The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.09: 'Hang Wire'

Last week I mentioned that I’d be out of the country for Covert Affairs eps 4.09-10, but that I’d do everything I could to watch them while away.  I managed to do that tonight for 4.09, late of course, so I figured I’d post a short version of my usual review.

Instead what it seems to be though, rather than short, is fairly long, but just shitty instead, with less cohesiveness in my thoughts.  Err ... maybe “shitty” is not the right word.  What I meant to say is “amazing.”  You should definitely read it.  Here are my quick and shitty/life-changing thoughts:

Remember early on in season 4, when Henry met Arthur for lunch and literally spelled out for him, “I am going to kill your son because you killed my son” ?  I’m paraphrasing of course, but that is essentially what he said.  In my review of that episode, my question to his declaration was, “WHY??”  Given the person that Henry has been for this entire series since the beginning of season 1, it makes complete sense that he’d eventually wind up as a “big bad” for our characters.  But have we ever once had it explained to us in any of these episodes, just exactly WHY Henry blames Arthur for Jai’s death??  Other than Arthur being in charge at the time Jai died??  At that time the answer was no, but I heard some good theories on it from fellow fans.  Fast forward to ep 4.09, and I just realized, we STILL don’t know the answer to this question!!  Do we??  Did I miss something?  We shouldn’t have to still be guessing and theorizing on the motives of the bad guy at the root of the *primary* ongoing story arc this season.

And what about Henry’s rundown of his ENTIRE evil plot to get his revenge on Arthur - from beginning to end - to Annie right before he had the helicopter blown up?  Reminded me a bit of the Scooby Doo-esque ending of nearly every ep of ‘Castle’, where the criminal explains every detail of their crime and their motivations for committing it, to Castle and Beckett.  “And I would’ve gotten away with it too if not for you meddling kids!!”  Only with Henry, I'm still confused on his motivations.  And then he purposely lets Annie go to see how she handles it.  I mean of COURSE she was gonna get Teo out of it, she’s the plucky protagonist who can get herself and her buddies out of any pickle!!  (Until they get shot in the leg).

And speaking of Baby Teo – my first reaction to his death was, I have to give points to the writers for bucking the norm on #5 from HGF’s article, “TOP 10 Stupid Things TV and Film Makers Do”:  “Arm and leg bullet wounds are shrugged off even though they can be extremely painful, result in broken bones, and cause severe blood-loss that can kill just as easily as any other wound.”  Good job, Covert Writers.  I think??  That is assuming that Teo doesn’t show up alive again later in a “shocking twist.”  Because if that happens, the points the writers earned here plus every point they’ve ever earned for anything else ever will be taken away.  Because not only is this one of the most cliché things in all of spy TV shows and soap operas, it has now been done on THIS show in THIS season once, and most likely twice as of next week’s ep when Annie fakes her own death.  Probably.  AND it would completely invalidate the impact that Teo’s death was supposed to have on Arthur and the rest of our characters.  Kind of like that time Annie and Auggie broke up for no reason and then made everyone cry, and then 5 seconds later changed their minds and everything was fine again.

Back to Teo.  My other thought on this is, assuming he IS really dead, it makes me even more annoyed with LAST week’s episode, 4.08, a.k.a. The Teo Braga Saga.  Because at the time, my cousin pointed out that she felt like the writers were manipulating us into caring as much as possible about Teo so that killing him off later would be more impactful.  And hey look!  It only took them one week to prove her right.  It seems.  Though it happened in an oddly rushed, off-screen manner.  Which is what makes me a bit suspicious.  And just WHAT was the deal with all of Annie and Teo’s conversations in this ep??  Her comments about not wanting to “lose him” on the rooftop struck me as the typical tactic Annie takes when trying to turn a target/asset.  So I didn’t think much of it.  But then later in the car ... I don’t know.  Was that just more bonding to make us more sad when Teo died?

O.k. last thing I want to touch on here: I’m starting to realize that nearly the ENTIRETY of the almost absent character focus or insight we’ve gotten on Annie this season has come from Henry Wilcox’s observations on how she reacts to his “challenges”.  And every single time, Annie has responded by shrugging it off.  Even in this episode, when she finally starts to concede that *maybe* she’s made some mistakes along the way in letting her heart lead over her head, she ends that statement with a sarcastic quip that she should’ve let Teo kill Henry instead of stopping him.  While it did make me laugh, it also somewhat invalidated the ONE time she actually seemed to take two seconds to consider what he was telling her.  Though she did make the same statement to Teo himself later in the ep, in a serious manner.  Maybe it sunk in a little after all?  OH and I genuinely liked Teo’s comments to her about wishing he could go back to the days when he could be carefree, but then per usual, Annie responded with her typical: dead silence and/or change the subject.  Like hey, what does Annie think about this?  Who the hell knows!!  We rarely know the answer to that question these days.

And then this made me think: I have a bad feeling that we may end up getting zero insight at ALL into what leads to Annie’s decision to fake her death next week (4.10), other than the standard plot points: “Must get out of Germany.  I’m a wanted criminal.  Must escape Henry.  Must fake death.  Must dye hair brown.” (robot voice).  A + B = C.  Zzzz.  And that will be … INFUUUURRRRIATING to me.  We’ll see; I can’t judge it before I see it.

