Covert Affairs: "Lady Stardust" and Season 3

Lordy.  You know, with most t.v. shows, I'm able to love them at a totally healthy level.  Breaking Bad, Homeland, pretty much all comedies like Parks & Rec, 30 Rock, Community, New Girl, Louie, It's Always Sunny, etc.  And by "healthy level," I mean: I watch them, I enjoy them, I delete each ep from the DVR after watching.  However, there have been exactly three shows in history that have brought me into "obsessed mode."  Symptoms of obsessed mode: following Twitter feeds, reading (some) spoilers, checking ratings (uggh), and my husband's favorite symptom - keeping episodes on the DVR to comfort me like warm blankets until the DVD/BluRays come out (my husband: "Are you ever gonna delete these!?").  The entire list of shows that have ever fallen into this category is short: Alias, Chuck, and Castle for about one season.  Now that I think about it, I'm probably halfway there with Girls too.  Anyway now, I can officially add another show to that list, because Covert Affairs pulled me in hardcore this season.  And this is a show I totally blew off for the first two seasons because it looked way lame.  But then BAM, out of nowhere, in the middle of season 3 it sucker punched me, and before I had a chance to claw my way out of it, I was fully sucked in.  Sigh.

So now here I am, doing what seems to be the newest symptom of "obsessed mode": blogging a review of the season finale (ep 316 "Lady Stardust") and season 3 as a whole.  Let's get right to this, shall we?  Lemme start off by giving my bottom line, now that the entire season is complete: I loovved the first 11 eps of the season (everything up through Annie escaping Russia).  I mean, I am IN LOVE with them.  I want to marry them and live with them blissfully, happily ever after.  And then, I found the last 5 eps to be an exercise in frustration that eventually did have some payoffs in the last couple episodes, especially the finale - which I thought for the most part was a very good ep.  But, there's only so much that can be addressed in like 43 minutes.  Interestingly, the finale managed to bring some much-needed clarity to both the plot trajectory and Annie's character trajectory, but it also clarified and solidified for me one key thing I have felt was missing in these last 5 eps.  Let's start with the good stuff first, and then I'll get to that second part:

Covert Affairs "Quicksand": Moving the Puzzle Pieces

I might as well just turn this blog into an official Covert Affairs episode review site at this point; this has been the subject of 5 of my past 6 blog entries, after all.  Then again, the show will be off the air again soon and I'll have like 7 months to write about other stuff, heheh.  Anyway like I mentioned before, I didn't plan to review each of the last 3 eps of the season; I meant to come back and review them only after the season was over.  But I found last week's episode (314 - "Scary Monsters") to be so frustrating that I needed to vent about it.  So now I'm doing a check-in after this week's ep, 315 "Quicksand", to give an update on whether any of my frustrations have been resolved.

After seeing 315 "Quicksand", I'm thinking of the 3 eps leading into it (312-14) be like taking a big intricate puzzle from a box, and dumping all the puzzle pieces onto a table.  Each of these three episodes move the pieces around a lot, but very few of the pieces actually start to connect properly.  And there's some that you try to fit together but they don't fit and you have to start over again.  The low quantity of connections made between puzzle pieces in those eps were what made them so damn frustrating.  But in 315 "Quicksand" ... it feels like ... I think ... we're starting to see some possible connections here.

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:

Dear Covert Affairs: Please Don't Screw This Up.

A few weeks ago I posted a blog entry about how Covert Affairs on USA (Tuesdays, 10pm) had surprisingly sucked me in by leaping from mediocre/decent in seasons 1 & 2 to pretty legitimately awesome in season 3.  Each season is 16 episodes long, and at the time of that blog entry, they had aired up through episode 3.10.  That entry included this caveat:

Now, here's the thing.  These plot developments all just came crashing down in episode 8, and we're only 10 eps in, so I'm still not sure of how this is all gonna play out.  There are still 6 more eps this season, which still gives the writers plenty of time to screw the pooch.

If this was just your average shitshow, the route the Covert writers would take with this is to spend ep 11 on the big dramatic escape from Russia, and then get Annie back to D.C. and say, "Whew, glad that's over!!  What's the next mission?"  And then she would be reset back to the status quo, and the rest of the season and beyond would be spent on new missions and wacky hijinks, and new hot guys to romance.  I seriously hope that is NOT the route they take, because if so then this show will have been a complete waste of my time.

