Covert Affairs – Sydney Bristow’s little sister enjoys glamour, flirtation & a $7,000 purse

There were dead bodies, a black tie gala event requiring our gal Annie Walker to don a pricey frock, overt flirtation between agents, spy trickery and a mysterious bad guy whom no one in the intelligence community had seen an image as of yet.

Plus most of the this episode of Covert Affairs took place in Paris. What more could you want?

While Annie didn’t exactly get to celebrate her birthday in the way that she might have wanted to, she did get a mighty expensive handbag, a homemade cupcake and a bit of flattering attention. Her jaunt to Paris wasn’t exactly a complete success — the asset in the Syrian embassy whom she was supposed to cultivate wound up dead — but she did get a not-so-great image of “Chemical Kanaan” who was shot, but only in the shoulder. (Usually that means the guy’s not dead. At least that’s what it meant on Alias whose DNA is all over Covert Affairs.)

I like the relationship Annie’s developing with Israeli agent Eyal Lavine, who’s simultaneously untrustworthy (as in stealing the memory card from her camera while flirting) and a got-your-back kinda guy (saving Annie from getting shot). There could be some decent, long-term romantic tension built up here between Annie and Eyal, as well as between Annie and the mysterious Ben, with whom I don’t think Annie will ever be able to have a stable relationship. The competing suitors would be a good thing for this show, provide Covert Affairs with some character depth.

Auggie as the boss was promising, as he reluctantly took command while Joan, of all people, provided some comic relief as she was seated on a jury for a lengthy case. Usually Auggie’s the one providing the moments of levity to Covert Affairs. But to give Joan a chance to be more than a stern authority figure whose wardrobe appears to be comprised only of form fitting, sleeveless dresses, to allow her to be funny was refreshing. I’d love to get more of a backstory on her story on her character and how she got to where she is.

Also fun to watch during this episode was the MacGyver-like moves Annie pulled in order to save Eyal, using the cloth and causing a van to catch on fire and explode. It reminded me a bit of something her predecessor, CIA agent Sydney Bristow, would’ve done, because Annie, like Sydney, can’t leave a man behind without at least trying.

Speaking of Alias, it seems as though the Covert Affairs folks are taking a page from Alias in trying to create characters that are reoccurring and expecting viewers to remember who they are, like Eyal. The show is also balancing the serious, lethal work of espionage with humor (which usually fell to Marshall to provide in Alias) and including a glimpse of the “normal” life the secret agent must maintain in the real, non-spy world, such as Annie living in her sister’s family’s guest house. This humor and normal life element was, sadly, missing from the later seasons of Alias, but hopefully won’t disappear too soon on Covert Affairs.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jun 15, 2011 @ 14:45 EST5EDT