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 ...