Here are a few of my other random thoughts:

• Do you love that the episode where we finally find out Calder is a “good guy” also involves TWO major “Calder drives his Jag in a douchey manner” scenes?
• For her first couple scenes, I felt like the lawyer character was someone who must have been on a previous episode of CA.  Turns out it was Homeland.  I guess the spy shows are running together for me now.
• Who is it that gets to decide in each episode whether Annie gets to wear sensible shoes vs. heels? I can never quite figure out the logic.  Sometimes it depends on her cover, but not always.
• Is it possible in ANY circumstance to survive a jump from a building that high??  That was a little insane.
• "Care to explain where you’ve been for the past FIFTEEN HOURS!?"  Joan’s Calder-smackdown was pretty amazing.
• My cousin Katie’s comments on the method in which Teo was framed for the missile/helicopter bombing: “What was the plan on leaving the missile launcher with him??  The cops were going to find him passed out with it and go, ‘Well, looks like it’s definitely this guy who launched the rocket and then took a nap!’”  Mystery solved.  This made me laugh really, really hard.  I guess the assumption would be that he got knocked out from the blast itself??
• Auggie’s gratuitous shirt scene.  Seriously.  I don’t even know.  Your guess is as good as mine.
• Auggie’s phone convo with Annie about taking time off in the Galapagos islands, where no one can find them – Was that little reminiscent of Simon, Annie and the Maldives in “Glass Spider”?  I know Auggie’s plan was more of a vacation ... I think ... but still.  Was that on purpose?

Anyway I know I mainly just listed complaints here, but overall I thought this ep was better than last week and the week before.  I’m going to write a more cohesive review of 4.10 when I get back from my trip on Weds 9/18 that will probably somewhat cover both of these eps.  This was such a set-up episode that I’m kind of lost on what grade to even assign to it. 

GRADE: 80.  I think. 

Let’s be honest, I should’ve given 4.07 a 60.  And I should’ve given 4.08 a 70 (I know, still a bit better than HGF’s grade).  Right now I’m at about an 80 for 4.09, but at this point I’m mainly just concerned about what 4.10 is gonna bring to the table after all this.  I’ve already got thoughts on what I’ll write in my review for that one, if it goes the way I think it’ll go.  Maybe it won’t.  Maybe they’ll surprise me.  Maybe.

Tell me how shitty my review was in the comments section.

The Plopper

2013 Summer Movies in Review

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.08: 'I've Been Waiting for You'

I mean ... look ... Covert Affairs ... here’s the thing.  This episode was better than last week.  By a comfortable margin.  But, was it everything I look for in a great ep of this show?  Eh, we’re not quite back to that place yet.  I’ve still got a few bones to pick.

First off, I love baby Teo.  Anyone who has read any review I’ve written of any episode involving our Sweet Puma Cub knows of my undying love for him.  So when I saw from the previews that this week’s ep seemed to be Teo-heavy, I was happy.  Especially because watching Helen take over last week’s ep was like watching a cat screech its nails across a chalkboard for a full hour, culminating in the equivalent of that Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercial with those horribly sad mistreated animals, i.e. the “A&A break up for no reason” scene.  “I’ve Been Waiting For You” was supposed to be like a palate cleanser for that, if you will.  It was supposed to soothe my aching CA-fan soul.  And it did, somewhat.  But oddly enough ... the Teo-heavy nature of this episode ended up kind of *annoying* me as well.  Partly.  I felt o.k. with it until about halfway through the ep, at which point I realized that this was going to be the entire episode.  This was IT.  I mean, for the most part.

Let me explain.  We spent all of last week’s ep dumping HUGE HORRIBLE stuff on our main characters.  Helen was really alive, Auggie was freaking out, Annie had to go on a whole mission with Helen, Helen convinced Annie her whole life was going the wrong direction, Auggie inexplicably decided the same thing on his own, A&A broke up, everything was suddenly horrible and dark and gloomy.  And then, this week, we spent almost ZERO time actually dealing with ANY fallout from that.  We got a slightly angsty and awkward mission set-up scene from A&A at the beginning, and then boom, at the end ... well ok.  Hold up.  I’ll address the end in a few mins.  Let’s talk about the rest of the episode first. 

It’s not that I don’t care about Teo’s plight - about his mission to avenge his mother’s murder, his mission to stop the ALC, and his relationship with Arthur.  I DO care.  I just don’t care about that AS much as I care about our MAIN freaking characters.  All I ask for is an episode that is a little more balanced to cover BOTH of these bases.  We got some plot movement on the “Henry Wilcox is funding the ALC” plotline, the little prisoner field trip fake-out scheme was fun, and Manolo Cardona even got me a little choked up in his scene with Arthur in the forest.  That was all entertaining enough.  I just wish that Teo and Annie could have talked about SOMETHING else at some point in this ep (the damn hotel room maybe??) other than Teo’s daddy issues.  Yes, we touched a tad on Auggie and Arthur lying to Annie, but barely anything at all.  Once again, we got an episode where all the character focus went to someone OTHER than our main character(s - including Auggie this time).  As happens pretty often on this show, Annie seems to exist for no reason other than to enable OTHER characters to get real deep and confront THEIR own issues with themselves and their cohorts.  Annie just watches from the sideline and gives sympathetic looks and wears cute shoes and runs around crashing trucks and dodging bombs and shit.  Annie, honey, I want more for you.  I’ve seen glimpses in the past that we can get more, but I can’t help but constantly feel like those were just teases for something that’s never going to happen.  Like the elusive backstory on Joan’s pill addiction that we’ll likely never get.

