The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.07: 'Crackity Jones'

I feel … weird … right now.  And confused.  And cold.  And alone.  Somebody hold me.  Please.  Tightly.

I finished this ep like 15 minutes ago and I think I’ve now set a new record for the longest time I’ve spent sitting on the couch post-ep, staring into space,  trying to get my head around it and to decide whether I enjoyed it or whether I want to drag my TV into the front yard and set it on fire.  I mean obviously, if you read my review of last week’s episode, you know that I was NOT particularly thrilled with the insertion of the “OMGAASH Helen’s really alive!!” storyline.  But still, despite that, I went into this ep with an open mind.  I swear.  I gave the writers the benefit of the doubt that this Helen character could wind up being interesting for the storyline, and that her presence could force our main characters into confronting feelings and situations that they would not have otherwise.  i.e., character development.  I’m a *huge* fan of character development, so if that’s where this gets us, I can be extremely forgiving.

And after watching “Crackity Jones”, I see that this is indeed exactly where the writers were going with it – to push the story, to push our characters, and to give them some insight on themselves, their situation, and each other.  Which is a GOOD thing.  So then why did this ep feel so ODD to me??  So ... kind of ... off?  I’ve been texting back and forth with my cousin while writing this and I think with her help, I’m starting to diagnose the sitch.  Or at least some pieces of the sitch.  Here’s my take: This episode required a LOT of exposition and flashbacks to get us up to speed on who Helen is, how Auggie wound up thinking she was dead when she really wasn’t, what Arthur’s doing with her, and why the hell we should give two shits about ANY of this to begin with.  So as a result, we ended up with an episode of Covert Affairs that starred some random-ass chick who we’ve barely even MET before today.  It was an ensemble effort, yes, but Helen’s screentime had to have been at least equal to both Annie and Auggie here.

So start with that jarring and foreign situation, and then add to it the fact that the amount of time that had to be spent on the flashbacks took away essential story time that was needed to show Annie and Helen’s relationship build and develop on that mission to Lyon.  Crucial time that we did NOT get.  Instead, we got a quicky mission, plus two and a half dialogue scenes.  And this is between two characters who have not only never met before this mission, but have every reason to dislike and distrust the HELL out of each other from the get-go.  Yet somehow it only took a couple chats with Helen to convince Annie that the entire way she’s living her life right now might need a complete overhaul??  Really??  It’s one of those things that ... I would imagine, when you’re mapping out a storyline, makes sense in theory.  In the writer’s room you’re like, “Yeah ok so Helen shows up and she tells Annie her story, and then Annie starts to doubt her sitch,” and then yadda yadda yadda A&A break up.  BUT when the rubber hit the road here, the writers didn’t allow themselves enough screen time to execute this in a convincing way.  The dialogue between Annie and Helen even felt strangely forced to me at many points, like overly on-the-nose.  I’m pretty sure this is because they needed to move these characters from 0 to 60 in their relationship with so few scenes.

So THEN, we get back home from the mission, and Annie goes to Auggie’s apartment for their H2H.  And while Chris and Piper played the HELL out of this scene – major kudos to both of them for that - and it gave me plenty of angsty feels ... it still somehow didn’t seem ... right.  It didn’t feel natural or organic to how I imagine *I* would be acting in that situation, or decisions I would be making.  The events of this episode were plenty to plant seeds of doubt for both Annie and Auggie, sure.  Even plenty for Annie to decide she needs time to herself to process all these crazy developments.  But to call it quits for good??  If you put yourself in their shoes, is this situation even close to enough to make you decide, “Aiight.  That’s it.  Fuck it.  I’m outtie.”  (mic drop)  ?  After ALL that they’ve been through over all these years and that bond they share and everything??  Not even close, for me.  Granted, I do get that in break-up type conversations, the way one person says a little something and then the other party kind of agrees with it, and once that little snowflake starts, you keep pushing each other until it becomes a huge snowball avalanche and you can’t get yourself out of it.  Because neither of you has the balls to be the one to be like “OK JK JKaaaayyyy I didn’t mean it I don’t really wanna break up!!”  I get that, and I think that’s part of what was at play here.  But still, it just wasn’t enough to convince me that they’d go anywhere near this far.  And I’m being 100% honest when I say that I don’t have an issue with A&A breaking up IF it feels organic to the progression of the story, and IF it’s something I can absolutely believe the characters would and should be doing, based on their circumstances.  My issue with this episode is that this was not the case.  It felt much more manipulated and manufactured than it did organic.

