Agent Carter: A Quick Primer For People I May Be Forcing to Watch the Show.

Important stuff in regular text.  Additional information that isn't super important in this text.

This is Peggy Carter.  She kicks ass.  All the ass.  She is effectively unrivaled in ass-kickery.  She is a British spy who works with the Post-WW2 "Strategic Science Reserve," which is basically a fictional extension of the Manhattan Project, if the MP had no single active goal, vaguely unlimited funds, and a series of crazy people running it.  She dated Captain America very briefly (he got frozen in a chunk of ice for the next sixty years).

This is Edwin Jarvis, butler to Howard Stark.  He is best summed up by this single pose.  He is a delight of
frustration.

This is Ana Jarvis, wife of Edwin.  She is a wonder of grace, and she has been treated very shabbily by this season.  She's going to live after getting shot by villains, but she can't have kids now because of that.  I am annoyed by that trope.

This is Calvin Chadwick.  He was going to be a senator, but he ended up dead, as a result of his own stupid decisions.  He cheated on his wife:

His wife, famous movie star Whitney Frost.  BRB.

And because of that, they had to dispose of the mistress, and because everyone makes bad decisions, they use experimental stuff to kill her.  This causes trails, and Peggy found one of those trails, and seriously, if he had just not been a cheating fuck, he'd be Senator, and WITH THE BONUS of not being fucking dead.  Fuck you Chadwick.  You're a jerk.

This guy is Dr Jason Wilkes, who worked for Chadwick at Isodyne, investigating some material "zero matter" discovered after a nuclear test went wrong.

This guy's bomb test.  He probably won't show up anymore, so this whole thing, then.

Hopefully this works, as it's a web/p image?  It animates here.  This is the test.  It goes "not like nuclear tests do."

This is Howard Stark.  He is a billionaire because he sold lots of weapons during the war.  He is an asshole, but he's our asshole, so it's ok.  He is also possibly the smartest person in the world, and can design just about anything ever.  His son is Tony Stark, Iron Man, but his big invention (arc generator) is entirely based on a design Howard couldn't build due to issues with manufacturing in the 60s.

That sets up the main characters

"We're going to have to do something about that Agent Carter and the stuff at Isodyne."

So they plan to kersplode it, and wipe everything under the rug of "I'm a senator now, I don't care about old business."

Except Whitney is actually the brains behind Isodyne, because she's also super smart.  She wants to steal the zero matter.

Wilkes knows what's going on, so he also wants to steal the zero matter.

Zero matter is not something easy to steal.  It kind of kerspodes in a different way.

So now Whitney has this neat-o zero matter scar on her face.  That's bad for being a movie star!

Wilkes has issues too.  Here he is after Howard made him visible again.  See, he turned intangible and invisible and basically a ghost.  Adding more zero matter gives him some stability, and he was able to design a containment field so he doesn't fade away, but he's kind of fucked right now.

Let's go through the rest of the good guys.

Sousa.  West coast SSR director, crippled during the war, totally in love with Peggy, so much so that his fiance noticed, and so that's why he's not engaged anymore.  Whoops.  But he's not an ass, at least.

Jack Thompson.  East coast SSR director and technically Peggy's boss, but fuck that shit.  He's a coward and and an asshole, and can go fuck himself.

This is Angie.  She only appeared in the dancing dream flashback, as they didn't bring her back for season 2.  This was a bad decision, but I suspect I know why.

This was from The Atomic Job.  Sousa, Jarvis, Carter, and:  Rose Roberts, the "receptionist" and Dr. Aloysius Samberly, an actual scientist from the SSR (it's not just spies).  They are wonderful people, and balance out the sheer number of assholes in the rest of the cast.

Oh, and they parked on the other side of the building. Oops.

They basically have to do a bunch of difficult things, and no one has as much confidence of Peggy.

Except Howard, obvs, but Howard has the confidence of the asshole. 

Bad guys.

This is Dottie Underwood getting clocked by a bag of silver dollars.  Dottie is a Russian spy who did the same program as Black Widow (movie Scarlett Johanssen).  So, super spy.  Also a psychopath, but that's how it goes.  She was the villain in season 1.

Jarvis took her to a campaign party for Chadwick this season.  It was a solid plan.

Oh, I'm putting this link here instead, because of Peggy's face in the fourth panel.

So yeah, the plan goes bad, Dottie gets captured by the bad guys even though she is a bad guy, but she was a bad guy working for the good guys, and they had to go rescue her.  That rescue isn't the best (see above re: Ana), and she kills a cop to escape, so she's on the loose now too.  Whoops.

Vernon Masters.  I have never seen Kurtwood Smith in a role where I didn't think he needed punched in the face.  He just plays jerks.  Guess what?  He's a jerk.  He's some FBI/military intelligence whatever, and is technically everyone's boss, I think.  Thompson toadies up to him because he sucks too. 

Vernon with Joseph Manfredi, mob boss, and ex-bf of Whitney Frost.  He's on Whitney's side no matter what.

Let's get back to Whitney's side, and see what she's doing with her husband and the secret Arena Club Council of Eight Mystery Team Campfile Club (No Girls Allowed) that is making him a senator.

"Harrumph!  We run the world the way rich old white people like!  Oppressively!"

Oh no, Whitney!  What horrible zero matter powers are you using to murder your husband with?

And this guy, I think possibly because you just decided "fuck that guy too!"

 Yeah, so now Whitney can horribly murder people due to (I think it's Thompson here with the line) "magical space goo."

But it shows up on her face.  Joey Mobster doesn't care.

"We really just don't want to get murdered, is what we're saying."

To finish up the recap, Whitney got Masters to re-steal the nuclear stuff Peggy stole in the Atomic Job, and used it to blow up a new hole full of zero matter.  Stark emailed plans for a gamma gun to stop zero matter, and they fixed the hole with that.  But, Wilkes (who may be uncontrollably evil now) absorbed all the zero matter, and now he's sick, and in the closing of this week's episode it looks like he uncontrollably exploded.   It's all very serious.

Very serious.