Anyway.  Let’s get to that ending now, shall we?  The truck blows up, the mysterious bad guy disappears, Teo’s buddy dies, Teo feels sad/pissed, Teo runs.  Annie comes home, finds her apartment totally ransacked, and runs over to Auggie’s to warn him.  Calder shows up before Auggie can even start to do a proper sweep of his place, but before Annie runs to hide from Calder, we get Auggie’s “Wait Annie!!  I decided everything Helen said was wrong!!”  OK GREAT Auggie well I’m glad you finally pulled your head out of your ass on that one, but WHY!!?  HOW did you come to this decision??  WHAT was it that led you to realize that everything Helen said was wrong??  Oh, sorry!!  We didn’t get to see any of that because we spent the ENTIRE EPISODE on Teo.  We had to spend the whole thing focusing on a character that for all we know, could very well end up dead a few eps from now.  Remember, no matter how dreamy he is and no matter how much we love him, he’s not a series regular.  He’s only a guest star.  We can’t get too attached (remember Simon and that hail of bullets?).  That convo between Joan & Teo about him joining the CIA after all this felt a bit foreboding to me for some reason.

I don’t think I would be nearly as annoyed right now if this was, say, ep 4.03 or something.  Early in the season, we’ve got more time for episodes like this.  But this was 4.08 – there are only TWO episodes left of the summer season.  We only have approximately one, maybe 1.5 more episodes until Annie somehow finds herself faking her own death (err, most likely, based on all the obvious clues we’ve been given so far).  I feel much less like we can afford to spend an entire ep focusing solely on a guest star this late in the season.  This ep reminded me a lot of eps 313-15 last year, when 95% of the episode time was spent focusing on friggin' Megan and Khalid instead of giving proper focus to our main characters.  Maybe I should just be happy that at least I LIKE Teo, unlike Megan and Khalid (blech).

Do any of you watch ‘Castle’?  Anyone who watches 'Castle' will understand what it’s like to spend 97% of every single episode suffering through the case-of-the-week, in the desperate hope that they’ll give us like TWO MINUTES of general character development time or Castle/Beckett time before the ep is over.  And that’s if we’re lucky.  CA, thank GOD, is NOT normally like that at all, because the mission-of-the-week is rarely boring and the ongoing plotlines are a *bazillion* times more engaging.  But I swear to god, this week, I felt that exact “COME OOONNN!!” feeling I get from‘Castle’ nearly EVERY week.  Again, I totally get that we can’t get character time in every episode of a given series, but the closer we get to the end of the season with so many unresolved issues, the more frustrated I get.

Here are my general ramblings:

• Teo’s story to Annie about doing deep cover work w/the ALC … I’m not sure if that is yet another clue about Annie faking her own death in 4.10.  It’s not like Annie can pretend to be someone else with Henry after she’s “dead.”  We’ll see.
• Again we have protective Joan in this ep, which I continue to enjoy.
• Annie punching Teo in the hotel room was pretty hilarious.
• Again Manolo Cardona did a really good job with the scene in the woods w/Arthur.  I got a little verklempt.
• Uggh effing Calder in the helicopter.  And smashing apartments.  And everywhere.  I had hoped we’d find out in this ep that maybe he’s actually a good guy, but no dice.  I’m still convinced he’ll eventually wind up on Annie’s side though.  Otherwise that flashforward scene from the elevator just doesn’t work, unless he’s *actually* shooting her.  But there’s no way in hell they’d shoot her nearly dead AGAIN.
• So Henry essentially killed Teo’s mom, eh?  Sucks but I mean ... Henry is responsible for EVERYTHING bad this season, so, duh.  It’s like my friend Shelby said the other day ... I’m paraphrasing but it was something like, “They can’t just make Henry responsible for SOME of the bad things, he has to be responsible for ALL of the effing bad things.”  I’m totally fine with having a “big bad” this season, but I feel like it worked a bit better with Lena last year, because we didn’t KNOW she was bad until 3.08.  But I guess in the end, she was kinda responsible for all the bad things too.
• The prisoner truck-crashing scene was kind of ... awkwardly filmed.  I laughed when it crashed because of the way poor Piper was having to throw herself around in that thing during the “crashing” hahaha.  And the guy shooting at the truck, conveniently a HORRIBLE shot until the second Teo finally got out of harm’s way.
• So the flash drive has been found!!  Uh oh.  This honestly seems like a much bigger bit of plot movement than ANYTHING that happened regarding Teo and Henry.  And it happened in the last damn minute of the episode.  Grrrr.
• Where the hell do A&A go from here?  Well, at the very least, they’re back in a place where they are fully out in the open with each other that they still WANT to be together.  But I have a feeling they will need to stay “broken up” for now in order to take down Henry the way they are planning to.

Bottom line: This episode was better than last week.  But there was still a good deal left to be desired, for me.  If I were Randy Jackson I’d say, “It was just aiight for me, dog.”  It’s like HGF said in a comment last week – This show has shown me that it’s capable of pretty great things.  I just want it to live up to what I know it’s capable of, that’s all.

GRADE: 80/100

[Editor's note: The Plopper's being too generous. We, the executive group at this blog, give the episode a 60 out of 100. Last week's was crap too. We now return you to your scheduled program.]

I know this is only 3 points higher than last week, but if I had last week’s grade to assign all over again, it would be lower.  I probably would have given it like a 73, tops.  Maybe my opinion of 4.08 will change depending on what happens 4.09 & 4.10, but I won’t know till we get there.  What do you guys think, am I just being a dick??  Are my expectations too high??

