TV Show - Covert Affairs

TV Show - Covert Affairs 

Score 8/10 

Created by : Matt Corman and Chris Ord 

Multiple directors & writers (as most shows are) 

Music : Christopher Tyng (season 1) and Toby Chu (seasons 2-5). 

Country : USA

Filming locations : Toronto, Ontario, Canada as main; location shooting elsewhere as required
Language : English. Others sporadically (I don't have a list). 

Duration : 1h10 (Pilot) ; 0h42 minutes for the other episodes
Aired : 2010-2014

Full production and cast member on IMDb 

Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) freshly arrived from the CIA's training "Farm" facilities,  integrates the DPD ( Domestic Protection Division) and must adapt to the challenging life of an operative under the guidance of her handler, Auggie Anderson (Christopher Gorham) and her ever-changing direct bosses to which she has to report. 

In her Operations, Annie travels a lot, to asses potential threats, get rid of clear and evident ones, or "turn" people into informants/assets. Annie's background in languages (she speaks English and 7 others) gives her the perfect cover in the Smithsonian and helps her understand and interact with many of the people she has to meet in her travels.  I love this character, played by Piper Perabo, with gusto and passion. Annie's a kickass operative, driver (you'll see many car chases!),  she's intelligent and evolves during her career as a spy. From rookie, who had to be saved a couple times by men at the start of the show, she becomes more confident and assertive, and often the one to save others, and mutually help with one particular spy guest - saving one another more than once. 

Covert affairs isn't your regular one-story-an-episode - despite some where stories end immediately - there are several arcs, which last anywhere between 2 or 3 episodes to entire seasons - even several seasons for the more complex ones. Annie isn't always alone in her travel - often one more person comes, if not an entire team - either from the main cast, or guest/recurring. 

I enjoyed the pace and acting, growing characterizations and back stories, as well as action and dramatic moments, between Annie Walker, her coworkers and her superiors - ranging from caring, easy interactions to more complex, even explosive disagreements, to Annie having to hide her true job from various people, starting with her sister, Danielle Brooks (played by Anne Dudek) and Danielle's family. 

As the show's title announces, there are many hidden aspects in the plots and subplots, which is why some of the stories needed multiple episodes. I really loved the original way of starting one of these arcs by its end, and every episode or two after that would show prior events which led to that crucial moment, building suspense... it wasn't a typical start-at-end, flashback and finish in the same episode, but over an arc! 

Though I realize that some missions and resolutions aren't super realistic (probably), the show is made for entertainment, not as a documentary, so I cannot agree with many negative reviewers, who often base their comments on 1-3 episodes to decide they hate this (or any other show). On the contrary, I like that some of these aren't real, it helps distance myself as a viewer, with what happens on the screen, all the whilst being on the edge of my seat, marathoning the show in such speed, that I finished all 75 episodes in less than 2 weeks! (ok, part of it was because I wanted to finish before Amazon Prime took the show off, as it was suggested to me only a few weeks before it was set to go, but the main reason was that I wanted to see MORE of this kickass Annie Walker and her stories). 

I liked that the show and characters have many grey areas, they're not systematically all good or all bad, and that sometimes, they make mistakes, even the main characters. 

I really loved some of the complicated relationships everyone has, and that people are different from one another - some are less bold and work as tech, behind the scenes, others on the forefront of every action, and yet others, somewhere in between. 

The main cast includes Kari Matchett and Peter Gallagher (Joan and Arthur Campbell, the usual bosses for Anne and her coworkers). Their relationship as spouses who run Divisions and being one another's boss were very complex aspects of the show, and their mutual dedication made it complicated and interesting for their job-related decision making - not to mention some personal impacts due to their spy lives. 

Guest and recurring cast includes : Hill Harper, Gregory Itzin, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Dylan Taylor, Nic Bishop, Oded Fehr, Nazneen Contractor, Amy Jo Johnson, Sarah Clarke, and many more. 

Dialogues are usually in English, but many episodes add other languages - it was helpful that I was able to use the French subtitles on Prime, as the English ones covered, very oddly, only the English dialogues...  

The show isn't as dark as some, and has quite a bit of comic relief- sometimes dark humor - and many emotionally-charged moments, perhaps as many as action and suspenseful ones. But, there are still some very dark moments, and characters sometimes take reprehensible actions - hence the grey areas I mentioned earlier. 

