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.