Psych: Not Even Close… Encounters

An outstanding Psych last night. Let’s dive right in:

A lawyer named Roy Kessler (Charles Martin Smith) works late in the study of his stately manor. Suddenly, the house starts shaking, the lights start blinking, and the television goes on the fritz. Accompanied by Toby (Adam Greydon Reid), a young attorney with his firm who was helping him with his work, Roy rushes outside and sees a blinding light in the sky. The light descends to the ground, and a spooky, alienesque apparition appears. Toby stumbles into the light… which disappears, taking Toby with it.

In the morning, Lassiter, Juliet and Henry all arrive at the crime scene, trailed by UFO enthusiasts Shawn and Gus, who are naturally gung-ho about Roy’s story of Toby’s extra-terrestrial abduction. (Roy: “Are you UFO chasers?” Shawn: “Nothing as ridiculous as that. We’re psychic detectives.”) The police refuse to investigate this nonsense any further, but Shawn and Gus happily take the case.

Toby’s car, which won’t start, is still parked in Roy’s driveway, and Toby isn’t answering his cell phone. Shawn finds signs that back up Roy’s account of what happened -- the outside lights are shattered, and there’s a huge circle burned in the lawn.

Shawn and Gus decide to consult with their childhood friend and fellow UFO freak Dennis (Freddie Prinze, Jr.). Dennis, however, claims to have reformed his geeky ways. He’s happily married to his gorgeous wife Molly (Becky O’Donohue), who is blissfully unaware of his geek past.

After Molly leaves the room, Dennis ushers Shawn and Gus into his secret geek lair, which is filled with sci-fi memorabilia and homemade Renaissance Faire costumes. He gripes bitterly about having to hide his geek side and maintain a façade of being a macho jock for Molly’s sake:

Dennis: “Yeah, I’d hit that.” What, exactly, am I hitting?
Gus: Most likely an attractive lady.
Dennis: Okay, that’s horrible.

Meanwhile, Roy cheerfully alerts the press about Toby’s alien abduction, which leads to a mocking newspaper item, complete with an unflattering photo of Shawn and Gus (Shawn: “Oh my God, I look like k.d. lang!"). Toby has turned up, safe and sound -- he claims his car simply didn’t start at Roy’s house, so he caught a taxi home. It seems Roy has a long history of believing in crazy conspiracies and is prone to psychotic episodes. Shawn and Gus find themselves the laughing stock of the police department. (Lassiter does a happy little dance at their humiliation.)

Roy is suspended from his law firm, and his cases are reassigned to Toby. Suspecting that Toby might’ve rigged the whole UFO scenario to discredit Roy for his own personal gain, Shawn and Gus follow Toby around. To avoid detection, they don ingenious disguises, borrowed from Dennis’s memorabilia stash: Shawn wears Adama’s helmet from the original Battlestar Galactica, while Gus wears Geordi’s visor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Toby contacts them, claiming Roy was telling the truth, and asks to meet with them in secret at a hotel. As soon as they arrive, however, Toby falls to his death from the hotel window.

The coroner finds a strange object in Toby’s stomach (Gus’s logical guess: It’s an alien embryo), which turns out to be a flash drive containing documents relating to a class-action suit Roy was bringing against a chemical plant called Budding Textiles over a dangerous chemical spill. As a result of the spill, an entire small town was evacuated, and Budding Textiles bought up all the land. From a lab analysis of the soil, Shawn deduces that the chemical spill was intentional -- there’s a vast supply of oil beneath the ground in the town, and Budding Textile wanted to get their hands on the property.

Shawn and Gus investigate the abandoned town. A blinding light appears in the sky… which turns out to be a helicopter containing Budding, the CEO of the chemical company, and his armed henchmen. They whisk Shawn and Gus away to a warehouse. Shawn reveals Budding’s nefarious scheme: He paid Toby to rig the whole fake UFO abduction to discredit Roy and get the lawsuit dropped. Before Budding can kill Gus and Shawn, Lassiter, Juliet, and a nunchaku-wielding Dennis all arrive at the warehouse and make the appropriate arrests.

