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 4.14: 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 4.12: Something Against You

My god, could Helen a.k.a. Helesa (remember her alias earlier in the season was Teresa something) BE any effing worse!?  She is not only a completely unnecessary and grating character, but she proved in this week's episode to be a TOTAL scammer.  Back in ep 4.07 she was all like, "Ohh whoops sorry Auggie I never loved you, it was all for the mission, duh!!"  "Oh Annie, falling in love is dangerous, going dark is the best!!  OMG it's soooo kewl you should try it out too!!  You can be SO awesome as a spy this way I swear!!  It's totes fun.  Love only slows you down.  Dump the loser and you can be cool like me."

And now this week she's all like, "OH wait what's that you say??  Annie's dead!?  OH in that case!  Auggie I DID love you, I never stopped loving you, I totally regret going dark what the hell was I thinking OMG!!??  Going dark is so lame I shoulda never done that shit!!"  UGGH.  Just go EAT A BAG OF Ds HELESA, SERIOUSLY.  And get out of our faces already.  You are a plot device and you're doing nothing but EFFING shit up in the most obnoxious way possible for the audience.

Anyway.  Despite my venomous reaction to Helesa being on my TV screen, luckily her screen time was kept mercifully short in this episode.  And the rest of the ep actually managed to be pretty damn good.  Two weeks in a row of good eps now.  Does Covert Affairs have its mojo back?  God ... please TV gods ... I pray to you that this is the case.

Annie has been thrown off the rails in this ep, and it appears that she may be starting to have feelings and stuff again, like a normal human.  Maybe.  I hope so.  We'll see what happens next week.  Here's my review at GeekFurious:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-412.html

Covert Affairs 4.08: I've Been Waiting For You

Sigh.  Covert Affairs, WHY are you doing this to me??  You know how much I love our Sweet Puma Cub.  And last week's ep was so painful to watch, that I thought a Teo-heavy episode was going to be just the remedy we needed this week.  Turns out, there is actually such thing as too much Baby Teo.  Who would have predicted!?  It also turns out that Brooding Mysterious Teo is a lot sexier than Whiney Daddy-Issues Teo. 

I'm being a little unfair, because I actually liked the scene with Arthur in the woods.  But, the reason I had issues with it here was because it completely steamrolled over our MAIN characters.  Well, just read my full review and you'll see what I'm talking about:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-408.html

I'll admit though, despite all that, the Teo-punching scene in the motel room was pretty awesome.

I'll on vacay next week so my review will likely be late or very short.  And I may not get a chance to link to it from here until after I get home.  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.  I'm bummed right now because I thought 4.01 through 4.06 hummed along quite nicely until the Helen twist seem to throw everything off kilter.  Oh well.  Fingers and toes and everything crossed.

Covert Affairs 4.07: Crackity Jones

Crack Crack.  Crackity Jones!!

Uggh.

Where the hell do I even start with this episode??  First off, I love the Pixies and they have SO many good song titles that would make EPIC episode titles ("Wave of Mutilation" anyone??) ... so why do they keep picking ones like Crackity Jones??  Actually I shouldn't complain about this one.  At least this one is memorable.  Unlike "Space (I Believe In)".  BUT ... at the same time ... does it even MEAN anything relevant to the ep??  I'm assuming because the song is about a crazy guy who sees things (hallucinations) ... and the episode is about someone coming back from "the dead."  So you'd feel like you were seeing things.

Whatever.  I just didn't like episode.  That's the bottom line.  I had hoped beyond hope that the writers and director and everyone involved would pull off this Helen storyline in a believable way.  That ... didn't happen.  None of it worked for me.  None of it.  Except Barber and his little buddy whose name I forget.  Barber is THE BEST and this was most definitely the best scene he's ever done.  And guess who didn't listen to Barber's advice, AT ALL??  AUGGIE, that's who.  Grrrr.

Also, Piper.  At the end.  The girl SOLD her heart out of that scene even if I didn't believe for one second that anyone in their right mind would break up based on the riddic events of this episode.  Chris too, don't get me wrong, although I was frankly a bit disappointed that Auggie wasn't more upset than he was.  I was also disappointed that Auggie did not disagree with Annie when she practically BEGGED him to.  None of this made sense on any logical level.  But Piper did act the shit out of that scene.  And it (she + the scene) left me feeling like there was nothing good left in the entire world by the time it was over.  All the flowers turned grey and died, the sky turned black, and every puppy in the world looked like that horrible SPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan.

Anyway.  Here's my review:

http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-plopper-reviews-covert-affairs-407.html

You can let me know if you think I'm nuts.