That was then, and now it's been a few weeks.  As of the time of this blog entry, they have now aired up through episode 3.13.  So half of their back 6 have now aired, and we have 3 left.  Ep 11 ("Rock 'n Roll Suicide") was indeed spent escaping from Russia, as expected.  I thought it was a really good episode, with Annie's old buddy Eyal helping her to escape.  It had a very good mix of suspense, twists/turns, story developments, emotional payoff, great character interactions, etc.  The episode ends with Annie/Eyal beginning their long journey home, after escaping the Russian baddies who have spent the episode trying to re-capture and re-imprison Annie.  Thumbs-up from me on this episode.

Episode 3.12 "Wishful Beginnings" is really the start of the back part of the season, storywise.  It begins with Annie arriving home from Russia and starting back to work.  It's this episode and ep 3.13 "Man in the Middle" that have me feeling slightly nervous about how the writers will play out the rest of the season (or I guess I should say, have played out the rest of the season, since everything is already written and filmed at this point).  These are both very transitional episodes that are hard for me to judge before seeing where it's all headed, but there are a few bits that have got me going, "hhmmmm ... ?"  I'm not going to bother recapping these eps, because if you're reading this blog post, you should have already seen them by now.  Instead, I'll just point out the things I'm apprehensive about.

Settle Down, This Won't Last Long.

Despite the fact that I mostly use this blog to talk about t.v. shows and movies and other random frivolous topics, it was, oddly enough, actually born out of some rather tragic and effed up circumstances.  I created it to basically vent to no one at the time, knowing that it wouldn't likely be viewed by many people other than myself.  Kind of like the internet version of screaming into a pillow or punching a punching bag till you're blue in the face.  I'm glad I've moved onto these frivolous and happier topics these days though, because it means I'm no longer trapped within that vortex of misery.  But as we know, life likes to throw random curve balls every so often, and so it goes, I've been brought back to a darker topic again for this entry.  The curveball in this case was actually thrown at a good friend of mine.  And once again I have some shit swirling around in my head that I feel the need to get out, and I also want to pay tribute to my friend, as a great person who greatly deserves to be paid tribute to.

I met Jaspreet in 2008, at work.  That was when she first came to work with us in my previous group.  We had beefed up the team at the time with several new contractors, due to some large projects that were in flight that needed coverage.  She was an analyst like me, so we reported up to the same manager and we were in all the same team meetings.  We didn't work on the same project at the time though, so my interactions with her beyond our team meetings mostly involved breakroom chats, hallway chats, team lunches, etc.  She was a really fun person to talk to and joke around with.  Eventually she became pregnant with her first child, and we all were able to see her through until she was just about ready to pop.

From Left to Right: Me, Brad, Jaspreet, Ramya, Shikha, Charu

Shortly before she had the baby, she left our team to go on maternity leave (as a contractor, there is no such thing as maternity leave, so this basically meant that she left our team).  This was in maybe early 2010 if I recall.  We had a goodbye lunch and also held a big baby shower at work for her and another coworker who was also pregnant at the time.  Jaspreet then left to have Sidak, and from there I pretty much just kept in touch with her on Facebook.

O.k., I Caught Up on Covert Affairs Seasons 1 & 2.

So ... my last blog post convinced me that I should go ahead and catch up on seasons 1 and 2 of Covert Affairs.  That's usually how these things tend to go for me.  I try as hard as I can to resist, but eventually I give in and watch the backseasons, and I always wind up being glad I did.  Even in situations where the previous seasons are not as good as the current one, they are usually still entertaining and they fill in the backstory, and help me get to know the characters better.  And that allows me to enjoy the current and future episodes more.

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.

Covert Affairs was Kinda Lame Until it Became ... Awesome??

Ummmm ... shit.  Covert Affairs has been on for like ... over 2 years now, right?  It's in the second half of its third season right now.  I have successfully ignored the crap out of this show this entire time, which I was perfectly happy about, because as much as I love a good spy show, this one always seemed SO generic to me.  I mean right down to the title itself ... Covert Affairs ... how much LESS descriptive can you get than that?  You might as well just call it, "Spy Show".  Or as I just saw on another blog which made me laugh out loud, "Secret Stuff."  The previews always made it seem like a possible Alias rip-off too, not just because it's about a female spy, but it seemed to focus on the whole "balancing friends/family and my secret spy life" theme as well.  Because of my past deep love of Alias, this made me angry, so I purposely didn't bother to check it out.