The newspaper runs a story vindicating Shawn and Gus, complete with another unflattering photo (Henry: “My God, Shawn, you look like Billie Jean King!”). And Molly discovers Dennis’s secret lair, but turns out to be a closet geek herself. So all turns out well.

Cute episode. Clever script. Lots of quotable lines. Good stuff.

Awesome Eighties references:
Shawn: (after Henry claims he and Gus only took Roy’s case because they were blinded by their love of UFOs): The only thing we were blinded by is SCIENCE!

Gus: (after Shawn vows to no longer investigate anything related to a childhood obsession) What if there’s a Pop Rocks murder?
Shawn: That is the exception.

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
Lassiter shows Henry his very extensive crap list: “I like to keep track of people who have wronged me. Shawn. My mother. Olympia freaking Dukakis.”
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Covert Affairs: South Bound Suarez

Ah, the life of a CIA agent. Annie’s important mission this week: Cozy up to a leggy Venezuelan soccer player/ Georgetown student named Diego (Michael Steger). Diego’s sister Julia (Lana Parrilla), a banker in Caracas, is the mistress of a crimelord named Victor (Julian Acosta). With Julia’s assistance, Victor has been embezzling millions of dollars out of the accounts of US oil conglomerates. The CIA, keenly invested in the plight of those poor, downtrodden oil companies, wants to use Julia to bring Victor down.

(Seriously, oil companies? I don’t think Covert Affairs could have come up with a less sympathetic victim. Oh, sure, it’s mentioned that Victor is using the influx of embezzled funds to dangerously destabilize the Venezuelan economy, which is a legitimate-sounding concern, but… oil companies??? My heart, it bleeds.)

To get close to Diego, Annie poses as a Smithsonian worker who spends her weekends playing soccer with a gaggle of nubile college students. Oh, hell, why not? Diego, naturally, falls prey to Annie’s charms and agrees to help convince his sister to betray Victor. In exchange, the CIA will provide US citizenship and protection for Diego and Julia.

While cute, Diego is sort of annoying and grope-happy with Annie, which the episode attributes, unsuccessfully, to him being one of those hot-blooded Latin types. I’ve never found unchecked lechery to be an especially charming and endearing character trait (to her credit, neither does Annie); between Auggie and Conrad in the pilot and now Diego, Covert Affairs could do with fewer horny Alpha males hovering around.

(Annie, by the way, speaks fluent Spanish to Diego. Spanish, Russian, Sinhalese… counting English, we’re up to four of her six languages.)

Meanwhile, on the streets of Caracas, a CIA agent named Lopez is ambushed by Victor and his gang of armed henchmen. Victor strangles Lopez to death with his necklace, which features a gold 20 bolívares coin on a gold chain. After murdering Lopez, Victor presents the necklace as a gift to Julia. Villainy established.

While Annie spells out the plan to Diego, Auggie hovers on a nearby bench and (sightlessly) monitors the situation. Back at Domestic Protection Division headquarters, Joan chides Auggie for putting himself at risk -- he’s not sanctioned for field duty -- and kindly but firmly tells him his days as a field agent are over.

In Joan’s office, Annie and Joan discuss Annie’s upcoming mission to escort Diego to Caracas. Annie’s weirdly elaborate cover: She’s Diego’s girlfriend, who also happens to be a Smithsonian employee visiting Venezuela to obtain a letter James Madison wrote to Simon Bolivar. It seems like they could have probably done entirely without the second half of that cover, no? Annie shows off her new Smithsonian ID badge to Joan; Joan glances at it, winces, and says, “Too bad about the photo.”

I love Joan.

Sexy Jai lurks in the doorway during all this, looking adorably worried. When Annie leaves, he tells Joan they’ve lost contact with their Caracas agent, Lopez.

Annie packs for her first overseas mission. Ah, here we have another of those scenes with her sister Danielle that I love so much. Okay, Covert Affairs, we’re three episodes in, and Danielle has yet to show a single redeeming personality trait. She’s self-absorbed, oblivious, and spiteful, and her scenes are not fun to watch. I get that this is no doubt laying groundwork for future episodes where Annie will have difficulty keeping her work life and personal life separate, but Annie’s home life is dragging this otherwise buoyant and breezy show down. Here’s hoping Annie moves into her own place soon.

