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!!"