease to disappoint.
The item Jarvis was attempting to purchase was not a Bad Baby. It was a container the size of a small room. Inside of which looked remarkably like an actual room, complete with furniture, art on the wall and Howard Stark. The SSR is hell-bent on hanging as much as they can around Howard’s neck including treason. Stark can’t hide at home, instead we turn our attention to “the Griffith”. A place that does not permit men at all.
Chief Dooley heads to Germany to chase down Ernst Mueller who is set to be executed in the coming days. How this pertains to Stark is yet to be seen. With the Chief out, Thompson becomes the interim Chief. This means Peggy will be relegated to running down lunch orders. A great opportunity for her to snoop around and get some pictures with the camera pen Stark gave her.
Agent Sousa is working on his own lead that at most will implicate Jarvis and maybe Peggy but get them no closer to Stark. A homeless war vet who won’t talk to cops. Sousa gives a heartfelt story hoping to open this homeless man up, but to no avail.
Peggy heads downstairs to swipe some food for Howard, when she returns, he looks glum. All of his inventions are in the SSR lab. That should be good news. Howard needs Peggy to steal one back from the lab. A proposition that Peggy is not thrilled about. She needs to recover the “Blitzkrieg Button”, a sphere the size of a baseball that has the capability to knock out the entire power grid in the tri-state area.
Mr. Mink the gentleman whose men were trying to extort Jarvis in the cold open, has decided to take matters into his own hands, quite literally. He killed his two lackeys with what looked like a pistol sized Gatling gun. Now he is tailing Jarvis and Peggy. In the car, Jarvis keeps tugging on his right ear when Carter asks certain questions. Could be a tell. We already know that Stark and Jarvis are keeping something from Carter, we just don’t know what or how egregious.
Dooley arrives in Germany to meet with Mueller who is hours from his execution. Dooley wants to know about a specific war battle that ties Mueller to the dead Russians. He offers cyanide as an alternative to being hanged. This way Mueller can rob his captors of the satisfaction of watching him squirm toward death.
Thompson walks into Sousa’s interrogation with a cheeseburger and a bottle of Scotch. Thompson gets the homeless vet to roll over pretty quickly. Later on, Peggy arrives at SSR. She pulls the old switch-eroo pretty easily. However, Jarvis’ tell has her concerned. After lifting the sphere she takes it into a room. She flips the switch and the canister opens. Inside is a vile of someone’s blood. This is not adding up. When she returns to The Griffith, she is adamant that Howard say what’s in the vile. My mind went straight for the ailment that Tony Stark will eventually have, but that was caused by the shrapnel not heredity. It’s so obvious it should have slapped me in the face. The vile contains Steve Roger’s blood. Then Carter decked him.
When Howard comes to, he might have wished he hadn’t. The important play by-play as it pertains to the plot is that the government had 11 viles of Steve’s blood and Howard only had one. The government has all but depleted their supply. Peggy’s bigger concern is to the why. Why all the running around? Why risk her neck to save Howard’s? Especially if he’s not interested in clearing his name. Meanwhile, Mr. Mink dressed as a florist delivery man, got Peggy’s room number and is attempting to sneak in. Leaving Stark vulnerable.
Dottie, Peggy’s new neighbor departs her apartment and discovers Mink. He tells her to go back inside. She does not. He pulls his mini Gatling gun out and points it at Dottie. She tilts her head like a curious puppy and says, “is that automatic, I want that”. Then she runs up the walls and takes Mink out in one swift move. Starting to wonder if Dottie plays the same role for Peggy as Kate (Agent 13) did for Steve Rogers in Winter Soldier.
Jarvis intercepts Peggy and tries to make amends, unsuccessfully. She walks off and Jarvis pulls a u-turn. Howard is sitting with his face in a paper in a shoe shine seat. Jarvis conveys his dislike for the apologizing part of his job description. Then Jarvis departs. Leaving two men reading a newspaper. Howard is no longer reading the paper. Then the man next to him asks to borrow the sports page. Howard begrudgingly complies. The other man was Stan Lee. Patriarch of Marvel comics.
At SSR, Sousa finally entertains an idea the rest of us have already known about. Maybe the woman in the picture from the night club is not actually blonde. Meanwhile, Dooley returns to the office and Thompson has a wrinkle to the story that Dooley will be pleased with. The battle in question apparently never being a battle in the first place, instead a one-sided massacre. This Dooley knew. Thompson pulled the flight log from the day after the battle. One name jumps off the page. Howard Stark.
Peggy arrives home and immediately turns up the radio and breaks a hole in her wall. Dottie, next door admiring her new Gatling pistol, here’s a knock at her door. It’s Angie to see if Dottie is coming down to dinner. Peggy is putting a hole in the wall to hide the sphere that contains Steve’s blood. Back at SSR, Dooley adds Mueller to the evidence wall. Then something strange happens. The typewriter they grabbed from the Man in the Green Suit’s place, started self typing.
You’re not going to want to miss next week’s episode. Two words. Howling. Commandoes.