Upon arrival in Caracas, Diego takes Annie to the bank to meet Julia. Horrified at the age difference (Annie is 28, Diego is 20), Julia accuses Annie of being a “cougar” with impure intentions toward her baby brother. Tip, Julia: Anyone in her twenties cannot be classified as a cougar. Really. Annie spills the beans about her true intentions: She wants Julia to put an electronic tag on Victor’s Cayman Islands bank accounts so the CIA will be able to track the embezzled funds. In exchange, Annie will give Julia a US passport and a fresh new identity.

Julia, who has no intention of leaving her life in Caracas, initially refuses to believe Victor is involved with anything shady, but Annie eventually convinces her to play along. The password to Victor’s accounts changes every minute, so he carries an electronic fob which provides him with the current password whenever he’s in the proximity of Julia’s computer. Julia agrees to bring Victor to lunch with Annie and Diego, then swipe the fob from him during their usual post-lunch tryst.

Meanwhile, news of the discovery of Lopez’s dismembered body reaches the DPD. Joan, Jai and Auggie eat Chinese food and look glum and debate whether to pull Annie out of Venezuela, now that her cover may have been compromised. Jai is all for yanking her, while Joan and Auggie decide to leave her in place. Sadly, this is all Joan, Jai and Auggie will do for this entire episode: look grimly determined, contemplate aborting the mission, agree to keep Annie undercover for the time being. Repeat as necessary.

Also, there is no Peter Gallagher in this episode. What’s that all about?

At lunch, Annie relentlessly works her Smithsonian cover, quoting Bolivar for all she’s worth to convince Victor of her bona fides. Victor, who is either smitten or suspicious or both, offers to chauffer Annie to the Smithsonian. Annie and Julia make a hurried plan to meet at the bank later.

So Annie and Victor zip around Caracas in his Ferrari. Victor lets Annie take the wheel, then reveals that he knows she’s a spy and shoots her in the shoulder. Annie somehow manages to disarm him, beat him up, and throw him out of the car while still driving the damn Ferrari, which is no mean trick.

Wounded yet still plucky (she calls Auggie to cheerfully tell him she’s bleeding all over the posh interior of the Ferrari), Annie arrives at the bank and gives the fob to Julia, who gets the password and adds the electronic tag to Victor’s accounts. Victor and his henchmen arrive, but Annie, Julia and Diego manage to get out of the bank and flee to the States. Unbeknownst to Annie, Victor trails them out of the country.

Back in DC, Julia has difficulty adjusting to life without Victor, whom she still refuses to believe is a bad guy. Even though he, y’know, shot Annie. Julia is not terribly bright. Julia slips away from CIA protective custody and secretly meets with Victor at Potomoc Park.

Diego, Annie, and some random agent named Hughes trail Julia to her rendezvous with Victor. Hughes shoots and kills Victor just as he tries to strangle Julia with Lopez’s coin necklace. While all this goes down, Annie sort of hovers ineffectually on the sidelines.

Huh. Sort of an odd way to end things. I get that we’re too early in Annie’s development as a spy to see her killing people -- she doesn’t even carry a gun -- but it was a little jarring to have Mr. Random Agent step into the spotlight and wrap things up, especially since Joan, Jai and Auggie spent the entire episode loitering around the DPD headquarters looking like a trio of grim bunny rabbits. It’s been established that Auggie can’t do field work because of his blindness, and Joan doesn’t do field work because she’s the boss, but what’s Jai’s excuse? Two episodes of Jai, and he hasn’t stepped a single pretty foot outside Langley yet. This seems like an oversight.

Still, good show. It’s got a ways to go before it reaches its potential, if indeed it ever does, but I’m enjoying the journey.
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Psych: Feet Don’t Kill Me Now

Lassiter and Juliet investigate a fatal car accident in which the driver, Desiree Blake, evidently drove over an embankment into the ocean and drowned. Still concerned about Juliet’s fragile mental state after her traumatic encounter with Mr. Yin, Lassiter shoos her away from the crime scene, sternly telling her, “There will be plenty of other females who have died horrific deaths, and you can investigate all of them when you’re ready.”