There’s another thing I noticed about that final scene too.  It’s of very minor importance to the scene itself, but it reminded me of something I’ve been observing and irked by for quite a while now.  And please forgive my comparisons to other spy shows again, but it’s how my though process works - One thing I always found interesting about ‘Alias’ was that Sydney Bristow was written as a tough character, but she was also allowed to be very “girly” in many ways.  And that was nice, but she was almost TOO girly, in the sense that the woman bawled like a baby every damn time you blinked an eye.  Going back and watching old eps now, the amount of crying Sydney does drives me INSANE.  And that’s the main reason I loved Annie’s long-lost cousin Sarah Walker so much on ‘Chuck’ – She was tough as nails, and rarely showed her emotions, UNTIL the series progressed and the character developed *naturally* from a pretty cold and ruthless spy, to basically kinda opening her heart as a result of Chuck’s influence and impact on her.  It felt right, it progressed naturally, and it was fun to watch.  And she never came even CLOSE to being the weepy baby Sydney was.  She was well-balanced in that sense.

And like Sarah Walker, one thing I’ve always appreciated about Annie Walker is her LACK of weepiness.  Not only that, but she has a cocky swagger about her, that type of cockiness that’s actually even a level or two above what she probably deserves to give herself credit for, that I don’t recall seeing in female characters all that often.  Maybe I’m crazy, but this seems like a traditionally very male quality to me, like Jeff Winger on ‘Community’.  Or every guy on ‘Gigolos’.  Point being, it feels like an interesting change of pace to me, and I like this about Annie as a character.  And her tough-ness is a good thing, but sometimes she can seem like the exact inverse of Sydney Bristow to a fault.  i.e. In the interest of the writers making her “tough,” she can almost border on beyond human sometimes.  Like she’s some sort of robot who can get through anything with barely a quick brush of a little dust off her shoulders.  Like that time she returned home from the Russian prison after the Simon/Lena/nearly-dying debacle and she was just like, “Ok well that was lame.  Next?  No prob.  Back in action and better than ever.”  She never had any sort of emotional breakdown, she never hit any rock bottom, she never had PTSD, nothing.  She just kept on going.  It’s always seemed very odd to me, and it’s hard for me as a human audience member to relate to someone with such super-human cyborg-like powers.

And then, in the break-up scene with Auggie, we saw Annie break down FAR more than she ever has before, that I can remember.  And it was nice to see her finally having some real normal human emotions, BUT even this was quite interesting in terms of the way the scene was filmed.  She started to break down but then she stood up and walked behind the couch, and we could tell that she was crying, but we couldn’t see her face.  The point is that she was trying to hide it from Auggie, but at the same time it almost seems like the writers/director/etc. didn’t want the *audience* to see it either.  And then when she left the apartment, the focus at the end was on Auggie.  I think that was to show him breaking down after she left, but it still struck me as kind of interesting.  Like the writers themselves are afraid to let Annie act like a normal human being with real emotions, every once in a damn while.  I dunno, I could just be in a bad mood at this point and being too nitpicky.  But it’s one more thing adding to my constant nagging feeling that CA’s lead character is the LEAST fleshed-out character on the entire show.

UGGH holy shit this review is so long already.  Let me just do a few other quick random observations before my summary/grade:

• Watching Auggie look people in the eyes in flashback scenes is always weird, isn’t it?  And in this ep we got him running too.  Without tripping and stuff.  Kinda fun.
• The transition from the Auggie->Arthur punch to the flash of the title screen thing made me LOL.
• The way Annie approached Sabino also made me LMAO – “I’m the owner of the missile launchers you stole??  I want them back.”
• Ha, I love that Myers-Briggs got a shout-out in this ep.  I took one of those many years ago, but at my company they’ve run through several other assessment methodologies since then.  We’re currently using one called LinkUp.
• Convenient that Helen’s cover for this ep’s mission gave an excuse to let Michelle Ryan use her real accent.
• Ok that was the best Barber scene EVER, right??  He even came within an inch of going full-on Abed.  “Cool.  Cool cool cool.”  Frankly, he was probably the only bright point of this entire depressing episode!!  Thank you, Barber.  And Auggie took his words to heart, too.
• The fight scene underwater was kinda cool.  With the bullets going through the water.
• Ok so it was already obvious to pretty much all of us that the flashforward they keep giving us from ep 10 is Annie faking her own death.  This episode just punches us in the face with it 50 times in case we hadn’t already figured it out.

