This post contains spoilers from the fourth episode of Agent Carter, which aired on January 27, 2015.
I'm going to try to keep this super-short. But this week's Agent Carter has a couple of awesome feminist moments, so here goes.
I mostly want to talk about the punch. In this episode, Peggy punches Howard Stark when she finds out that Howard had Steve Rogers' blood for research. OK, so what? She punched him, that's what. She didn't slap him like the trope of the "emotional woman." She punched him and gave him a black eye. Normally, on TV and in mainstream movies, a woman slaps a man in the face when she finds out something upsetting involving the love of her life. And normally (in mainstream popular media), a man punches another man when he's upset about something involving a woman he loves. But Peggy Carter is no trope. She punched Howard and, somehow, did it in a way that made it seem natural for a woman to punch a man in the face. She just punched away another stereotype.
At work, Peggy continues to face the ugly face of sexism (sometimes conveyed by a pretty face). This week, the a-hole agent played by Chad Michael Murray (note: yes, he's conventionally attractive; no, he's not my type) says to Peggy's face that no man will ever see a woman as his equal and that she is only fooling herself. This hurts Peggy profoundly, especially after she had been designated to lunch duty (i.e., taking lunch orders from everyone in the building, pretty much), and we hope that she will prove him and all the other sexists wrong.
But in some ways, we already know that she has (and will). Howard Stark, the playboy father of Tony Stark (like father, like son?), treats her with the respect that he would never treat any other woman. He doesn't have the best attitude towards other human beings in general, but he treats Peggy as a friend and an equal. We know that this was not how Howard behaved from the beginning. In the pilot, Peggy mentions an anecdote of when he tried to kiss her on V-Day and she pushed him into the Thames. But apparently, they had grown to be friends, and we know that they eventually go on to found S.H.I.E.L.D. (in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) together.
And so the adventures of Peggy Carter continue. I'm just a little sad that it's more than halfway through the mini-series. Here's to hoping that more series like Agent Carter and more characters like Peggy are on their way to mainstream media.
