Now that I've officially done that for Covert Affairs, I don't think it changes any of my opinions from my original blog post on season 3, but it definitely gives me added perspective on the series as a whole. So I'm writing this post just to call out some extra points that I learned from catching up. I'll split them up by season:
Season 1
- First off, I will say that despite its issues, the show is still thoroughly entertaining in season 1. I rarely felt myself getting bored and I always looked forward to the next episode. But the problem is, well, keep reading, I'll get to it.
- What I heard about the episodic nature of Covert Affairs is exactly right in season 1. The A.V. Club article was dead on. Annie goes on various disconnected missions, and everything gets tied up neatly with a bow at the end of each episode. Annie sometimes gets bummed out at stuff that happens on the missions or having to hide stuff from her sister Danielle, but then the next episode comes along and we're on to the next thing. I mean yes, you can feel some sense of her experience and reactions building as it goes along, but that kind of plays very slowly and it focuses much more on the mission of the week. The only other major ongoing arcs are:
- The Liza Hearn leak and Auggie sleeping with Liza. Mildly entertaining I guess; not the most riveting thing I've ever seen.
- The Ben Mercer storyline - UGGH. Almost EVERY part of this storyline is like nails on a chalkboard for me. Every single time that camera would focus in on that freaking seashell bracelet thingy, I wanted to blow up my t.v. It's just too ... I mean I like romance storylines, don't get me wrong, but this one seemed too teen-soapy to me and we never knew enough about Ben to give a shit about him. I actually found the season finale to be pretty blah because it was all focused around whether Ben was a good guy or a bad guy and whether he could redeem himself with Annie, and I just did not care. at. ALL.
- My favorite episode was probably 1.4 "No Quarter," because a) it was just a really fun episode in general (and I kinda loved the fact that the characters never found out what was in their briefcases), and b) Eyal. LOVE this guy, and THIS is what chemistry looks like. I don't even necessarily mean romantic chemistry either, just chemistry in general between the two characters and the two actors. It jumps off the screen. Let's keep the Eyals coming back and dump the Ben Mercers, please!!
- Piper Perabo has quite a talent (at least in the first few eps of season 1) for slipping almost-F-bombs past the censors by kind of mumbling the word and not quite finishing it. You get the "ffuuhh" without quite getting the full "ck" at the end. This is very amusing.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the episodic mission-of-the-week nature of season one makes it feel very ... light and airy. Despite the fact that it's a perfectly enjoyable show, you just don't feel a lot of weight to most of what happens. The characters are all likeable (except Ben), and they certainly make you care about their stories, but we're not exactly getting too deep with anyone or anything. Real life doesn't tie up nice and neat at the end of each chapter. The show also doesn't really feel like it's building towards anything in season 1, it's just kind of moving along randomly and you're not sure whether there will ever be much of a point to any of it other than just a bunch of cool/exciting missions. That is why this show can't be called anything beyond "decently entertaining" in season 1.
Season 2
- When season 2 begins, Ben Mercer is STILL. HERE. WHY?? I was seriously hoping that a miracle would occur and the writers would forget about him between seasons and he'd just be gone. Or that he would have died off camera. But nope, here he is, alive and obnoxious. And to make matters worse, Annie is annoying when she is with him! Uggh.
- The second ep is like night and day from the premiere (which was not my favorite episode), and guess who's in it?? EYAL!! Not a coincidence, but even beyond Eyal, everything about this episode is immensely better than the premiere. It's fun, unpredictable, and surprisingly hilarious. And not even so much as a reference to Ben Mercer! Ahh.
- After watching several episodes of season 2, I started to realize that the showrunners thankfully did the right thing and decided to get rid of Ben Mercer after all. He's in ep 2.1, but then disappears after that until ep 2.8, in what seems like an effort to close out his storyline once and for all. I like the fact that Annie makes a clear choice in 2.8 that she's over him and she's not wasting any more of her time on him, although I find it slightly irksome that we don't get much info as to why. Is it because she has actually grown as a person since the last time she saw him, or is it simply because she has a new dude she's banging now? I think it's supposed to be the former, but they don't give us much info into her thought process there. The other crappy thing about this is that they leave it open for him to possibly return, but I reeaally hope they (and Annie) are done with him for good. Please!!
- I absolutely love how this show does a lot of filming on location. Major network shows almost NEVER do this, do they? Chuck and Alias always wound up looking pretty fake in eps with foreign missions because of it. Cover Affairs makes me realize how much more real and authentic these stories feel when they actually shoot them in the location (or in a similar location to) where the the story takes place.
- I've just finished season 2 as I type this bulletpoint, and I now see a very clear pattern that the best eps of the season are the ones where the ongoing story arcs actually move forward, and we get legitimate significant character development. Cases in point:
- Ep 2.7 is a really good one, because we finally get to see the backstory of how Auggie was blinded. This not only helps define him as a character, but it helps move the Auggie and Annie relationship/friendship forward. The final scene where he tells the story to Annie at the bar is kind of that perfect mixture of touching and then slightly awkward, that, IMO, is exactly how that convo would normally go in real life. Nicely done.