NOTE: I will NOT BE IN THE U.S. for eps 4.09 and 4.10.  Clearly I should have checked with the PTB at USA channel on CA’s summer schedule before planning my vacay.  I’m going to do *everything* in my power to watch those eps from Europe.  Pray to the sweet puma gods for me; I hope I’m successful.  IF I can make that happen, I *might* do a super quickie short review of 4.09 (tho it’ll be late bc of timezones).  Then, I will be back home the day AFTER 4.10 airs.  Not until the afternoon though.  My plan is to have a FULL review of 4.10 (or maybe both eps together) up by late Wednesday, 9/18.  Wish me luck, I’ll need it.

The Plopper

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.06: 'Space (I Believe In)'

Oh god.

Look ... I mean ... I had a feeling I was going to come out of this episode feeling extremely uncomfortable.  Let me first start by asking – Do you watch 'It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’?  If not, and if you enjoy demented humor, you’re missing out.  I spent 99.9% of this Covert Affairs episode, “Space (I Believe In),” in a pretty decent frame of mind, and then the last 30 seconds suddenly sent me into feeling exactly like the YouTube supercut of every single utterance of the phrase “GODDAMNIT!!” in the entire ‘It’s Always Sunny’ series.  Google “always sunny goddamnit supercut” and you’ll find it.  That is me, right now.

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you’ll know that I’ve been dead set against this “Helen is really alive!!” twist since the second we found out Helen ever existed to begin with.  And that is all while knowing it was 99% likely to happen, due to Bionic Woman constantly lurking in the background the entire season.  Why do I feel so uncomfy with this?  It’s two reasons, really.  First, it gives me horrible flashbacks to ‘Alias’.  There’s GOTTA be some ex 'Alias' superfans who watch CA, right??  Well, if you live in my head, which is not at *all* something I’d recommend, you’ll know (remember, this is pure fact because you’re hypothetically living in my brain), that the first two seasons of 'Alias' were amazing and seasons 3 through 5 were an ever-increasing pile of steaming shite.  Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it was a STEEP slope into season 5.  :shudder:  Anyway.  The turning point was the last scene of the season 2 finale, when Sydney wakes up confused and disoriented in Hong Kong, meets up with Vaughn, and Vaughn tells her, “Syd, you’ve been missing for 2 years, we thought you were dead.”  Syd then looks at Vaughn's left ring finger and is like, WTF dude, is that a WEDDING RING!?  Then we got to spend the ENTIRE 3rd season with some random blonde being MARRIED to Sydney’s new boyfriend.  What a nightmare.  In all fairness, JJ Abrams leaving the show to focus on ‘Lost’ was really the larger issue at hand; the overall quality of the show took a major dive at the same time.

But point being, one of the major suckage points was the fact that the writers purposely threw in this love triangle so as to *manufacture* drama and put a wedge between Syd and Vaughn.  It FELT contrived, and caused nothing but lameness the entire season.  I don’t know what the angle of the CA writers is with this Helen thing, but if it’s to set up a manufactured love triangle, then no.  No thank you.  It’s been done on many other shows, and it has always been lame.  If, on the other hand, it’s to INFORM our lead characters and give them insights on next steps to deal with Henry, or to help them to grow as characters even, then maybe it’s something that can be of value.  We shall see.  There’s another reason I feel uncomfy with this though, as well - The whole “OMGWHUUT she’s still alive!!” thing is a liiiittle on the wacky side for this show.  It would feel right at home on many other spy shows, but one thing I’ve always liked about CA is that it usually tries to keep its head a little closer to reality and away from soapy town.  Now, to be fair, the Lena storyline also veered a bit close to soapy town, but I loved that storyline so much that I was able to get past that.  Likewise, IF this “Helesa” (the Twitter fans came up with this nickname: a Helen/Theresa hybrid) thing is done well, I’ll be forgiving.  We just won’t know what this is about until we get there.  Fingers crossed.  BIG time.

Have I seriously just spent THREE paragraphs on the LAST 30 SECONDS of this damn episode!?  Lord.  Writing the rest of this is going to be a rough ride.  Let’s get to *everything* else now, shall we?  Outside of my uncomfortable feelings about Helesa, I actually enjoyed this ep.  I’ve gotten a big kick out of the whole “Annie killed Seth” storyline this season in general, and I’ve had to really sit and think about why that is.  I’m a HUGE sucker for spy shows.  A running theme on these shows is that bodies tend to pile up at the hands of the lead characters pretty regularly, and as far as I can think of, it’s pretty damn rare for the characters to ever face REAL consequences for that.  Think about ‘Homeland’ - Brody has killed several people, from Tom Walker to that tailor who made the suicide bomb vest, to the damn VICE PRESIDENT of the United States, and has he really had to face consequences for ANY of these??  I don’t think so, not yet anyway.  He dumped that tailor’s body in the woods and I don’t think we ever heard another peep about it.  Did we, or is my memory failing me?  OH my cousin Katie just reminded me – “Well he WAS a no-show at his wife’s fundraiser event that night, which was NOT COOL.”  True.  Maj consequences.

