Covert Affairs "Scary Monsters": Invasion of the Body Snatchers

O.k. look, I did a checkpoint/review thing last week on Covert Affairs eps 311-13, and my plan after that was to wait until the last 3 eps of the season aired before I did another review.  That way I could consider the season as a whole.  But after Tuesday's ep, 314 - "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)," I have more things I feel the need to discuss.  It feels like every single one of the past three episodes has gone about 50% of the way I expected and hoped they'd go, and 50% in some totally weird/off-putting direction, and 314 was no exception.  Lemme start with what I liked about this episode:

• I ended my last review with a question about whether any of the shitstorm Annie had stirred up in 313 would have sunk into her seemingly thick skull by the beginning of ep 314.  It is for that reason that I love the scene at the beginning of 314 in Megan's depressing hotel room where Annie is made to feel the full weight of just how badly she has screwed up this chick's life.  Megan calls Annie on the carpet for pretty much every single grievance too, forcing Annie to face everything head-on.
• I also love that we get to see just how much fallout there is on Arthur and Joan from the higher-ups due to this whole drone strike debacle.  To not show the consequences they have to face with the investigation would give this storyline a whole lot less weight and validity.
• In Annie's first scene with Auggie in 314, she does seem genuinely distraught about the situation she has caused with the drone strike.  To some extent.  I do still see issues on this front though, I'll touch on those in a bit.
• Unlike eps 312-13, I did not find myself wanting to shake Annie by the shoulders for any of the major decisions she made in this ep.  Every choice she makes in 314 is at least somewhere in the ballpark of what I would have done in her shoes.
• The writers seem to have resolved my previous question about whether Eyal would be proven guilty or innocent (of photo-doctoring betrayal and con artistry) in a rather ingenious way: He is guilty, but he's been strong-armed into it by Mossad, and he feels terrible enough about it that you don't wind up totally hating the guy for it.  In a sense it allows the show to have its cake and eat it too - It lets them present Annie with the consequences of placing too much trust in another spy, without making us completely hate a character that everyone has always loved throughout the series.  I also love that Eyal tells Annie straight up: "You know this thing you keep doing, looking for the good in people??  Not only does it make you weak, it makes you a target.  And an EASY one at that!!"  Again, some tough words she needs to hear.

That's the good stuff.  Now on to my concerns:

Are we supposed to be noticing that something seems ... off ... about Annie in this episode?  Well, lemme take a step back before I continue this thought: I've said many times before that we absolutely should be seeing behavioral changes in Annie based on her experiences this season.  IMO that's the biggest thing that should be making the show interesting right now.  They did a fantastic job showing this in eps 310-11, and pretty well in 312.  But in 313 it gets fuzzy for me, and in 314, it just straight up drops off a cliff into bizarro land, where I have moments of wondering if Annie has been body-snatched and replicated into a pod person.  Let's first start out with what eps 312-14 have clearly shown us:

1. From eps 312-13, we know that Annie is very distraught about Simon's death.
2. From ep 312, we know that Annie cannot go back home without re-living the trauma she experienced there, so she is staying at Eyal's D.C. apartment instead.
1. It makes me wonder though - Where the heck did she spend the couple/few months that it took to recover from her injuries?  When she left for Russia in 310, she left from her own place.  BUT I do see where it's entirely possible that it wasn't until she left for a while and then came back home that the PTSD could be triggered.  That might be it.
3. From ep 313, we know that Annie's holding resentment towards Joan for transferring her to Lena's department to begin with.
4. In the scene where she and Eyal interrogate Griffin Cole's brother in 314, Annie lunges at the guy with zero hesitation and a pretty rabid/angry look in her eyes.  This scene did seem to pretty clearly (and intentionally) show a change in her behavior patterns. 