1 Samuel

Whoops, o.k. I'm late posting this link, but I did FINALLY finish my 1st Samuel review a couple weeks ago.  I still have yet to start reading 2nd Samuel though ... errgh.  As usual I'm too busy blogging about t.v. shows instead haha.  Dang.  Priorities.  Anyway here's 1st Samuel:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/samuel-1/

Rating the TV Romance, Part 5: Castle and Beckett

O.k., we are now at the final entry of my "Rating the TV Romance" series of blog posts.  Castle (2009 - present) is actually the show that prompted me to start this entire series of posts to begin with - specifically the finale of season 4, which just aired in May.  It was an episode that I kinda loved immensely but also felt conflicted about.  My brain was like "Wellll ..." but my heart was like "WOOT!!" 

Rating the TV Romance, Part 4: Chuck and Sarah

When I was re-watching a few episodes of Alias for my last "Rating the TV Romance" post, I re-watched an episode called "A Higher Echelon", the second ep in a 2-ep arc in which Marshall Flinkman (nerdy SD-6 spy gadget inventor extraordinaire) gets to go on his first mission (with Sydney of course).  Towards the end of the episode, Sydney is in the middle of saving him after he has been kidnapped by bad guys, and after she saves him, he manages to bust out a moment where he returns the favor using sheer nerdy ingenuity (i.e. one of his inventions) - a secret parachute that can be hidden in the lining of a jacket.  Syd and Marshall are stuck in a tall building with no way out, so the parachute comes in very handy at that moment.  The moment when Marshall suddenly turns from nerd to bad-ass spy, at least for that short minute in time, is when he straps Syd onto him so they can jump out a window together, and follows this up with: "My name is Marshall J. Flinkman, and I'm here to rescue you!!"

Rating the TV Romance, Part 3: Syd and Vaughn

When Alias first started airing in late 2001, I initially had no desire or intent to watch it because it looked like it would be cheesy and I've never been into the spy genre.  James Bond and that type of stuff was never my thing.  However, a friend of mine was super into it and relentlessly begged me to watch, so I finally reluctantly agreed to check it out.  I was hooked like crack pretty much within the first 2 minutes.  Suddenly I realized that I actually am into the spy genre, provided that it involves the girl getting to do all the bad-ass stuff for a change.  I was used to the tradition of chicks being used mainly as eye candy in spy stories.  But then Alias came along and flipped that 180 degrees, and I was all for it.  And this show had the added benefit of one of my favorite things: a "will-they-won't-they" couple in Sydney and Vaughn - Sydney Bristow is a double agent for a rogue organization called SD-6 and the CIA, and Michael Vaughn is her CIA handler.  Vaughn doesn't show up until the last few scenes of the pilot episode, but the chemistry is there pretty much right away.

Rating the TV Romance, Part 2: Luke and Lorelai

Alright peeps, next up in my "Rating the TV Romance" list, we have Luke and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls (2000 - 2007).  O.k. I know that pic above is not Lorelai and Luke, it's Lorelai and Rory.  But I wanted to start off with the main logo for the show, and I think Rory should get a shout-out there, shouldn't she?  Anyway, for reference, here are the two blog posts that led into this:

Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic
Rating the TV Romance, Part 1: Felicity and Ben

Rating the TV Romance, Part 1: Felicity & Ben

So, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, a recent season finale of one of my TV shows has prompted me to do a list and rating of some classic TV romances (my faves), to figure out what made them enjoyable, and see how they stack up against each other.  I'll get to the TV show that prompted this in the final blog post.  But for now here's the categories that I think I'll use for my ratings:

• The "Danger" Factor - I mentioned in my "Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic" post that if the t.v. show contains a "danger" element for the couple in question, my level of interest instantly shoots up by several notches, heh.  If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it IS ridiculous, but what can I say, I can't help it.  It's something I realized in my soap-obsession days as a kid.  :-P  Anyway the "danger" factor is not essential, but if it's there, it usually brings my interest level up even higher than it would be otherwise, simply because it adds extra drama (or melodrama and angst, ha) to the mix.
• General "Soapy-ness" Factor - Since the post that started this revolved around my former love of soaps, I'm throwing this in there too.  I'm putting it in here to see if the "soap" factor increases or decreases my enjoyment of the show and the romance storyline.  I consider the "danger" factor to actually be an important part of the "soap" factor, and I think it's the soapy element that reels me in the most, by far.  But I want to see if any other soapy elements also have any effect.
• Overall Rating of Show Itself - How good is the show as a whole?
• Rating of First "Couple Getting Together" Scene - It's hard to title this one ... but by this I just mean the scene where the couple first get together, which usually translates to a kiss ... a make-out, sometimes even fake simulated t.v. sex, that type of thing.  It's usually the scene the entire audience has been waiting for, for however many episodes or seasons they've decided to drag out the "will-they-won't-they" dance.
• Rating of First Sexy Times Scene - Ha I know this sounds pervy, but I'm not rating this on like, a porn level.  :-P  Many t.v. shows don't even show much of anything in this scene anyway, they only show you the "hey it's about to happen!" and/or the "hey it just happened!" moments.  But I'm including it because it's usually an important milestone for the progression of the plot.  And it doesn't always happen in the same scene as the first "couple gets together" moment, so that's why I gave it a separate section.
• Overall Rating of the Romance - When you take the entire course of the t.v. series and the fake t.v. relationship into account, how good was it?

Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic

When I was a little kid, my brother and I were babysat regularly by a teenager who lived on our street named Cheryl.  Cheryl was actually only about 5 years older than me, but when you're 10 and she's 15 it's a pretty decent difference in maturity level.  Between Cheryl and her older sister Connie, their family provided babysitting duties for our family for quite a large chunk of my childhood.  My parents divorced when I was 7, forcing my mom into the undesirable territory of single mom-hood, and the necessity of good after school babysitter became quite apparent by that point.  Cheryl filled the role quite nicely and dutifully.

When I was 10, I started to weasel my way into watching daytime soaps with Cheryl, her mom, and sometimes our other neighbor friend, at Cheryl's family's house.  Before that I had never been allowed to watch soaps at all, and had always been pushed out of the room whenever anyone (Cheryl or otherwise) had them on the t.v.  But I guess by the time I was 10, they started to get sick of telling me "no" all the time when I would beg and beg them, and they eventually kinda gave in and let me start hanging out while they were watching them.  Specifically the two soaps they were into were General Hospital and Days of Our Lives.  I never got super into General Hospital, but Days of Our Lives quickly became a daily obsession for me.  That may have had to do with the fact that it was on later than most of the others: 3pm.  I think the key was that it may have been on just late enough that I was able to regularly catch some of it when I would get home from school.  Though I honestly don't recall if my regular soap watching started during the school year or the summertime.

Judges and Ruth

Yikes I've apparently been bad at updating this blog with my latest Bible reviews.  Here are the two most recent reviews:

Judges: http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/judges/

Ruth: http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/ruth/

Spoiler: Judges is awful but it has some pretty hilarious stuff in there.  Ruth is surprisingly pretty decent.

The Hunger Games: Movie Review

"Forget Twilight's insipid Bella Swan. This is a literary heroine girls can cherish."  

(Note: It's a little embarrassing that I took that quote from People Magazine's review of The Hunger Games, but it's accurate, what can I say??)

Joshua

Oops I almost forgot to post my Joshua review here.  Here it is, from earlier in the week.  Spoiler alert: It's the worst book of the Bible that I've read so far!

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/joshua/

One Year Later

As of this past Friday (1/27), it has been exactly one year since my aunt Amy's suicide.  Since that was the impetus for me to start this blog in the first place, I decided to do a "year later" check point on this topic.  The blogs I previously wrote on this were the following:

Initial gut reaction written shortly after it happened: http://maryploppins-brainpoops.blogspot.com/2011/02/pros-and-cons-of-suicide-note.html

More gut reaction posted shortly after the first blog: http://maryploppins-brainpoops.blogspot.com/2011/03/for-us-it-isnt-over.html

The "few months later" update from June: http://maryploppins-brainpoops.blogspot.com/2011/06/disappointment-and-why-i-might-be.html

The place I was at when I wrote the first two blogs was the point where you still feel like that knife is in your gut, and that someone is twisting it around every time you think about it (which is very often at that point because everyone is still kind of standing in the middle of the "rubble" of the aftermath and trying to pick up the pieces, if you will).  It's shock, it's devastation, heartbreak, anger, etc.  My brain subconsciously defaulted back to anger a lot during that timeframe because IMO, anger is a WAAYY easier emotion to have and to deal with than sadness and hopelessness is.

Deuteronomy

O.k. Deuteronomy is FINALLY done after my sinning detour ... I actually posted it last week but I forgot to post the link here.  Here it is:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/deuteronomy/

Minor Sinning Detour

I took a minor sinning detour from Deuteronomy.  Here's what happened:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/minor-sinning-detour/

I'll get back to Deuteronomy now, I promise.