Now take ‘The Americans’ ... the bodies piled up all season, including the damn PARTNER of the FBI dude/neighbor investigating the KGB.  There’s constantly the threat on that show of any one of these killings coming to light, but that hasn’t happened ... yet.  Granted, it’s only been one season, so there’s plenty of time.  But you see where I’m going with this.  On CA, again keeping itself somewhat in the realm of the “real world,” when Annie accidentally kills someone, she has to face REAL consequences for it.  She has to sit in the hot seat for an entire in-depth murder investigation.  Yes, Henry saved her ass in the end, but her going against him now means she’s in even hotter water now than she was to begin with.  She doesn’t just get to wipe her brow in relief and go on her merry way.  She’s now even more screwed than she was when this ep started.  Like I said, the effort to stay within the realm of logic and reality is one of the things I’ve always loved about this show.  And the tense and suspenseful way they played out each bit of Seth’s murder investigation in this ep was great.  I’ve always loved Rossabi as a character, and Noam Jenkins was awesome in that final scene with Annie, after he had been “broken” and turned by Henry.  You could really feel his pain.  Poor Rossabi has been the CIA’s punching bag throughout this entire series, so I’m glad Annie defended him against Henry in the end.  The poor guy deserves someone on his side.  Marlon, on the other hand, is f*cked.

Here’s my random thoughts before I get to my summary and grade:

• The exposition spent re-introducing Rossabi to the audience every single time he shows up again on CA drives me insane.  Wouldn’t a new viewer be able to figure it out from less obvious comments here and there??
• Hahaha poor Tim Griffin – how would you like to be killed off of a TV show, only to be forced to return for one more episode to play your own dead body?  Oh well, part of the job of an actor I suppose.  ;-)
• I recall recently saying, either in one of these reviews or to my friend Shelby, “Joan’s goddamn abandoned pill addiction storyline will haunt me to my grave.”  FINALLY it reared its hazy drugged-out head again tonight!!  We still have zero background on it, but at least it’s something I guess.  Oh and Annie jumping in to stop Rossabi’s line of questioning in defense of Joan gave me the warm fuzzies.
• Calder, seriously, continues to be ... THE WORST.  It’s frankly kind of annoying me, because he really didn’t seem THAT terrible in eps 401 or 403.  I could at least identify with where he was coming from in those eps.  But in 405 and 406 he’s just been downright insufferable.  I hope they put a little humanity back into his character soon.
• “Now Rossabi thinks there’s a conspiracy to cover up Seth’s murder.”  Auggie: “Well there kinda is!!”
• Bwahaa when Annie secretly calls the FBI chick in the evidence room to distract her – I love that she keeps the sound on her damn cell phone turned ON.  Great spycraft there – “Swipe click click dial!!”  Very inconspicuous.  Hahhaa I do like that her trick didn’t work here though.  Rossabi caught her.  That woulda been way too easy.
• They can’t possibly have much of a budget on this show for fancy stunts, I’m assuming, but they still managed to make Rossabi and Marlon’s fall from that balcony look pretty cool.  Didn’t feel fake at all – props to the director and stunt coordinators for that one.
• Annie/Auggie HAD to realize that Annie’s number would be all over Henry’s call history.  But Rossabi’s initial investigation was focused on Seth’s call history, not Henry’s.  I suppose they simply had no better option at that point than to put Rossabi on that goose chase, to buy themselves some time to get Henry’s GPS data.
• I already called out Noam Jenkins for his awesome performance this ep, and holy SHIT Gregory Itzin in that final scene with Annie?!  The recurring guest actors they have on this show really are top notch.  What a great scene.  I liked his line too: “You haven’t lost nearly enough yet.”  YET.  And we’ve never seen him that out of control.

This was one of those transitional episodes that I always find extremely difficult to assign a grade to.  The main purpose of it is to set up the next few eps, and depending on how those go, my opinion of this one could change significantly.  But if I’m taking this solely on its own, and mostly ignoring Helesa since it only took up 30 seconds here, I actually quite liked this one.  I thought it was smartly written, it kept me on my toes at every turn, surprised me in several places (e.g. whoops Auggie couldn’t hack into the FBI database after all, amongst many other moments), and all the actors gave great performances.  It wasn’t snazzy like last week with Vienna, and it wasn’t action-packed, but it was very solid, clever and entertaining.  It also set up the rest of the summer season, it seems, with Henry now on the complete warpath against Annie (along with the rest of Team Campbell).  I guess I’d give this a grade of …

GRADE: 91 out of 100

Dang, I feel like a zork giving so many eps B+ and A- grades other than 4.02, which I thought was a solid A.  But that’s just how these have been for me.  And believe me, if you were to read my old reviews of eps 3.13 and 3.14 you’d see that I have NO problem giving episodes “eh, not awesome” reviews just after watching them in real time.  I just luckily have not run across any of those in season 4 YET (knock on wood).  Am I lame??  Tell me in the comments.

The Plopper

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.05: 'Here Comes Your Man'

Random fact: My husband loves “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies so much that he was careful to ensure it was played at our wedding reception.  The DJ played the song and people on the dance floor kind of halfway froze in a state of awkward confusion as to exactly what to do with it, but we were happy.  We and like, the 4 or 5 other people who knew what the hell the song was.  I wasn’t entirely sure what this title would mean for tonight’s ep of Covert Affairs, especially since the preview made it clear that our heroes A&A would be purposely separated during this episode.

  Turns out, it didn’t refer to our boy Auggie at all, but to my sweet, sweet illegitimate baby puma cub Teo.  Puuuurrrrr.  Well o.k., to be fair, I guess it referred to both of them since Auggie sent Teo there to begin with.  I mean whatever, fine Auggie, I’ll give you a LITTLE credit.