That's basically the extent of what we have from the past 3 episodes.  You can see that 312 gives us some solid info, but then the clues quickly start to dry up in 313 and 314.  And that is where we start to get some of the downright strange behavior from Annie I hinted at earlier.  Stuff that makes me go, "Wait, wha??"  Like, are these supposed to be intentional clues for the audience, or is it an unintended consequence of trying to shove WAY too much plot and not even close to enough character focus into these last few eps?  Are the scenes just being rushed?  A couple examples:

1. At the end of 313, Annie seems shockingly UNfazed by the huge fight she's has just had with Joan, where Joan has just straight-up fired her from the DPD, and told Annie she wants nothing to do with her anymore.  Shouldn't Annie be more concerned about this, considering that her job is basically her entire life??
2. Same exact thing goes for Annie's discovery in 314 that BOTH Eyal and Megan have betrayed her.  She ends the episode seeming no more than mildly bummed out about all this shit that is blowing up (no pun intended) in her face.  She treats it like, "Oh well dang that sucks but I guess I'll just finish up my work and go to Bluebonnet.  Oh sweet I don't have to go to Bluebonnet!!  Whew, dodged a bullet there!  I guess I'll just go home and have a beer and snuggle with my new blankie."  Shouldn't she be freaking the F*CK out about this stuff!?  I would!  Why does she not seem to care that much??  It's entirely out of character for her.

My theory is that one (or both) of a couple different things could be happening here.  Either:

a) Annie is in a bit of an "I don't give a f*ck" mental state right now (at least about her own well-being, because she clearly cares about Megan's well-being and she still cares about catching bad guys, but she seems to not give two shits about herself at all at the moment) ...

b) Or, the writers have tried to shove SO much plot into this second story arc of the season that we're not getting nearly enough character focus.

I hate to think it's B, but I'm starting to suspect that might be at play here.  Chuck suffered from these issues in seasons 3 and 4, when NBC would order 13 eps, and then they would later order a back 6 or back 9 - thereby forcing Schwartz and Fedak to write two separate arcs each season, and the second arc would always feel WAY too rushed.  In Covert's case they split it based on the summer vs. fall seasons, but I'm starting to wonder if that may have been a mistake.  Maybe they should have kept one long arc for the whole season so that they could have time to allow the characters to properly deal with all the plot developments.  It's interesting how eps 301-11 were almost perfectly paced IMO, as opposed to how rushed and overly dense these last 5 seem (so far).

The funny thing is that I actually thought the first 55 minutes of ep 314 were pretty good; it was only in the last 5 minutes of the ep that I suddenly became practically infuriated, not just by Annie's bizarrely nonchalant reactions to everything, but also by the introduction of no less than THREE major new plot twists!!  (1. Eyal is a puppet for Mossad's larger mysterious scheme, 2. Henry Wilcox's sentence is being commuted, and 3. Khalid wants revenge on Annie.)  We only have TWO episodes left, people!  How the hell are they gonna shove all this crap into the last 2 eps without completely losing all the proper character focus that should be happening before this season is out?  There are SO many characters who need to work their shiz out with each other right now it's not even funny:

• Joan & Arthur
• Joan & Annie
• Joan and her pill addiction
• Annie & Auggie
• Annie & Eyal
• Annie & HERSELF!!

Why, in these last 5 eps, do the writers seem way more interested in cramming in 20 new plot points per episode than they do in letting their characters deal properly with anything that is happening or has already happened?  Aagghh.  All I know is that if we don't get significant focus here by the time the season is out, I'm gonna be suuuuper disappointed.

A few other random thoughts:

• Is anyone else starting to have a case of Bluebonnett Blueballs at this point?  At the very least, sending Annie there would have forced her to take some time to sort through all the crap that has gone down instead of totally ignoring it.  In the end, they talked it up so much that I was seriously annoyed when Joan so easily decided to drop the entire thing in this episode.  By then it actually felt like a letdown, and it made Joan look wishy-washy.
• I totally get the decision to sideline Danielle this season, but lately I've almost kind of started to miss her, which I never expected.  It makes me wonder, does the poor woman even know that her sister practically died a few months ago, or was in a Russian prison??  Has someone in this fictional world filled her in on all these developments?  Though they may want to soften "Russion prison" to "Eastern European vacation" or something when they tell her heheh.
• I'm gonna seriously go ballistic soon if we don't find out the damn backstory on Joan and the pills.  Another example of the need for more character focus!

2 more eps guys ... TWO. more. freaking. eps.  I'm starting to feel like we're gonna need a magic wand in order to deal with all this stuff in anything even close to the satisfying way that most fans are expecting.  Eerrgghh.  P.s., the thing that worked me up enough to write this review was the confirmation here that I'm not the only person feeling this way (see comments too).  :-P