Covert Affairs – Expecting the unexpected

Sorry, but I didn’t buy the fact that Reva — a person who’s more comfortable crunching data and creating complex spy gear in a lab someplace — accompanied Annie to the dangerous Poland-Belarus border in order to place a CIA rock camera on the ground. Given Annie’s talent, I think she could’ve handled placing the camera on the ground herself, thank you very much.

Sure, Reva said she volunteered for the mission to help bolster her cred within her department, but it just didn’t ring true. It seemed a poor excuse to pair the lovely Annie with an attractive brunette so there’d be two pretty damsels in distress … though Annie’s quite capable of saving the both of them.

That being said, I liked watching Annie improvise and maintain her cool after she and Reva were abducted by the Belarus secret police and taken to some kind of safe house. Annie’s clever use of vodka as an accelerant as a way for the pair to escape was smart, though I wondered whether the guys who were supposed to be watching two American agents — who were worth tens of millions of dollars in ransom money — would actually be doing shots on duty. If they really thought Annie and Reva were CIA, why would they weaken their defenses by getting drunk in front of agents? (I further wondered how Annie would be able to keep her wits about her after downing several consecutive shots.)

Once they were on foot and fleeing the secret police, it was a nice touch to have Annie explain how she knew which berries she could safely eat because her sister had taught her some outdoor survival skills when they were children. That same sister,  meanwhile, was trying to make sure Annie’s passport got to her so she wouldn’t encounter difficulties traveling for her “work” for the Smithsonian. Watching Danielle in her brief scenes made me wish she would be afforded a bit more airtime. That’s one of the things that made Covert Affairs‘ predecessor, Alias, so great in its first couple of seasons: watching Sydney balance her lively home life with her engaging roommate Francie and close pal Will, in which Sydney had to lie to them, with her clandestine work.

Then there was Jai, who was dispatched to extricate Annie and Reva, along with a small team. Their chopper was grounded in Belarus yet they were all able to sneak back to safe territory (did they repair the helicopter?), acquire motorcycles, and miraculously find the right location — adjacent to a river and a cliff dividing two countries — in which to pick up Annie and Reva? That moment was a challenging one to buy into even when Auggie, who seems to be flirting with our gal Annie more frequently these days, says he anticipated that Annie would pick the “unexpected” route to safety, and so he sent Jai there. Auggie, the mind reader.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jul 13, 2011 @ 11:27 EST5EDT