I kid, I kid.  I love Auggie as much as the next red-blooded gal of the dude-loving persuasion, but I’ve always been an equal opportunity appreciator of the fine male characters on this show.  And this storyline went down pretty much exactly like “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide,” didn’t it?  With Eyal?  Oh god how I LOVED THAT rescue scene, despite having to flinch and groan my way through Annie’s hair being down, then up in a bun, then down, then up in a bun again.  In a Russian prison, where she would have been very worried about the state of her hairdo.  Whoops, I digress.  Anyway I’ve seen this show take a lot of shit on the internets in the past from people who claim that Annie is a terrible spy because she always has to be saved by Auggie et al. (sidenote: I just had to google “et al.” to make sure I was using it properly here).  But I would claim that first off, this is not factually accurate.  Auggie HELPS Annie because he’s her handler, but she does just fine on her own in plenty of other instances as well.  I’m ok with the fact that she occasionally needs to be saved, because that’s how it would happen in REAL LIFE.  IF real life were this amazing, of course.  But point being, this mission was way too risky thanks to DPD Head Calder McJerkOff, so it went bad.  Was it convenient that Teo swooped in JUST at the right moment to rescue Annie?  Well yes, but I’m willing to accept some of the unrealistic stuff if they at least make an effort to make other aspects a bit more real.

OH!!  Record scratch sound!  Speaking of Calder McJerkWad, can we please go back to the first scene of the ep again for a second here?  The flash forward.  Can I get a WTF????  We’re in the elevator again, and I just have to ask, is it just going to be a theme on this show now that EVERY season involves Annie getting shot nearly dead by her boss??   Remember on ‘Chuck’ when Casey used to get shot practically more often than we saw Big Mike eating a donut??  I seem to recall him getting shot three separate times & getting thrown off a building once.  But at least those were all shots to the leg and foot.  Annie apparently is going to be taking KILLshots in every season now, I guess.  Of COURSE there are many things we don’t know yet about that scene, so we’re probably just being misled to think that’s what’s happening, when it’s really something else.  Still, my reaction to it was to physically pause the TV and yell, “Haha WHAT the F#$%!?” when I saw it (response from my husband from the back room: dead silence).  Hell, at least Annie made progress in this one by actually shooting BACK??  Maybe NEXT season she’ll actually win the gunfight.  Baby steps.

HAHA sidenote #2: Just now as I was finishing the above paragraph, my cousin Katie texted me, “Oh WTF. Annie gets shot AGAIN AND she’s wearing booties!!??”  Then we wasted several minutes trying to recall if she was also wearing booties when she got capped by Lena.  I don’t have time to check.  Someone’s gotta remember.

Whew ok so ... Lord I can’t touch on even half of what happened in this ep because it was DENSE.  Almost more so than last week, AND with more action.  My Twitter friend Shelby usually sums up the ep for me in a non-spoilery few words after she sees it on East Coast time.  Tonight she was 15 mins late, and as I was ALL CAPS yelling at her on DM to give me her reaction, she *finally* responded with, “Hang on, eating a Payday.  Trying to gather my thoughts.”  Uhhhh, yeah.  I did the same thing for about 15 mins after watching it.  I had to pause this ep every 5 seconds to re-listen to lines because SO much information was being dumped on us at once.  If there’s one major thing I take issue with in this ep, it’s the back-and-forth between Annie and Stavros.  She charms him in the beginning and that’s fun, but then it gets weird.  We go from a deal being made for his art collection, to Stavros calling Annie a fraud and coming within an inch of killing her by the river, to him suddenly trusting her enough to find him a buyer for 25 MISSILE LAUNCHERS.  I suppose that’s simply because he’s so desperate to find a buyer and get his Paul Klee back that he's willing to try anything at that point?  I just watched it again; I guueessss I can buy it because I suppose, what does he have to lose at that point?  He might as well give her a day or so to see what she can work up.  HAHA the location of those white vans with the missile launchers at the end though, just in the middle of the ... shopping area or something??  With all the people around, pretty ridiculous.

I’m going to sum up my overall take on this ep after my random thoughts:

• So Senator Pierson is in cahoots with Henry, eh?  I guess that explains all the mustache-twirling in ep 403.
• “Amy Jacobs is an LD on the Intelligence Committee for Senator Pierson.”  What the heck is an LD?  Lame Duck?  Lady Doctor?  Living Dead?  Legal District?
• HAHA Barber.  “I’m angry.  And SAD!!  And you know what??  I’m slightly annoyed, too ...”
• Seriously though, Calder Michaels is THE WORST, right!!??  He can’t even manage to charm Auggie properly with the promise of approving Project Hummingbird, which should have been SO EASY.  He has to completely f*ck it up 5 seconds later with his threat about Auggie’s call to Annie!!  He just oozes “dickhead” from every pore.
• Is it bad that I’m attributing a good 10 points of my score for this ep to the look and feel of the Vienna scenes alone??  I love the music they used on those too.  On point.
• In my ep 401 review, I made a crack about Annie being CA’s version of Claire Bennet, due to her uncanny ability to get shot twice in the chest & have no physical aftereffects or even scars from that.  I later watched 401 in HD (rather than the shitty low-def hotel TV I first watched it on) and realized I was wrong about the scars.  They were much more clear in the hotel scene here too, so I have to give the CA peeps their due credit for attention to detail and continuity.  Still no surgery scar though.  ;-)
• My my, Annie managed to take her habit of disregarding Auggie’s advice to new levels in this ep, didn’t she?  That Tarel Birkin conversation was intense.  Glad Auggie really gave it to Crapper McDoucheFace after that.
• “What I don’t understand, is how you got to Vienna so fast!?”  Hahah yeah, good question.  Spy shows are constantly guilty of these crazy globetrotting feats; it’s kinda funny that the writers called themselves out on this one.  It doesn’t necessarily forgive the contrivance of it, but at least they’re admitting it.
• “Welcome to my home, Annie.”  “Hello, Dion.”  Bwahaha oh Annie, you are becoming quite the lil’ sassafras these days, and I approve wholeheartedly.
• You don’t bring the Bionic Woman onto this show as a guest star simply to waste her on what we’ve seen so far.  That had to have been her trailing Henry at the end, right?  She’d BETTER NOT BE HELEN back from the dead!!  Grr.

