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CUSTOMER REVIEW
This is a review of the June 24 Season 5 premier.
First: for those who are unfamiliar with Covert Affairs, the show is about Annie Walker, a 27 year old army brat with a talent for foreign languages tagged by a university professor for CIA recruitment into the newly Domestic Protection Division under the Director of Clandestine Services - the black operations division within the CIA.
Annie spends her first season getting her bearings. She has a handler, a Special Forces officer blinded in the line of duty named Augie, who is also her tech manager. Her boss, Joan, is head of the DPD and the two establish a mother/daughter style of trust and resentment. Joan's boss is the Director of Clandestine Services, and is also her husband - a relationship strained given that Joan is Arthur's second wife by way of an adulterous relationship with Arthur while married to his first wife. Thus Joan knows that Arthur cannot be trusted.
The first season was episode based, warm, humorous, and peppered with just a little excitement. It centered on the developing character of Annie Walker, and why she was recruited - which includes a relationship prior to her recruitment with a deep cover agent now gone rogue, and whom Arthur and Joan hope to bring out using Annie, who is unaware of their intent nor that her affair was with an agent.
If the internet chatter can be trusted (ahem), Covert Affairs in its first season garnered a following among the Intelligence Community. Although produced by the Jason Bourne movies team, Seasons 1 is laid back and a departure from Hollywood spy fare. Blessed with Valerie Plame as a technical consultant, the show got many things about the CIA right, sprinkling tidbits in conversation such as the epic retirement turnover just after 9/11 that left more than half of the staff of the CIA with less than five years experience (which Annie notes is "a bit frightening" when told). The security badges on the show are accurate. Annie doesn't carry a gun (real CIA does not) and carefully observes the law. Annie makes mistakes, loses fights, and mostly gets by on smarts, luck, and a powerful smile and sweet-and-innocent look.
Annie's relationship with her sister Danielle and Danielle's family, with whom she lives, is Annie's (and the show's) anchor to the real world and her only family. But Annie can't tell Danielle anything about her job but the cover story, which is as an art curator for the Smithsonian.
Season 2 has Annie moving into more coherent cross-episode stories, an increasingly personal attraction to her blind handler Augie, and an eventual blowup with her sister as Danielle realizes that Annie is not who she says, and that Annie's work is endangering the family. She has also been developing rather close and personal ties with a Israeli agent, and other unapproved operatives. Slowly but surely, Annie is becoming less timid and obedient. And while her initiative is of value to Joan and Arthur, it is also a growing problem. Annie is also becoming more action oriented, and has to kill in the line of duty at the season finale.
Season 3 moves more to a season theme thread - and follows Annie through her introduction by a female agent into the more gray areas of spying. She's becoming tougher, and starts to carry a gun more. She's forced to keep things from Auggie, who has been removed temporarily as her handler but whom she still leans on for guidance and support. And she survives some major mistakes and errors. Her sister and the family have moved away, leaving her without personal grounding. Season 3 is a bit darker, but still retains some of the humor and charm of the first three seasons.
Season 4 is one long story of increasing darkness as Annie pursues Henry Wilcox, a former Director of Clandestine Services who has always been a self-serving traitor with a megalomaniac streak running through a bedrock of Sociopathic personality. Henry is on a personal vendetta against Joan, Arthur and all of the CIA, stealing money from the Agency to build his own spy network. To bring him down, Annie uses her network of Agency friends to take a full dive down the rabbit hole, fake her death, and go rogue to track down Henry. In the season finale she is compromised to Chinese intelligence, kills Henry, and rides off into the sunset on a speed boat. In doing so she and the team have exposed the evidence needed to return her, Augie and Joan back to their jobs, free Arthur from jail, and gain kudos for bringing down "the worst traitor in the history of the CIA". The season is a good one, but for Piper Perabo fans, a little less satisfactory than earlier seasons.
Oddly, the show's theme song from the first three seasons ("Can You Save Me") which really didn't fit the fresh and sweet Annie through the first two seasons, is dropped in the fourth - just when the song had gained meaning and application to Annie's situation - who is now on a decided journey into darkness.
In the Season 5 premier, Annie has been missing four months. She returns thinner and blonde again. And she returns with secrets, including a mysterious illness that is clearly going to handicap her work. Yet she beats her debrief polygraph (which none of her friends accept), and is immediately assigned to track down a terrorist. She walks into what turns out to be a stunning double feint by the terrorist that destroys an entire CIA clandestine office and its staff in Chicago, and which Annie almost prevents but for stumbling on the part of others. Through her own heightened situational awareness she barely avoids the blast herself.
The episode is engaging, but lacks the charm and freshness that drew in viewers at the start of the program. Season 4 had a rough start, but eventually engaged this viewer. Hopefully Season 5 will develop into a the same,
If the Season 5 premier is any indication, Covert Affairs is becoming darker still. Gone is the humor. Gone is the early model of a fresh approach to spy shows. Gone are the three dimensional characters. Gone is Annie's smile, it has been replaced by a stern frown. And gone with it is the charm that makes Annie watchable.
The introduction of a rich navy SEAL billionaire is a bit too close to Eric Prince, the fun loving SEAL officer who started Blackwater on a huge inheritance and parleyed it into a billion dollar industry by buying his own helicopters and other toys, mostly for the fun of it, hiring away CIA and other Special Operations Forces, and then renting them out to the CIA and foreign governments. About the only difference between the show's McQuad and Prince is height: McQuad is taller. With Arthur going to work for McQuad, we are bound to see a lot of McQuad, and that may not be a good thing - despite Annie's clear attraction.
The show is moving towards a more stereotypical image of spy shows, and seems to be stealing plotline and character development from Homeland, while borrowing a mistake from Burn Notice in which the ensemble cast loved by the fans is scattered and loses the chemistry, banter, and appeal that drew in viewers. Thankfully, Alias and Nikita have not invaded, but Annie is rarely without a gun these days. Explosions rule the screen. The ensemble is taking a backseat. And Covert Affairs is the poorer for it.
Can anyone save poor Annie? She seems lost.
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