Covert Affairs 4.16: Trompe le Monde & Season 4

Well, here we are.  Covert Affairs has finished its 4th season, and we can now look back with 20/20 hindsight and figure out what worked ... and what did not.  The final two eps were filmed in Hong Kong, and were *visually* awesome, as this show always is with all its foreign shoots.  The finale was a fairly solid ep in and of itself, as all the fall season eps mostly were, IF I could have subtracted the Helesa storyline out of them.  The climactic scene (of not just the ep but the entire season) was very satisfying ... another one of those lovely scenes that manage to rise above the clutter and frustrations of the season, at least in those fleeting moments.  I want to put a screenshot of it here but I don't want this post to be too spoilery, so I'll refrain.

Covert Affairs 4.15: There Goes My Gun

O.k. this is super obnoxious ... I always use Amazon HD to get my screenshots for these blog posts, but for some reason, Covert Affairs ep 4.15 is still not available to watch there.  They normally make them available in the wee hours of the morning after it airs.  Not sure what the hold-up is.  Guess I'll just use these pics I got from the show's official Facebook page.  The one below of Auggie fighting the dude in Hong Kong is a real doozy.  It's too hilarious not to use if I can't get the screenshots myself from Amazon.  Heh.

Covert Affairs 4.14: River Euphrates

 

Hahahaha ... is this too mean?  I'm sorry but this is ALL I saw from every single A&A interaction for this entire episode.  10,000 nails on 10,000 chalkboards.  Granted, if I could completely separate this A&A storyline out of the episode, it was actually pretty decent otherwise.  It's just that exactly what I feared would happen with A&A after last week's ep is now playing out just as I had pictured it - in a way that makes every scene with Annie and Auggie just make me feel miserable.  Completely, utterly miserable.  I want to punch Auggie, I want to smack some sense into Annie, and I want to throw my TV out the window during every scene with them together (thank god we only had to endure a couple though).

Covert Affairs: No. 13 Baby a.k.a. The One Where They Ruin Auggie

Dear Covert Affairs,

No.

Dear Auggie,

NO.

From last week: My god, could Helen a.k.a. Helesa BE any effing worse!?

YES.  I mean NO she CANNOT be any effing worse but she DOES GET WORSE.  Soooooooooooo much worse!!!

From last week: Does Covert Affairs have its mojo back?

NO.  O.k. well, kind of.  I mean in the sense of telling a coherent story ... they're actually still doing pretty well.  In the sense of giving me something I actually want to watch, however??  Well, for the first 38-ish minutes, yes, they gave me mostly good stuff.  But then, they did the TV equivalent of putting 10,000 kittens through a huge blender right in front of me.  The took a HUGE EFFING DUMP ALL OVER MY TV SCREEN FOR THE REST OF THE EPISODE.  Hahaha o.k. well not for the whole rest of the episode.  But once they took the dump ... all I could see in my head for the rest of the ep was diarrhea (by the name of Helesa).  I couldn't scrub the diarrhea off.  It was permanently there.  I was just living on Diarrhea Planet.

Covert Affairs 4.11: Dead

A month ago, when the mid-season finale of Covert Affairs aired, I was extremely frustrated with this show.  I went into the fall premiere with another month's worth of realizing how annoyed and disappointed I was with the way that the quality of the storytelling seemed to complete drop off a cliff between episodes 6 and 7 of this season.  The first 6 eps were quite enjoyable and I had given them all good ratings in my reviews.

So I couldn't, and still can't, figure out why the next 4 eps were such a cluster of half-baked and convoluted stories, leading into an ultimate decision by Annie that felt totally unconvincing.  And the crazy thing is that the turn in the story was actually something that I really LIKED in theory.  It's something that should be completely amazing and badass, but we got there in a way that didn't make much sense.

This week's fall premiere was the start of that new storyline, so I tried to just set my frustration with the way the show brought us here to the side, and take in the new storyline for what it was, on its own.  Interestingly ... the ep ended up being FAR better than the last four.  It felt like suddenly the show had come back to sanity ... back to the show that gave us 6 quality episodes in the first third of the season.

I don't know what happened, or why, but it suddenly feels like the show has its focus back.  It's a bit of a different focus, but it's one that sounds extremely interesting to me.  I see great potential in it, and it's starting to give me hope again.  Will the goodness continue, or will we return to convoluted chaos again before the season is out?  Only time will tell, but in the meantime, here's my ep 4.11 review at GeekFurious:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-411.html

Covert Affairs Eps 4.09 "Hang Wire" & 4.10 "Levitate Me"

Dear Covert Affairs, you are kiiiiiilllllllllling me.  Seriously.  There are few things in this fangirl's life that are more frustrating than to watch a TV show take its HUGE potential and squander it.