Shawn and Gus arrive and snoop around. Shawn notices signs in the car that indicate Desiree wasn’t in there alone. He also finds a baggie filled with unidentified prescription pills. Shawn tries to share his results, but Lassiter won’t let them in on the case until they get approval from new police liaison Henry. Shawn is not terribly pleased about this:

Shawn: I’d be lying if I said I liked having to ask my dad for case assignments. I’d also be lying if I said Val Kilmer still looks like Val Kilmer.
Gus: I still have hope.
Shawn: Me too.

Gus leaves the scene to scurry off to his tap-dancing class. Lassiter, scornful yet intrigued, grills him on the details: “Is it court-ordered? Will it make you faster? Are you investigating some kind of dancing drug ring?”

(Is this entire episode just a flimsy pretext to let Dulé Hill show off his mad tap skills? Yes. Yes, it is. I have no complaints.)

Lassiter trails Gus to his class and loiters around the lobby while Gus taps up a storm. He wants to join in, but Gus bursts his bubble, claiming the class will be far beyond his skill level. Lassiter snipes, “I’ll have them send over the transcripts from Walking and Chewing Gum School,” and joins the class anyway.

Predictably, he’s a disaster. Gus takes him aside and gives him some private coaching, and finally, he starts to get into the swing of it. Further, he finds tap-dancing relaxes his mind and allows him to focus on his investigations more effectively. Mid-tapping, it occurs to him he forgot to call the police lab for an analysis of the prescription pills found in Desiree’s car. Pharmaceutical representative Gus takes one glance at the pills and identifies them as clinical trial samples from a local laboratory.

Gus and Lassiter form an impromptu partnership and head off to the lab together, where the cute technician, Lillian, identifies the pills as an experimental fertility treatment. Lillian insists she was the only one administering the test, which Gus realizes is a lie -- it was a double-blind test, and thus there must have been two administrators. Under interrogation, Lillian confesses she was trying to protect her lab partner, Ben -- Desiree was Ben’s girlfriend, who was taking the pills on the sly because she was trying to get pregnant but couldn’t afford fertility treatments.

Shawn trails Gus to the laboratory via the GPS parental controls he installed on Gus’s phone. Outraged that Gus is investigating this without him, he badgers Henry into letting him in on the case as well. Henry partners him with Juliet, who is still seething about Lassiter shutting her out of the investigation.

(Wow, with his new job at the police department, Henry seems to have absorbed most of Chief Vick’s job duties. I’m sort of thinking this new development will end up chipping away at Kristen Nelson’s already-meager screen time.)

While trying to find Ben, the Shawn/Juliet and Gus/Lassiter teams bicker and feud and mangle the investigation. Shawn and Juliet pose as a couple and sign up for fertility treatments; Gus and Lassiter tap-dance while brainstorming for ideas. They arrest Ben for murder, but release him after Lillian produces records that prove he was in the lab at the time of Desiree’s death. Ben is released from custody and immediately thereafter turns up dead, drowned from an apparent surfing accident.

The SBPD’s eccentric coroner, Woodrow (Kurt Fuller), deduces that both Desiree and Ben died from dry-drowning, not from being submerged in water. Shawn and a tap-dancing Lassiter puzzle it out: Lillian killed them both through an overdose of anesthesia in the lab, then dumped them in the ocean to disguise her crimes. She was secretly having an affair with Ben, and killed Desiree when she realized Desiree was trying to get pregnant. When Ben got wind of her actions, he threatened to turn her in, so she killed him as well.

And we wrap things up with Shawn and Juliet in the audience of a tap-dancing showcase, watching Gus tapping up another storm. (Yes, Gus. We’re all duly impressed. You can sit down now.) Following Gus’s triumphant performance, Lassiter takes the stage, tapping with a group of small children. Once again, the tapping stimulates his mental processes, and he shouts out, mid-performance, “I know who the Westside rapist is!”

A fine episode. Tap-dancing Lassiter! Hard to top that.

Gus’s fake names:
Santonio Holmes (wide receiver for the Jets) and Deon Richmond (former child actor who used to play Rudy’s friend Bud on The Cosby Show. It’s an inside joke: There’s a popular urban legend that Dulé Hill played Bud.)

Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn: (after he and Gus make a particularly clever deduction): And now we revel, Alien-style. (Shawn and Gus claw the air and emit high-pitched squeals, a la the creatures in Alien. Which, granted, was released in 1979, but it’s close enough to count for these purposes.)
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White Collar: Need To Know

Still looking into the plane explosion that killed Kate, Diana and Peter stake out the secret meeting that Fowler had scheduled. An unidentified man shows up at the meeting point, but scurries away when Peter runs toward him, waving his badge around and identifying himself as a Federal agent. Imagine that. I have no doubt that Peter is an excellent FBI man, but perhaps he should work on his sneaky, stealth approach a bit.

Meanwhile, Peter and Neal investigate a corrupt State Senator, Gary Jennings, who has been illegally funneling money into his reelection campaign. One of his staffers has provided Peter with an account of mysterious meetings, unaccounted-for donations, and two sets of books. Neal comes up with a plan to bring Jennings down: After Peter makes a big public commotion about wanting to dig up dirt on Jennings while investigating an old scandal, Neal swoops in, with a carefully-crafted alias, and tries to get hired by Jennings to smooth over the scandal and get the FBI off his trail. Neal accomplishes this by talking a bunch of nonsense and looking super-pretty. This works surprisingly well.

(There’s a lot of time devoted to Neal’s madcap scheme, which involves creating a scandal about a prospective stadium to deflect attention from the real scandal. It’s not the best scheme Neal has ever concocted, frankly, and if I wanted to watch Wag the Dog, I would have rented Wag the Dog.)

Elizabeth is out of town on business in San Francisco. Like last week, there’s only one scene featuring her, which, like last week’s Rockefeller Center scene, is shot in front of a green screen. This time, she’s standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge while chatting on the phone to Peter. I realize this is probably due to Tiffani Thiessen’s advanced pregnancy/reduced mobility during filming, but it’s still weird -- and yet strangely hilarious. I sort of hope this trend continues, with the locations becoming more and more exotic with each passing episode. Maybe next week she’ll be standing in front of the Great Wall of China, or the Kremlin, or the Taj Mahal.

Anyway, since Elizabeth is out of the picture, Neal offers to take Peter out drinking to keep him company. Peter lies about having to go on a stakeout instead. He’s actually meeting secretly with Diana to look through surveillance photos of the mystery man. Diana is in possession of the music box, and while Peter knows she has it, he doesn’t know where she’s hiding it. Still worried about Neal’s fragile mental state, they’re keeping their investigation into Kate’s death a secret from him. All these secrets will no doubt lead to horrible problems and misunderstandings down the road.

Neal snoops around Jennings’s office and finds a matchbook from a high-class escort service, with the (totally obnoxious) password “CiNNaMoN212” scrawled inside it. Jennings presents Neal with the surveillance photos of Peter and Diana -- he thinks Neal could use this alleged proof of Peter’s infidelity to discredit the FBI investigation into his campaign. Neal, for some reason that only makes sense inside his beautiful head, claims that Diana is not just Peter’s girlfriend -- she’s a prostitute.

Neal, by the way, is terribly miffed at this proof that Peter and Diana are having fun without him, and even more miffed that Peter lied to him about the stakeout. Mozzie reassures him that Peter is only trying to protect him.

Thinking Diana can give them dirt on Peter, Jennings arranges for her to get in touch with a man named Barrow, who launders Jennings’s dirty money through his escort service. Diana, dressed in a slinky dress and hooker-appropriate heels, meets with Barrow at a fancy party hosted by his escort service. He offers to let her work for him, providing she’s willing to go through an audition: She has to pick one of the men at the party, spend the night with him, and receive ten thousand dollars in cash for it. Just as Diana is trying to figure out what to do about this, Neal shows up at the party, posing as her prospective client. They head off to a lavish hotel suite together, where they loll in bed in bathrobes and share anecdotes about their pasts while waiting for Peter to come up with the ten grand.

