Covert Affairs

[jeregenest]

We watched the first episode of USA's new spy show, Covert Affairs last night. I like it better than USA's other spy show, the one with the annoying voiceover and exposition that everyone likes but me, Burn Notice.

The plot was a little thin, but I like the amount of detail on CIA life we're getting. It is refreshing to have a spy show use a real agency (mostly, and as peaseblossom says its not like the real CIA has a great track record on jurisdiction). I keep on hoping to see the statue of Nathan Hale in all the establishing "We're at Langley" shots. I also like that the spy tech is pretty realistic, and hope it stays that way.

I personally think my favorite characters are Keri Matchett and Peter Gallagher as the feuding CIA power couple/bureaucrats. I hope we see a lot more of them. I also want to see more of Clarke Peters as the Russian linguist upset his protege is now working for the CIA. His scene was a real plus and made Piper Perabo's character feel more fleshed out for me. The same went for the FBI agent who kept on riding her for being a CIA agent operating on US territory, all without Perabo's character really admitting it.

And finally we had a fight scene that looked like a real fight. And the protagonist actually was loosing. Lets hope the mystery ex-lover shows up to save the day trope is avoided in the future. Though his being some sort of spy (probably rouge) was pretty evident from the beginning.

In short, well worth watching. My only huge bone to pick is Christopher Gorham as Auggie Anderson. I like Gorham, and I adore the Auggie character. But would it be so hard to actually have hired a blind actor? I think that is just pure laziness.

Comments

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I watched it earlier today, and liked it for pretty much the same reasons you did. I think the requisite comparison is to Alias however, and not Burn Notice, and Covert Affairs did hold it's own nicely.

Regarding Auggie, considering the rest of the casting I'm guessing they wanted an actor with some recognizability (not actually a word). I can only think of two blind actresses I'd recognize, and no actors. Sure, they could have taken an unknown, but this goes for Piper Perabo as well.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

And that inability to think of blind actor is the problem. I think its great to have people with disabilities on shows, but honestly its not enough to have any old actor play them.

We both can't think of a blind actor because tv produces continue not to give them chances and instead hire sighted actors to play blind actors. And that is what is wrong.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

They're most certainly trying to channel Alias. I appreciate the lack of crazy so far. Alias's line of "We work of the ultra secretive, no wait we're evil, I'm a CIA double agent, we work for the CIA, no we don't, we're rouge, we're CIA..." it got old.