- Ep 2.10 is another great episode, and guess what?? It involves major story and character developments! Annie finally reads in Danielle on the fact that she works for the CIA. This is obviously a huge step forward in that relationship, and the way they tie it to the mission of the week is clever. It definitely helps that the mission of the week in this episode is entertaining as well.
- I mentioned earlier that I loved ep 2.2 because Eyal is in it. That episode alone doesn't really move forward any major ongoing arcs, but Eyal returns in ep 2.13, another standout, and this is where I started to see a possible gameplan and purpose to this character. I'm betting the writers probably didn't originally intend for him to be a recurring character, but then kept him when they realized how great Oded Fehr is. I'm also not sure when they figured out what he could add to Annie's character development, but to me it clearly seems that they had started to figure it out by ep 2.13. His storyline here has major similarities to where Annie is at this moment in season 3. That's why I can't wait for him to return for the last 6 eps of S3.
- The season finale is another enjoyable episode, and I detailed the reasons why in my last blog post. But long story short, we get significant and interesting developments for Auggie, Annie, and Danielle.
- One other note: The "Liza Hearn leak" storyline continues into season 2, but the focus changes to Jai as a character, his dissatisfaction with his job, his attempts to advance his career, and his relationship with his father. I kind of feel bad for Sendhil Ramamurthy in watching seasons 1 & 2, because I'm not convinced that the writers were ever quite sure what to do with him. His character arc never felt like it was fully getting the attention it deserved - it never felt 100% fleshed out and always seemed a little haphazard to me. The irony is that it seems like it's only in season 3 that the writers have fully figured out his place in the series, and unfortunately for Sendhil we're getting most of that after he has been killed off.
Now, with all that said, even with the story developments that I called out above, it is still pretty striking how little progress is made in season 2 when it comes to any sort of season-long narrative. There's almost LESS of a narrative to season 2 than season 1. Other than those very basic underlying plotlines and character relationships I described above, it's still hard to get a sense of the overall gameplan when viewing season 2. Despite the fact that I still found it quite entertaining, I also see 100% why people were left feeling frustrated by it. If I had watched it in realtime, I would have been wondering - where the heck is this all going? What's the point of it, other than to just get to know some good characters and watch Annie have exciting experiences on missions? Is there anything else to this show? Are the writers even clear about that amongst themselves yet? Thank god season 3 came along.
Season 3
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| Annie are you o.k.? Damn now that song is in my head. The Alien Ant Farm version. |
I know I had already seen all of season 3 (err, everything that has aired thus far which is up to 3.10) when I wrote my original blog post, but I just wanted to add a few more notes here because of the added perspective on season 3 that watching the first two seasons gave me. So here's a few observations:
- Watching seasons 1 and 2 has unexpectedly made season 3 look like even MORE of a stark contrast than I originally thought. I expected that if anything, I'd see evidence that the change was more gradual than I previously hypothesized, but in several ways it's the complete opposite. I still stand by my original observation that a decent chunk of the general quality improvement was gradual, but what I didn't expect was for the change in storytelling style to be SO night and day between the first two seasons and the third. I now realize that ep 3.1 is literally the very first ep in the ENTIRE series that doesn't end with the mission of the week being tied up by the end of the episode! That is huge, and it helps to give this episode and season a really different and much more mature feel than all of seasons 1 & 2.
- Annie's switch to Lena's department in 3.1 is a lot more of an extreme change in her job than I fully realized before as well. She really does get thrown into a brand new world right at the outset of season 3.
- The separation between Annie and Auggie in the first half of season 3 due to their job changes is also way more apparent to me now that I see how closely they worked together in 1 & 2. And not just that, but the exact same observation goes for Annie and Joan as well. Annie really does suddenly get put into a place where she has to fend for herself this season, which makes her much more vulnerable. No wonder she's had such a rough time of it lately.
- This list could go on and on but here's one more random example I just thought of: Originally seeing ep 3.2 ("Sound and Vision") out of context made me assume that Annie had been pining after Auggie for a quite while at that point, but now I realize that is absolutely not the case, at least not on a conscious level for her. Getting the right history on that completely changes my understanding of that relationship.
- I kind of love that they can say "shit" on this show since it's on cable, but I never previously realized that the frequency of its usage jumps up quite suddenly in season 3 too. It's funny because I almost feel like they did it as yet another sign that the show has stepped up to a new and grittier level this season.
Anywho, these are just a few of the many examples of all the blanks that have now been filled in for me, which now make season 3 even more enjoyable. And beyond this, I honestly enjoyed watching seasons 1 and 2 ... to the point where I'm kinda bummed that I don't have any more unwatched eps queued up to binge on now. Damn!!
At least new eps return TONIGHT! Woot. I'm ready for some Rock 'n Roll Suicide.
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