I noted, for information on a feminist level, that despite the huge male cast, there are also many women, including in positions of power (such as Joan), and that many dialogues between women aren't always about men - thus passing the Bechdel test in numerous scenes. 

Almost every guest star who speaks one of the extra languages did so convincedly, as far as my ear could detect at least, but, with all due respect to Tovah Feldshuh (whom I've seen elsewhere and appreciated), her poor Hebrew spoken as Eyal Levin's boss was a poor choice : the Hebrew of the head of the Mossad shouldn't sound like grinding words into a rough powder, but be perfect - just like Oded Fehr as Eyal, an actual Israeli actor who can speak proper Hebrew and thus a lot more convincing.

The first 3 seasons share the same opening theme - can you save me, by Apple trees and tangerines, a brother and sister duo. The theme images shows Anne, some of her coworkers, and her sister, in an interesting flow of actions. As Anne's growth takes a turn after important events at the end of season 3, the 4th and 5th theme is shortened to the name of the show, and the cast is listed during the scenes following it (the theme never starts the episode, only after some scenes have been shown). 

In general, the music pieces played during the episodes fit the mood- dramatic, action, suspense - but sometimes, I didn't like the songs, preferring the instrumental pieces instead. One good aspect of these, however, is that most often, the chosen music fits at least the geographical location of the story. 

Overall, the show is PG to PG13, for some dialogues and suggestive material, as well as the overall tone, being a spy show. During the first four seasons, there are many hand-to-hand combats and some shootings, but the blood is kept to a minimal in the majority of cases. 

Season five (the last one) is darker and more graphic, including a lot more bloody scenes, more prolonged than previous seasons, and even has some graphic torture (as opposed to less visually, more psychological, in previous seasons, at least in general). Season five, therefore, is rather TV-14 to TV-MA at moments, but even at this higher, bloodier aspect, they're not as bad as they could have been !  - I was able to watch most of it, though that *one* torture scene made me wince a bit. (as a side point, this is where I notice the benefits of having applied what I learned in CBT). 

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List of trigger warnings 

The most graphic episode is S5EP13 "she believes", with torture, blood spatters, character with bloody face and clothes. Could have actually been far worse, but graphic enough to make one wince - and also to the torture itself. 

S4EP04 "rock my soul"' shows a bit more lengthy scene with murdered characters, blood spatters on the walls, around the room, and characters. If I recall well, there's a flashback to that in the recap in S4EP05.  

S5EP14 'transport is arranged" also has torture, less graphic in itself but psychologically disturbing nonetheless. Character with 

bloodied face and clothes, wounds. 

In some episodes, characters are either hit by a car, or fall from a building, to their death. Small pools of blood are shown briefly. I'm sorry, I didn't take note of all instances, but for example S5EP08, S5EP04. 

S5EP03 has a quick filed-operation on a character, but it's actually not graphic, contrary to what I was expecting when it started. A few other episodes show one or other character stitching someone's wounds, but it's never graphic and camera positions move away every time. 

In mental health level, a character's lefts and feet after a suicide by hanging. The rest of the body isn't shown, it's not bloody nor graphic, nor lengthy, only shown very briefly, this is S4EP16. 

S4EP02 could have an emet-trigger, but the only scene is a character runs to the WC as she's pregnant, nothing shown and I don't recall audio trigger, though if it was one, it lasted only a second or two. 

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After the fact, I read that the real CIA is forbidden from acting on US soil, and cannot, either, act as a generic SWAT team as shown in the show. Those 2 major goofs in facts makes the show unrealistic in our world, where CIA operatives acting on US soil would actually violate Federal law, so the show could be seen, in this fiction, as an alternate world, oops...  

Despite this factual error, i find the show entertaining, gripping with the suspense, and contrary to other reviewers, liked the acting. Cinematography and production quality are both very good. 

Sadly, the show was canceled at the end of season 5, with an open ending, which could eventually (as most fans wish) be rebooted. Despite this, the ending does have an interesting conclusion and as long as there is no sequel, you can imagine how events unfold after that.

I personally highly recommend the show, and in fact, plan to buy the dvds, one I find which edition I should get - for that subtitle issue.