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 4.12: 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 4.11: 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 4.08: 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.

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.

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.

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.