Covert Affairs tries to toe the line between having pristine, infallible characters, as all USA shows do, and having morally ambiguous characters, as other respected dramas. So it's hard for an episode to dig deep into a moral quandary when the writers need to maintain a sunny sheen to the show.
With "Communication Breakdown," an Auggie-centric episode, the writers tried to put some mystery into Auggie's character by having him run off with a Russian hacker ex-girlfriend while Annie and Jai give chase. Annie acts like the instigator for every inquiry into CIA practices, almost to the point where you wonder if she's been living under a rock her whole life. For all her foreign language skills, it's hard to buy that Annie has little or no knowledge of 20th century American foreign policy.
Still, Christopher Gorham was great at giving Auggie additional character depth, despite us knowing he wouldn't do anything wrong, which made the episode work to a certain extent. It was a less plot-intensive episode, so we really got the focus needed on Augie (though I didn't mind for Natasha).
Annie's home life, the weak link in the show, is the one sore spot in the show that sticks out every week. The issues between her and her sister are nonexistent, so something has to be manufactured artificially and then resolved artificially.
Score: 8.5/10
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
View Comments