Ok.  Now for the grade.  I re-watched this ep while writing my review, thinking it might change my feelings on it.  It didn’t.  As a matter of fact, I was even more annoyed on second viewing. 

GRADE: 77 out of 100

I’m so freakin’ tired right now I almost reverted back to my letter grading system on accident.  Is 77 super harsh??  My network just went down so now I’m in a SUPER bad mood, right at the time I’m assigning the grade.  That doesn’t help.  What did you guys think of the ep?  Will I need to fake my death to hide from you after this??  Will my network ever come back up so we can POST this review??

The Plopper

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.04: 'Rock A My Soul'

Wow, should I be flattered that we viewers of ‘Covert Affairs’ are so “high class” that the main product placement being used this season is for the Jaguar F-Type?? 

I know TV advertising and viewing habits are a much different beast these days than they used to be ... with my TiVo, I hardly see commercials anymore.  So I’ve gotten used to, and can even forgive, obnoxiously overt product placement in my shows.  Hell, ‘Chuck’ fans even supported Subway enough to come up with the “Finale & Footlong” campaign; eventually those sandwiches practically became their own characters on the show.  Oh and how bout all that Bud Light Annie & Auggie are always drinking at Allen’s??  Do people REALLY drink Bud Light??  No matter.  Point is, we fans are completely willing to put up with a certain level of cheesy product placement in order to keep our shows on the air.  But with that said - seriously, CA, did you really have END the entire episode with the ridiculous Jag commercial??  Because now, despite it being an otherwise pretty good episode, I’m left right at the end suddenly feeling annoyed.  And now I’m starting my review this way.  Grr.

O.k. sorry, rant over.  Let’s get to the ep now, shall we?  Let me start by asking this: Am I the only person who is feeling kind of relieved that Auggie’s gig as head of the DPD didn’t last long?  There's a line in the ep during a tense conversation between A&A where Annie says, “I don’t want to do this if we’re going to wind up like Joan and Arthur.”  THANK YOU Annie, I don’t want you to either!!  I’ll be honest, I love Joan & Arthur as characters, but I never found their relationship to be particularly romantic or even all that compelling, up through season 3 (though I will say, it has gotten much more interesting in season 4, which I definitely appreciate).  But through S3, it seemed like it was simply all tension all the time, with them constantly bickering back and forth about the conflict between Arthur as Joan’s boss vs. her husband.  Having A&A wind up like this is the absolute LAST thing I want for this show.  I’d rather the show focus on Seth’s zombie corpse rising up from the Potomac for revenge (like Jason Voorhees?) than to see a version of this show where the romance is completely sucked out of A&A’s relationship, and all that’s left is constant bickering.  :shudder:  Nightmare.

So not surprisingly, I spent much of the ep feeling very nervous about this.  Now that the ep is over, however, I feel fairly relieved that A&A do not seem to be headed this direction.  I don’t THINK.  Auggie’s demotion helps.  Is that horrible of me?  Sorry, Auggie.  A&A is way more important to me than your career.  There.  I said it.  It’s out there.  Sue me.  And on a similar note, most CA fans spent the entire week leading up to this ep freaking out and speculating on just WHAT the hell Auggie’s secret could be.  I heard theories ranging from Auggie & Teo being brothers (which would have been my own personal soapy hell), to Auggie moonlighting as Daredevil at night, to Auggie having bad credit (in the “mundane Auggie secrets” category).  After all this speculation, I’m downright relieved at what the secret ended up being.  I went into this episode with a horrible fear that it would be something shark-jumpingly horrible (Anyone else still scarred by Luke’s long-lost daughter April on ‘Gilmore Girls’?), and it ended up being something I was pretty fine with.  Teo caused the death of someone Auggie was in love with ("Helen").  And Auggie believes that his fully open “no secrets” relationship with Helen is partly responsible for her death.  Hence, we have an explanation for his attempts at keeping Annie in the dark on certain information.  O.k., I can deal with that.  Just so long as Helen doesn’t turn out to be secretly still alive or some ridiculous shit.  THEN we’d be in the shark-jumping zone.  Bionic Woman - I’m looking at you.  You’d BETTER be someone other than Helen using the alias of Teresa.