So, If I’m looking at the big picture right now, the Powerful Big Bad Henry storyline needs to fully play out before I can really form a valid opinion on it.  And the Calder stuff in this ep was obviously contrived to create hurdles for our characters, especially his mandate that Annie cut off ALL contact with Auggie.  But, I’m willing to buy it for now to see where it all leads.  I’ll tell you what I appreciated about this ep though – It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about this show – When things go wrong on missions, they’re not always things you expect to go wrong, and the REASONS they go wrong tend to be quite logical.  You’re not always going to be able to make the deal with your target without hitting some major bumps.  You have to bring in another agent at the last second to deal with those bumps, you might get someone who’s green.  You get someone who’s green, you might run into issues with them not being 100% on their cover.  You trust someone like Puma Cub to save your ass, and shit may go sideways later when he suddenly decides he’s going to kill your assets & smash your only method of communication with him.  You kill someone and dump their body in the Potomac, that shit is going to wash up somewhere eventually.  And thank GOD they made Seth really for real dead.  Having him turn up alive would’ve been too hokey for this show.

I’d say I liked this ep better than the last couple.  None of them have been a total knock out of the park for me like 402 yet, but I liked this one.

GRADE: 90

Depending on what happens later with Calder and Henry I may decide I graded this one too high, but based on what I know now, I enjoyed it overall.  What do you guys think?  Am I being too hard on Calder?  Did I grade this too high or low?  Tell me I suck in the comments.

The Plopper

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.02: 'Dig for Fire'

Umm … holy SHIT, Covert Affairs. If you haven’t seen episode 402 "Dig for Fire" yet, turn back immediately, because I’m going to just jump right to the point here.

The very LAST thing I expected when this episode began was that we would finish it with our two main characters attempting to cover up a dead body that Annie left in the Potomac. And not just any dead body, but none other than Joan’s “Pills Anonymous” buddy and carrier of massive pining Joan-crush from last season, Seth Newman!! And of course that is only after finding out that he was the mole leaking intel to Henry and Solstar. I suppose that last part was not exactly a major shock, but until now I really hadn’t even thought much about Seth since last season. And I spent the first half of the ep busy focusing on the question of whether Joan’s baby was Seth’s instead of Arthur’s. So I will admit, I was a little distracted, until that moment when Seth walked past A&A and Auggie grabbed Annie’s arm with a gasp. At which point I said, “D'OH!! Uhh DUH!!”

Whew ... o.k. let’s take a few steps back, shall we? I spent the first 30 minutes of this episode on the edge of my seat, but also wondering if this would wind up being one of those episodes like “Man in the Middle” that is literally ALL tension and dialogue on a medium simmer with some occasional moments of intense flare-ups/arguments between characters. Those eps are nice to do every now and then, but I’ll admit that I was wanting more than that from the second ep of season 4. Still, the first half of the episode gave us great tense scenes between Annie and Arthur, Annie/Henry, Joan/Auggie, and quite a nicely heated argument between Arthur and Auggie in Arthur’s hotel room while Annie pretended to have to take a wizz. (“Sack up,” Auggie!!) The sequence where Annie tails Henry through the DC Metrorail was really cool too; nicely filmed. I’ve only ridden the DC Metro once ever and it was way back in 2004, but I think that was really the DC Metrorail in this ep, right? Or am I an idiot for thinking that? It’s got those domed ceilings, right, with the big “M”s on the trains?

We also got some very nice plot progression during this first 30 mins with the Teo/Colombia stuff, and I was frankly kind of shocked at how many of the secret bombshells from the premiere were fully let out of the bag to all the characters here, so early on in the season. In a sense I’m extremely happy about this though, because I can tell you from other shows I’ve watched that there are few things more frustrating to the audience than to spend an ENTIRE season knowing a secret that one or more of our major characters don’t, and to be forced to sit through ridiculously contrived storylines and idiotic behaviors from the characters in order to keep the secret(s) hidden from each other until end of the season. Any Sons of Anarchy or Castle fans will know exactly what I mean. Uggh. So I’m quite glad Covert has laid a lot of this stuff out on the table right upfront, so we can now sit and watch as it hopefully causes very interesting situations for our characters to deal with and work through as the season plays out.

