After finally capturing Dottie, Peggy is shuffled off to LA before she can finish her interrogation. There, Sousa has found a rather strange case and he's in over his head. A body has been found in a frozen lake on the hottest day of the year. Jarvis picks Peggy up from the airport (with Howard's new flamingo) and their new adventure is just beginning.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Name Change: Calvin Chadwick's comics counterpart is named Hesperus Chadwick.
- Actionized Sequel: The first season having established everything, the new season wastes no time in getting to the new MacGuffin or Big Bad. Likewise, the story pacing is notably brisker and the plot more compressed.
- Attention Whore: Subtly implied with Det. Henry, who continuously insists that they bring in the press to assist the investigation. Justified, as the reason he disposed of the body in that manner was specifically to bring attention to the case it was copying so he'd get funding to reopen it again.
- Bait-and-Switch: From the opening scene, it looks like we'll get another season of the SSR going after Peggy with Dottie framing her for a bank robbery. Instead, Peggy and the SSR are well ahead of her and capture her before moving on to the real main story.
- Big Fun: We finally get to meet Jarvis's wife, and she's a teeny tiny big fun who loves to embarrass her straitlaced husband.Ana: What's that look?
Peggy: Uh, I don't know, I suppose I was expecting someone...
Ana: more like Mr. Jarvis? In a girdle? - Brief Accent Imitation: Peggy does an American accent when she's passing herself off as a woman who plans to vote for Chadwick.
- Call-Back:
- The opening scene shows a woman in a deep blue coat and a bright red hat walking through a crowd of men in drab suits and grey fedoras, just like one of the opening scenes of the first episode. This time, the woman is Dottie Underwood. After Carter takes Dottie down, she echoes the "Love the hat" line from the first episode.
- While interrogating Dottie, Thompson talks about the "carrot and stick" that he and Dooley did in Season 1. Except this time, he has no interest to offer her the carrot.
- Call-Forward: The lapel pin Dottie tried to steal? It's the sigil for the ancient HYDRA cult.
- Cleanup Crew: Det. Henry prides himself in his side job, making problems disappear for people wealthy enough to pay.
- Contract on the Hitman: Det. Henry is killed to erase all connections between the death of Jane Scott and Chadwick. A slight variation in that it was a contract on the Cleanup Crew.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Where the first season focused on sexism, this season focuses on racism.Det. Henry: Yeah, all on the word of some janitor.
Peggy: Dr. Wilkes is a physicist! - Dirty Cop: The LAPD is shown to be thoroughly corrupt.
- Det. Andrew Henry was paid by Chadwick to get rid of Jane Scott's dead body.
- Another cop is paid by Chadwick to kill Det. Henry before he can blab about who hired him.
- End of an Era: It's 1947 and many feel that the SSR is no longer needed and its functions can be taken over by other agencies. This sets up the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Foreshadowing: Implicating his role in the... situation with the titular Lady in the Lake, Det. Henry introduces himself having caught a cold.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Chief Thompson feels very intimidated by the way the men now look up to Peggy.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason why Chadwick has Det. Henry killed.
- In Medias Res: The episode begins square in the middle of an operation to capture Dottie.
- Jurisdiction Friction:
- Det. Henry doesn't really appreciate the SSR taking the lead in his murder investigation.
- The FBI swoops in and takes Dottie away from SSR custody, taking over their investigation.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Both the coroner and Detective Henry go out this way after the Zero Matter infection freezes them solid.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Inverted. Jane Scott almost certainly died from accidental exposure to the Zero Matter, but when disposing of her body, Det. Henry tried to make it look like the work of a Serial Killer so that he could get more resources for a cold case.
- Mythology Gag: Jarvis mentions that Whitney Frost appeared in the movie Tales of Suspense. This is a reference to the comic book series of the same name, where the character first appeared.
- Pass the Popcorn: The SSR agents looking in on Peggy's interrogation of Dottie treat the whole thing like watching a boxing match between two great fighters. Chief Thompson really doesn't appreciate it.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The death of Jane Scott, Isodyne physicist and Chadwick's mistress, is what sets in motion the events that bring Peggy to California.
- Politically Correct History: Averted. There would have been black physicists in the forties (there were black universities), and they would have been employed even in Pasadena, though in lower positions and without respect. Also extant, and even more uncommon and disrespected, would have been women working as physicists (like the eponymous Lady in the Lake).
- Rank Up: Sousa has been promoted to run the SSR's West Coast branch.
- Revealing Cover-Up: Det. Henry's plan to pass Jane Scott's death as the work of a serial killer is what gets the SSR involved in the case in the first place.
- Revenge Before Reason: Thompson sends Peggy to LA, partly because he's still grieving for Chief Dooley and wants to make Dottie pay.
- Sigil Spam: That pin Dottie stole from the bank bears a striking resemblance to a certain branch of NASA in the present day... It'll become more clear in the following episode, but this is all related to HYDRA.
- That One Case: The Lady in the Lake Killer to Det. Henry, which is why he disposed of Jane Scott's body using the killer's MO: His superiors were trying to make him drop the case, and he needed revived public attention to retain his task force.
- The Un-Reveal: The original serial killer is still out there.
- Visual Pun: The body in the frozen lake was posed to look like a cold case.
- Would Hit a Girl: Threatened by Thompson to Dottie, but not carried out.