At Neal’s suggestion, Peter heads off to meet with Mozzie to get the money. It really does seem like the FBI should have a better way of coming up with quick cash, doesn’t it? I don’t want to cast aspersions, but sometimes this show seems something less than grittily realistic. Anyway, Mozzie and Peter go through an elaborate rigmarole involving magnets and shoelaces and secret storage lockers, and eventually produce the cash, which Mozzie secretly delivers to Diana and Neal.

Anxious to bring Peter down any way he can, Jennings asks Barrow to rough up Diana to get information out of her. Peter rushes to Diana’s rescue, and finds that she’s already got the situation well under control, having shot Barrow in the shoulder when he pulled a gun on her. Barrow confesses everything about his shady dealings and money-laundering, which gives Peter and Neal enough evidence to arrest Jennings.

And… that’s pretty much it. Once again, much like last week, this is an okay episode, but nothing more. It feels like the season is off to a bit of a sluggish start, which hopefully won’t last long; Neal and Peter are adorable enough to keep my interest even when the plot sags a little, but this show is capable of much more.
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Covert Affairs: Walter's Walk

We open with exciting news from the CIA’s Domestic Protection Division -- they’re moving into new offices! Spies: they’re just like us -- they have to schlep boxes filled with their personal crap to their new cubicles, too. Anyway, I guess they upgraded the DPD HQ set since shooting the pilot, because here we are, in a shiny new facility, which looks not terribly dissimilar to the shiny old facility. Still, everyone seems pretty happy about this development.

Joan gives newbie Annie the usual rookie assignment: debriefing the various civilians who walk into the CIA from off the street claiming to have valuable intel. Cue the usual montage of babbling crazies. Discussion topic: Can anyone name a montage -- of bad auditions, bad job interviews, bad blind dates, anything -- from any film or television show that was genuinely funny? It’s the nature of wacky montages to fall flat, and this one is sadly no exception.

One of the walk-ins is a woman named Helen, who claims her brainy young son Walter has been monitoring an old numbers station on short-wave radio. Walter decoded one of the messages transmitted by the station, which led him to stake out a local post office box. Walter saw a man removing an envelope from the box; unfortunately, the man also spotted him, and now Walter is scared for his life. Annie makes a note of the bandwidth for the numbers station and promises to look into it.

Oooh, there’s a new opening credits sequence! Kind of artsy -- color-blocked and silhouetted moving images. Not quite sure what I think about it yet. I’ll have to watch it a few more times before weighing in. Peter Gallagher, by the way, is not a member of the main cast -- he’s listed as a “Special Guest Star.” I’m pretty pro-Gallagher (the eyebrows alone are worth their weight in gold), so I’m hoping it’ll be a situation like Heather Locklear on Melrose Place, where she was in every damn episode without ever officially belonging to the regular cast.

Aaaand we get our first appearance from new cast member Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays sexy and mysterious agent Jai Wilcox, newly assigned to the DPD. For those who’ve been mentally mispronouncing his name, it’s neither Jai as in “Jai Ho,” the insanely catchy theme song from Slumdog Millionare, nor Jai as in jai alai, the insanely dangerous Basque ball sport. It’s pronounced “jay,” as in “naked as a jaybird,” which Ramamurthy is regrettably not. Maybe next episode.

There’s some not-terribly-subtle pre-existing tension between Jai and Auggie (more on Auggie’s end than on Jai’s, actually). This will probably be explained away in a later episode, but for the moment, I’m going to go ahead and assume this is because Jai kept dodging Auggie’s calls following that one memorable night during that unexpectedly erotic undercover mission in Kuala Lumpur all those years ago. Look, the official Covert Affairs website describes Jai’s character thusly: He has dated everyone from Congressional staffers to other CIA workers to a flight attendant he met while flying to a buddy's bachelor party in Reykjavik. Surely “everyone” also encompasses a cute blind technical operative from the DPD. In any case, that’s my story, and until it’s explicitly refuted, I’m sticking with it.

We get a chunk of exposition about Jai: He’s the son of the legendary former head of the Clandestine Services department, he’s something of a legend himself, and he’s the new special liaison between Joan’s and Arthur’s departments. Joan does not seem entirely thrilled about this development.

