For the first time, we got to see Carter out in the field with her co-workers (and with Neal McDonough, reprising his role from Captain America). The quick-draw ingenuity she'd displayed in the past was amped up to a higher degree, and supplemented with a strong command presence too. And thank God that unlike, say Captain Janeway of Voyager, the writers of this show know how to present a strong, commanding female without just having her yell at everyone and ignore everyone else's suggestions.
The scenes of Carter hiding her double identities were turned on their head. The scene that would normally be about her keeping her spy life out of her personal life instead was a scene about her creepy Russian agent neighbor (a 1940s Black Widow or something?) stealing her key. The scenes that would have been about her hiding her work for Stark from her co-workers were instead about Sousa figuring out her secret.
We also saw some very welcome development among the secondary characters. Thompson's relentless brutishness was undermined with a war story in which brutality was really the wrong answer. Dooley was starting to believe in the idea that Stark might be innocent of weapons dealing. And both those characters advanced in their acceptance of Carter as a real, honest-to-God agent, instead of a "lady agent."
All that said, the highlight of the episode, honestly, was still probably the commercial that promised the return of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a month. But at least Agent Carter took a strong turn towards the entertaining. It was probably the series' best episode so far, and it made the next three weeks of "filling in" suddenly show a lot more promise. I give this episode a B+.
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