The reveal of Auggie’s secret is a great example of one of the things I’ve always loved about CA – it has a very “down-to-earth,” true to life quality that wasn’t there with many of the wacky spy shows I’ve loved in the past.  It’s a lot more relatable.  It’s not 'Covert’s way to make Auggie’s secret something total out-there and overly melodramatic.  And that’s why I found HENRY’s storyline in this episode to be a bit irksome.  Clearly he is the “big bad” this season, at least so far.  And that completely makes sense, given that he’s been lurking around as this angry vindictive and powerful character since the beginning of season 1.  CA is not taking this in an unexpected direction at all.  What irks me about it is that Henry’s “a son for a son” campaign against Arthur is not only a bit “operatic,” to use an analogy that Henry actually used in this ep, but it doesn’t even necessarily make sense!  We know that Henry blames Arthur for Jai’s death, but we’ve never been given a reason as to WHY.  Have we??  Did I miss that at some point??  Are we simply to assume that Henry thinks Arthur’s bad management of the DCS led indirectly to Jai’s death?  That doesn’t seem nearly damning enough for him to want THAT level of revenge on Arthur.

In any event, despite my concerns about Henry and my nervousness about A&A, I did find this to be an entertaining episode.  In the past, I’ve found that my fave shows tend to be at their best when the core characters are really banding together to fight against a common enemy.  At the end of season 3, I was really concerned that Joan and Arthur would be turned into villains this season due to the contents of Henry’s file.  Thank GOD they didn’t take this in that direction, as it wouldn’t have been true to what we’ve seen from these characters so far.  No one is perfect and they’ve made plenty of mistakes, but they’re not bad people, especially Joan.  So Joan’s line at the end, “From now on we trust NO ONE but ourselves.  No one,” gave me a very warm fuzzy feeling.  I want our main characters to grow closer, not further apart, and to work together.  And that seems to be the direction they’re going.  Joan even gave Annie some relationship advice in this ep!!  She gave Auggie some too for that matter.  Aww.

Oh, I also like that Henry called Annie out on Auggie’s involvement in this situation being the entire reason that she let Henry court her in the first place.  I suppose it’s obvious that this was her motivation, but it’s nice to see it clarified.  There’s no way in hell anyone would go through all this trouble just to help out and/or dig up dirt on their bosses.  Here’s the rest of my thoughts on the ep in random order:

• Annnnd Annie’s red VW Golf is suddenly in perfect shape again.  I guess it really is like Walter White’s indestructible Aztek.
• Eric Barber is back!  And trying out Auggie’s office for a bit.  I love any excuse for scenes with him.
• Auggie makes two blind jokes within the span of like 20 seconds in this ep.  Is this a record?
• So Annie couldn’t get the calendar with the bug in the Chens’ room, but I guess the audio device Auggie already had set up was good enough?  Also, Auggie specifically says the Chens have no cell phones in their names, and are likely using burners.  And yet, Annie is alerted when a call comes into Xu’s cell, and can hear at least his side of the convo.  How?  Is that just from the same audio sensors through the wall?  Do they have Lester Freamon working for them or something?  (High-five for anyone who gets that reference).  OH he was in two eps of this show too!!
• Wow, Wendy Chen had quite the ‘tude going on there, eh?  To be fair, Annie WAS a bit annoying in that first convo.  For a “neighbor.”
• What the hell is up with Eric Braithwaite??  He’s been in 4 eps of this show in seasons 1-3 according to IMDB.  Can anyone with a better memory than me remind me of his backstory?
• “Don’t worry Olivia, my former husband seems to have a way with women!”  Nice one, Joan.
• “I thought you said I was the type that didn’t need luck!”  Annie remembered Auggie telling her this when they first met.  Aww.
• “My feelings haven’t changed, just my job.”  Again, aww.  Also, it’s good to see that Annie’s not listening to what Auggie tells her to do any more now than she did before they started dating haha.
• Henry: “Just keep yourself covered, the sun can be very dangerous, if you’re not protected.”  This was an odd line.  What was up with all the “sun” references here?  My cousin Katie thinks it’s a sun/son analogy.
• Teo: “[Arthur] didn’t raise a son, he raised a spy.”  Looks like Arthur’s got a little of the Jack Bristow thing going on in his past.
• Annie’s call from the safe house after finding everyone dead: “Umbra 10-79.”  Is this a real term or was it made up for the show?  I did a quick Google search and came up empty-handed.

