Postmortem: Covert Affairs 2×08

I’m sorry for the delay in writing about last week’s Covert Affairs, but honestly, it was so disappointing I just couldn’t muster up the energy to write about it until now.  Not disappointing in the psychic sense, mind you—I guessed pretty much everything correctly.  But after last week’s epic Auggie episode, I was decidedly underwhelmed with the angst of Annie and her crazy-eyed former fling.  They knew each other for THREE WEEKS.  It was TWO YEARS AGO.  In SRI LANKA.  He has CRAZY EYES.  Why does she still care about him?  Why are we supposed to care about him?  This whole plot is mystifying to me with its stupidness.

In other love interest that I don’t care about news, wtf is up with the sudden appearance of Jai as a romantic interest?  They moved from awkward, painful flirting to meeting the family awfully quickly.  I know why they did it—they needed a successful date to juxtapose with Ben’s arrival, plus Jai needed to know where Annie lives—but there needs to be more reason to put two characters together than just it being necessary for plot purposes.  At least set it up in earlier episodes.  Especially since last week’s set up the beginnings of an Annie/Auggie relationship.  There has to be SOME rhyme or reason to character pairings. For fuck’s sake.  I am getting way too angry at a USA program.  I think it’s because neither of the Tuesday shows had a shirtless dude, and that is frankly unacceptable.

Predictions: Covert Affairs

Covert Affairs has totally not given me any twists to predict in the past few weeks, but I do have a few stray predictions I would like to put down for posterity.  But first, it looks like I called another one before the show started!  I know I said that it looked like I had been proven wrong about Jai’s father being either a baddie or a bloviating politician.  Looks like I was actually right, on both counts.  I was also right about the rehabilitation of Jai, us seeing the ex-fling, and it looks like I’m right about the love triangle too.  Go me!  Now for the predictions:

Postmortem: Covert Affairs 1×03

I feel like it usually takes about three episodes for any TV series to make itself clear, so by that token, Covert Affairs last night established itself as a USA summer show par excellence:  not necessarily good, but watchable and fun.  Since I eat that shit up, I’ll be sticking with it all summer.  Unfortunately, last night’s episode didn’t have much in the way of plot twists to guess (they pretty much showed us the baddie in the first scene—not hard to guess), but it did furnish me with a few further predictions.

Postmortem: Covert Affairs 1×02

Sorry for the delay—life got in the way.  This will be short, as I must get it up before the next episode airs, lest I be a Bad Blogger.  So, Covert Affairs, episode 2: The Legend of Walter’s Gold.  Opinions first:  I found this episode to be much weaker than the pilot, mostly because of the introduction of two new elements, both of which kind of sucked.  I’m finding Mohinder the Spy to be both totally pointless and a complete charisma vacuum, although I’ve never thought Sendhil Ramamurthy was particularly charismatic.  That being said, he was better on Heroes, and if something is better on Heroes you know you’re in trouble.  Also, my comment last week about how I wish Christopher Gorham was playing the Sendhil Ramamurthy role while a visually impaired actor plays Auggie goes double now.  Christopher Gorham is one of the few actors who could make that role interesting.

But the disappointingness of the new cast member is nothing compared the utter shit that is the credit sequence.  Holy crap, it is embarrassing.  Just watch:

UGH. UGH. You know what it reminds me of? A much worse version of the credit sequence on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  That aired 10 years ago, and looks technologically advanced next to this crap.  Ugh.

But opinions aren’t what you’re reading this blog for, you want predictions!  The baddie was particularly easy to guess this week…

Predictions: Rubicon

AMC’s new original series, Rubicon, is admittedly not in my wheelhouse.  I know that some weird shit is gonna go down, but the thing about weird shit going down is it doesn’t really matter what the shit is, just that it’s weird (and going down).  I will probably know more once the series begins in earnest, but after only watching the pilot (which is available here on amc.tv), my only observations were either immediate and obvious (obviously Miranda Richardson’s father was going to shoot himself after he saw the four-leaf clover–do I really need to explain why?), or too vague to bother.  Regardless, here are a few predictions I do feel safe making:

• Whatever the organization is, it has a supernatural bent.  It will also be weirdly old-timey.
• The guy who got killed in the train wreck knew that the train was going to crash, because the Shadowy Organization was going to make it crash.
• Will’s moods will swing wildly from mopey to really fucking mopey.
• Miranda Richardson will be vastly underused.
• Names will pop up that look meaningful, but are probably just the writers being clever for no reason (Katherine Rhumor, Tanya MacGuffin, etc).
• James Badge Dale will be constantly compared to Matthew Morrison, even though they look nothing alike besides their hair.
• The main character will develop a relationship with his secretary, but probably not until late in the season at the earliest, possibly next season.  There’s a chance he’ll go for the new girl instead, but since her last name is MacGuffin I’m guessing she’ll play another role.