So, all in all, the first half of the episode chugged along pretty decently, but THEN, BAM, we got the first scene in Auggie's apartment. This was where "Dig for Fire" really started to come together for me, and to break away from that "Man in the Middle" feel. First off, CHRIST, how sexxxy was that scene, visually?? This ep was directed by Félix Alcalá, the same guy who directed “Suffragette City," with that dreamy ethereal quality. So it’s really no surprise that he directed this ep as well, with scenes like this one on Auggie’s bed with the jazz music in the background. Whew!! (fanning face) ... And of course, as I mentioned and discussed with several of my fellow fans last week, we got some actual real dialogue between A&A here! Per usual, Auggie did most of the talking, but at least we got some important character interaction here, albeit with Auggie clearly still hiding some major stuff from Annie. Annie’s never been great at expressing herself; I and several of my fellow fans have wanted to shake her by the shoulders for quite a while now (season 3 included), and tell her, “Annie, USE YOUR WORDS, HONEY!! Use your WORDS.” At least we got a little of that in this scene! A teeny tiny bit. I really hope we get more eventually.

And then shortly after this, we got the scene of Annie and Joan in the bathroom! I didn’t mention this last week, but one of the things that greatly pained me about the last third of S3 was how horribly strained Annie & Joan’s relationship was, and how neither of them ever properly talked anything out. We kept getting hints that Joan had gone through a similar past traumatic situation that Annie had been through with Simon and Lena, but we got zero exploration of what that was or whether Joan could give Annie advice in that area. Instead, these two just fought like an exhausted mom and teenage daughter and never got to the root of any of their issues. So I really appreciated this scene in the bathroom, even if they still talked about essentially nothing other than the preggers bombshell. Annie looked like she was about to choke up when she said, “Joan, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something ...” before Joan interrupted her. Was the “something” simply the Arthur/Teo/non-cheating secrets? Or was there anything more to that?

And of course, last but not least, we have Annie breaking into Seth’s apartment. I had read a spoiler that made me expect a physical fight to ensue there, but I did NOT expect anything like what actually went down. It totally shocked me not only how involved and stunt-laden the fight was, but the fact that Seth DIED as a result. I mean o.k. first off, maybe this is stupid of me, but I’m not convinced that a fall from the height of that bridge would really kill someone. But maybe it’s way higher than I think. In any event, holy shit. And then, seriously, the scene in Auggie’s apartment afterward, with the bandage tape on the forehead!? I will admit I am a HUGE sucker for shit like this, but that was seriously one of the best things I’ve seen on my TV in a while. Well o.k., in the cute/funny department, anyway. This is another perfect example of the type of character interaction that we’ve gotten almost none of since mid-season 3!! MORE, please. MORE!!

And then of course at the end, we have Henry setting Annie up to carry out more of his agenda, via a trip back to Colombia. With this development plus Seth Newman now mysteriously “missing,” we’ve got a lot for our characters to deal with in ep 403. (Insert Seinfeld voice: "Newman!!!") I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

A few last random thoughts:

*The first scene in the episode, with Annie and Arthur – This is the first scene inside Danielle’s kitchen since Lena shot Annie and Simon in there, right? I had been wondering if and when Annie would enter that room/house again. This scene was different than how I thought that would go down, but we did get a callback to that trauma with Annie mentioning “the last time someone broke into my kitchen.”

*I cannot emphasize enough how much I HATE that weird stubby fat creepy little silver revolver Annie always insists on carrying. Does the flash-forward scene at the beginning of 401 indicate that she’ll finally get a normal gun later in the season!? God, I hope so.

*Have you ever heard of the Showtime documentary called “That Guy … Who was in That Thing?” It’s about exactly that – those actors you’ve seen in countless movies and TV shows, and you know their face SO well, but you don’t know their name. You just know that they were “the guy from that one movie, and a few eps of that TV show.” I caught a decent chunk of this doc last year, shortly after getting into CA, and was pleasantly surprised to see Gregory Itzin featured pretty prominently in it. Well guess what? We know his name now.

*Should we discuss the flats Annie wears during the Henry-tailing sequence? I mean Jesus, I’m just glad the poor girl is finally wearing some sensible shoes for an outing like this. Maybe they should let her do that more often.

*So we were right about Arthur’s “affair,” just a cover for the Teo-related secrets he’s trying to hide. No shock there. Nice to see him protecting Joan from the shitstorm, at least.

*Have you ever heard a more polite and dainty puke than Joan in that bathroom with Annie?? Hahaha that was amazing. I wish I could barf like such a lady.

*Seth’s “Buenos tardes” that causes A&A to recognize his voice was kinda hilarious for two reasons: 1) that he would conveniently say that exact phrase in the office, and 2) his voice is so weird and loud there; sounds like it was definitely put in during ADR.

*Annie’s little red VW has taken a lot of shit-talk from picky fans over the seasons, who have wondered why she never got a better car. I’ve never had any issue with it, but I do find it interesting that they beat that thing up pretty bad in this episode. Is that the end of Annie’s little red Golf?? Well maybe not, I just watched the scene again and I guess it’s not THAT bad. It just initially had me picturing that ep of South Park where they kill off Chef by slowly tearing him to shreds via bear/cougar-mauling. There was major venom involved in South Park’s case … was there any similar venom in this case about that little red Golf? Hehe. But after watching the scene again I’m thinking it’s actually more like Walter White’s Aztek, indestructible.

So now for the ep 402 "Dig for Fire" grade ... I’m going to give this episode an:

A

Holy shit, is that too high?? Am I being too generous? I kinda loved this one. I just have not felt nearly this satisfied by a CA ep since the “Let’s Dance”/”Rock ‘n Roll Suicide” timeframe. Maybe that’s not saying much given my huge frustrations with the last third of season 3, but still. I really liked it, what can I say? Am I crazy? Tell me in the comments section.


Rachael (The Plopper)

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