So what’s my grade for this ep?  I’m having trouble deciding if I liked last week’s ep better, or this one.  Last week was more exciting and action-packed, but this week was stronger on plot movement and character development.  And despite my concerns about A&A and the Joan/Arthur parallels, their scenes here were all pretty damn great.

GRADE: 88/100

I changed my grading system since we’ve had 3 B+ eps (IMO) so far.  Whaddya think?  Too low?  Too high?  Yell at me in the comments.

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The Plopper Review - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.03: 'Into the White'

Have I already mentioned that Teo Braga may be my new Simon Fischer?  Yeah ... 4.03 “Into the White” pretty well solidified that.  For now, at least.  Sigh.  “Do you trust me?”  YES Teo, YES ... your wish is my command.  Your sweet sexy puma eyes have melted my heart!!  I’m yours.  You DO still know true north honey!!  Let’s talk it out.  There, there.

Answer me this though ... I’m tired, I have a headache, and my brain is moving slowly tonight ... but how is it that it took Annie & Team so long to figure out that the Solstar meeting was the target of the ALC bomb plot?  Didn’t we already know last week that Solstar was going to be having a big executive pow-wow in Colombia the following week?  And of course, Henry (who is in bed with Solstar) is the one who gave Annie the intel about the bomb plot to begin with.  Shouldn’t that have been higher on Annie’s list of possible targets before she even got to Colombia?  Also, is it a little convenient that amongst the torture devices, weapons, laptops, and other random junk at the CIA Black Site, there also just so happened to be a brochure/packet for the Solstar meeting laying around??  Kinda funny.

O.k. since I started this with a gripe (or else a dumb misunderstanding on my part), let me get to one more of those before I get to the good stuff:  What the hell is UP with that Senator Pierson biznatch!!??  What is her damage, and why does she have such a vendetta against Joan??  I mean ... were her accusations of Joan using Arthur to climb the CIA ranks and being too dense to realize he was cheating on her just ... a little weirdly personal?  One thing I’ve always complained about with ‘Dexter’ since day one, even when it used to be a good show, is how ridiculously exaggerated some of the “bad guy” characters are ... beyond real life.  As in, a convenient way to make them extra hate-able.  It felt like there was a *little* of that going on with the Senator Pierson character here ... but maybe that’s just me?  And Joan’s blackmail, WOW!!  I don’t know whether to be disappointed in her dirty tactics, or bow down to her badassery here.  A bit of both.  And I definitely appreciate the layered characters on this show.  No one ever seems to be 100% “good” or “bad.”

O.k. now let’s get to the stuff I liked.  First off, this episode contained a shockingly high number of moments that made me laugh out loud, by myself, at my TV.  And yes, I mean that in a good way.  Even from the very first scene: In the parking garage, Annie says to Arthur/Joan, “It’s intel that suggests that Teo may be involved in a bomb threat against an American target in Colombia.”  Arthur’s “It’s a total lie!” spoken simultaneously over Joan’s “I’ll get this to South America desk, loop in the CTC (etc)… right away” cracked me UP.  Other crack-ups: EVERY scene where Teo flustered the crap out of Annie.  From the first time she found him and he threw her exit package papers all over the ground for her to dive and grab, to the moment at the CIA black site when he answered her proud/accomplished, “That’s right I can get you out of here (if you tell me the ALC target)!!” with a swift kick to the chest.  And knowing that kick was coming (from the preview) meant that Calder’s warning, “He can kick out 5 feet so stay back at least 6,” right before leaving her alone with him made me laugh really, REALLY hard.