This brings me to a Rule of TV, in this case a Rule of Love Interests/Gender Dynamics:  If the guy is super smart, the love interest will not be.  She’ll just be super nurturing.  Actually, this applies even without a love interest situation–women are never geniuses, unless she’s unattractive and she can be a comedic nerd, or she’s super hot and is a spy, or a secondary character who is “quirky”, ala Garcia from Criminal Minds or Abby from NCIS.  Other than that, men are smart, women are caring and hot.  Occasionally they can be intuitive, but that’s very different from being purely smart.  Although maybe I should give AMC more credit here, seeing as Mad Men is one of the more consistently feminist shows on TV.

What are your theories?  Sound off below.

Predictions: Covert Affairs

Covert Affairs is USA’s new summer show, premiering July 13th after White Collar.  The plot is your pretty standard spy show–girl next door gets recruited to CIA, kicks ass while wearing tight dresses, nefarious schemes are afoot, blah blah fight scene blah lipstick poison blah.  It looks like Alias minus Victor Garber and the weird Rambaldi stuff, which is to say, Alias minus the awesome.  Nonetheless, I will be watching it, for four reasons:  a) USA has a decent track record for original series, b) it looks better than everything else on this summer, c) it’s on after White Collar, which I will be watching because I loves me some Matt Boner Bomer, and d) I have to see if it will be as predictable as I think it will.  Using just the information found on the official website, I predict that the following will happen over the course of the first season (assuming it makes it the whole season):

• It will appear as if Peter Gallagher is  having an affair, but really he is a double/triple agent.  The poor man’s SpyDaddy, if you will.
• There will be some other shadowy organization that Piper Perabo’s ex-boyfriend is involved with, but that link will be resolved surprisingly early on.
• That organization in general, and possibly her ex-boyfriend in particular, were directly related to Christopher Gorham going blind.  This will cause Tension, but not very much, and just for an episode.
• Piper Perabo and Sendhil Ramamurthy will be set up as the romantic endgame, but most fans will ship her and Christopher Gorham, because he is a woobie.
• There will be a tiresome side plot about not letting Anne Dudek find out about Piper Perabo’s spy double life, that will sadly not end in an awesome “Francie hates coffee ice cream” fight.  Instead, Anne Dudek, her husband, or one of her children will be held hostage or something, and they’ll have to try to rescue them without them discovering Piper Perabo’s spying.  No matter what, Anne Dudek’s talents will be wasted.
• There will be an excuse to have Piper Perabo in a bikini/lingerie, or at least a very tight, revealing dress, at least once an episode.  She will also wear many wigs (or maybe not, if they want to avoid being a really obvious  Alias ripoff).
• Christopher Gorham will have to go undercover at some point.
• While undercover, he will have to pretend to be sighted at some point.
• He will also have to drive a car.  They won’t use the music from Sneakers, but they should.  (These three points may or may not happen in the same episode.)
• Piper Perabo will have to put on many foreign accents.  None of them will be believable.
• Piper Perabo’s living situation will be needlessly shit.  (I’m guessing she’s living with her sister’s family and it’s comically awful, even though she presumably makes a decent amount of money.)  Christopher Gorham’s living situation will be needlessly awesome (sweet-ass apartment, probably.)
• There will be a gag where someone rearranges Christopher Gorham’s office furniture.
• Sendhil Ramamurthy’s father is either a baddie, a bloviating politician, or both.  (Played by Gregory Itzin, so it’s not a stretch).
• The plot will in no way involve a giant spinning ball of red water, and will be poorer for it.

I have more theories, but I kind of want to wait until the series actually airs to reveal them.  I think I’ve made a pretty good start.  Leave your predictions in the comments.