My last post was for episode 4.08, because I went out of town on vacation for a week and a half after that.  I was out of the country for 4.09 & 4.10, so this is my post to link to those two reviews.  At the time of my last post for 4.08, this is what I said:

I just pray that eps 4.09 and 4.10 are completely epic because ... they seriously need to be to make up for the lameness of 4.07 and 4.08.

So ... were they epic?  Well ... no.  They were not epic.  They were not horrible, don't get me wrong, but they just, were NOT epic either.  And rather than appease the frustrations I was already having after 4.07-8, they simply compounded and multiplied them.  And it all ended in this scene:

This scene that just ... it broke my fangirl heart, because it was something that could have been SO amazing.  It could have been.  It SHOULD have been.  There's no goddamn way this should have been anything other than ass-kickingly awesome.  But it just wasn't, and the problem was NOT the scene itself.  The scene on its own was wonderful.  The problem was that very little of what led into it made sense.  And therefore, the scene itself didn't hold much weight.

UGGH.  Anyway.  Just check out my reviews for the details.  Will they fuck up the back 6 when the fall season starts??  We've had 6 good eps this season and then 4 not-great ones in a row.  Somebody wave a magic TV wand for me, please.

Ep 4.09 "Hang Wire": http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-409.html

Ep 4.10 "Levitate Me": http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-410.html

Covert Affairs 4.06: Space (I Believe In)

Can we just talk for a sec about how the lighting in this scene made Kari Matchett look SUPER hot??  I mean don't get me wrong, she's always cute, but she was like on fiyah here.  She was also pregnant when she filmed this, so she probably has that pregnancy glow thing going on here too. 

Anywho.  This episode was quite enjoyable, until the last 30 seconds.  Then I wanted to blow up my TV.  You know, that final twist?  The one that most of us saw coming from miles away??  Uggh.  Here's my review:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-406.html

And if you're curious about the "goddamnit supercut" referenced at the beginning of the review, this is it.  Think of Helen (a.k.a. "Helesa") while watching:

God.  Damn it.

Covert Affairs 4.05: Here Comes Your Man

Hot damn, this show makes me want to travel everywhere in the universe.  Well, everywhere that the show goes to, which is practically everywhere in the universe.  Like Vienna:

O.k. well I guess this particular shot isn't exactly showing Vienna's distinctive attractions or landscape, but I'm a sucker for cool graffiti walls.  Anyway this was a good episode, and the scenes in Vienna looked and sounded amazing.  Stavros was hot, another of my fave hotties made a surprise appearance, and Calder Michaels turned into the worst human being ever to walk the earth.  Here's my review:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-405.html

Until next week ...

Covert Affairs Ep 402 - 404 Reviews

Remember that time I said I would be linking to my Covert Affairs reviews at GeekFurious from this blog?  Yeah.  I guess I got a little lazy with that.  The reviews are still coming, I've just been forgetting to link to them from here.  Here they are, the reviews for eps 402 through 404:

4.02 "Dig For Fire": http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-402.html

4.03 "Into the White": http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-plopper-review-covert-affairs-403.html

4.04 "Rock a My Soul": http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-404.html

Hey!  It's Barber!  Enjoy!!

¡Vamos! Covert Affairs Season 4 Begins

I've thought about possibly creating a new blog that is just for my TV-related posts, but I ended up not doing it because I'm going to be reviewing Covert Affairs over at GeekFurious instead of on my own blog for season 4.  And I can't guarantee how often I'll write posts about other shows, at least while I've still got my Bible Reviews project going on.  I've been following and enjoying Magnus's blogs (ChuckGasmic, GeekFurious) ever since the Chuck days, and let's face it, reviewing Covert there means it'll actually get SEEN by a few people!  Unlike here, where I'm lucky if I get 20 non-spam hits in an entire week.

Anyway, Covert Affairs' 4th season finally started last Tuesday.

Mmmm, yes please.  Teo Braga could be my new Simon Fischer.

If you're one of the few people who has actually read my blog before, you may recall that I got sucked into the show late last summer, and then reviewed several of the last few eps of the season.  Here is my review of the season 4 opener over at GeekFurious:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-401.html

I guess I'll keep linking to them from here the same way I do for my Bible blogs, though I'll be surprised if they bring any more hits.