We got some good character interactions in this episode as well.  Annie and Calder trying to work out their different approaches to their spycraft was fun.  Like in the jungle: “Well I want him captured alive.”  Calder: “Alive is the toughest option.”  Calder then questions Annie on whether she really knows when to give up on trying to charm/turn a target and instead simply ... well, deal with them another way, let’s say.  Also, we got yet another *very* interesting Annie/Joan conversation following baby Teo’s smackdown (kickdown).  “You don’t need to worry ... do you understand?  You have my support on ... whatever you need.”  Again, Annie looked a tad bit choked up at the end of that.  I still wish these two would communicate better with each other, but I’m very glad to see them back on good terms this season.

My other random thoughts:

• It’s one thing to ask your boyfriend for a favor like killing a spider or doing your laundry ... it’s *quite* another to ask him to break the news to your boss that you KILLED her close colleague-slash-buddy-slash-ex-boyfriend.  Oopsie!!  Auggie wins enough points for like 20 good boyfriends on that front.
• I liked Auggie’s little Marshall Flinkman moment with his untraceable cell phone prototype.  If only he could’ve tied the number 47 in there somehow.  “It’s a prime number.”
• “You just packed my favorite t-shirt, didn’t you??”  “I was hoping you’d think it was in the wash, and then I felt bad!!”  Last week Piper Perabo won the “cutest line delivery” of all time award (per Chris Gorham and all CA fans on Twitter) with her “That’s my forehead” line.  She may have actually managed to match it again this week with the “I felt bad!!” line here.  The cuteness of these A&A scenes this season has been pretty damn great so far.  I hope they can keep this up.
• Colombia looked pretty fuckin’ (err, gosh darn) awesome in this ep ... damn, fans of this show are spoiled as hell with all the on-location shooting.  It’s the thing that makes CA stand out from everything else on TV, and I hope they never stop doing this as long as the series lasts and despite any budget cuts they may be forced to endure in future seasons (NONE I hope!) haha.
• In that first scene of Joan’s “interview” with the Senate Intelligence Committee, the guy asks, “We all reviewed the intelligence surrounding Jay Wilcox’s death ... We also read a closed file about an unnamed operative who was shot in her house, here in Washington.”  Proof of how useless my brain is tonight – I seriously had ZERO idea who this statement referred to until I rewound it and watched again hahaha.  Oy.
• I know everyone thinks Auggie’s protective behavior over Annie is super sweet and cute and all ... but at what point does it become a little too “controlling boyfriend”-y?  I get it from his side, don’t get me wrong, and it’s not like he’s not still letting her do her thing.  He is.  I’m curious to see how long that lasts though.  Is she gonna have to tell him to step off at some point?
• Annie’s reactions/flinches to Calder’s beating Teo at the CIA black site were priceless.  And Calder’s giddiness at grabbing the jumper cable thingies and water bucket - also funny.
• “I know exactly what I did to him.  I know that 4 blows to the head and not 5 would be the difference between the hospital and death.”  Oh, sweet Teo, you had me at “4 blows to the head.”  Swoon.
  
• If that final sequence had ended before Annie made it back home to Auggie, I would’ve bashed in my TV with the remote.

One last thought to end this: Remember the quote I gave in my 4.01 “Vamos” review from Myles McNutt’s AV Club review, the one that gave me the “ah ha!” moment?  The one that asked, “Who is Annie other than a vessel of the series’ narrative?”  A major part of Myles’ point was that in season 3 (more like mid-season 3 onward in my personal opinion), most of Annie’s motivations have centered around OTHER people: Saving Eyal, convincing Simon to turn himself in, seeking revenge for Simon’s death, helping Simon’s sister, etc. etc.  This season feels similar so far: She’s trying to protect Auggie from being brought down by the Arthur scandal, she’s trying to help Arthur, to help Teo, to help Joan, etc.  Even with the theme of “secrets” this season, all the secrets so far are OTHER people’s secrets.  What about Annie herself??  What’s HER deal??  I already harped on that in ep 4.01, and now I’m thinking I may be asking that question for a while ... but we’ll see.  We shall see.

EP 4.03 GRADE: B+

I liked this one a bit better than the premiere, which I also gave a B+, but let’s call this like an 89% vs. an 87% for the premiere.  Maybe I should start rating these out of 100 like HGF does.  Now tell me I’m a nutjob in the comments below.

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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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