(Wow. Sendhil Ramamurthy is really, really pretty. Nice to have that bone structure back on my television screen on a weekly basis. Unlike Heroes, where all the characters seemed weirdly oblivious to Mohinder’s phenomenal beauty, his looks are not lost on the Covert Affairs gang: Even the blind guy remarks on his hotness.)

Auggie tunes into the old numbers station to see if Walter’s tip pans out. He overhears a woman reciting a string of numbers. Hey, I saw this episode! It turns out she’s this crazy French lady who’s been trapped on this freaky island for the past seventeen years! Don’t investigate those numbers too closely, Auggie; they’ll bring you nothing but pain. Anyway, Auggie determines the numbers station is indeed broadcasting active spy transmissions. He thinks he can decode the messages, but he needs the tapes that are still in Walter’s possession.

Helen calls Annie and says she and Walter have been followed ever since leaving CIA headquarters, then disconnects the call.

Joan holds a briefing: The messages provide the locations for dead drops for still-active IRA members, who might be planning an attack on US soil. (It falls to Jai to point out that this whole IRA plotline seems very 1987.) The CIA believes the intended recipient of the messages is one Michael Cahill, a former IRA head honcho who moved to the United States after being released from prison following a lengthy sentence for terrorist activities.

The CIA is working in conjunction with MI-6 on this. Annie has a rendezvous with a suave British agent, James Elliott (Steven Brand). Annie meets Elliott in a crowded market and exchanges some incredibly strained and suspicious coded spy banter about jars of honey. Having established their bona fides, Annie and James team up, compare high-tech spy devices, and break into Helen’s apartment to search for the tapes.

While they’re snooping around, a strange man busts open the front door and attacks Annie. Fisticuffs ensue. Well, finally! We’re twenty-four minutes into this episode, and this is the first action scene! The stranger gets the upper hand, but Elliott shoots him in the head.

Back at Langley, Joan bursts into Arthur’s office and interrupts his important meeting with representatives from the Finnish intelligence agency to confront him about transferring Jai to her division without her knowledge. Joan is ostensibly peeved about her husband going over her head with this, but she’s more likely concerned about the very real danger of Jai turning her seasoned operatives into a gaggle of pheromone-addled ninnies. And justly so. Conrad, by the way, is dispensed with in a vague reference to him being “gone.” Transferred to another department? Killed in the line of duty? We’ll probably never know, so I’m going to assume he quit the CIA to become a racecar driver in Europe, a la Farrah Fawcett’s character on Charlie’s Angels. It seems like the most logical alternative.

In other Joan-and-Arthur news, we discover Joan originally started seeing Arthur when he was married to someone else. So, y’know, her suspicions that Arthur is having an affair might not be completely unfounded.

And there’s a big tedious scene between Annie and her sister Danielle. Danielle and her husband are making a new will and want to appoint Annie guardian of their two daughters. Thinking of her dangerous job, Annie turns Danielle down. Danielle throws an epic hissyfit and flounces off. I’ve had quite enough of Danielle already, thank you. This scene just sucked up a couple of valuable minutes that could have been better spent examining the sexual tension between Auggie and Jai in greater detail

In a sequence sponsored heavily by Adidas, judging by the visible logos on everyone’s exercise togs, Annie and Auggie grapple with each other and roll around on the mats in the CIA’s fitness center. Ah, sweaty attractive people getting horizontal. Yeah, I like this show.

The CIA peacefully apprehend Michael Cahill when he arrives in DC. When Joan interrogates him, Cahill claims he has no more ties to his violent past.

Annie tracks Helen and Walter to a rental cabin in the woods, where they’ve been hiding from miscreants. Walter turns over the tapes to Annie, who plays them for Auggie back at Langley. While Auggie decodes the messages, Annie discovers James Elliott is a double agent working for the IRA, who has placed a tracking device on her phone and thus knows where Helen and Walter are hiding.

Elliott and his henchmen converge on the cabin. Annie hustles Helen and Walter to safety, then unplugs the gas pipe and sparks an electric fire, blowing the cabin and the henchmen to smithereens. Dangerous woman, that Annie Walker. Annie gets into a down-and-dirty scuffle with Elliott. Using the tips on fighting dirty that she picked up from Auggie in the gym, she blasts Elliott with pepper spray, bashes him over the head with a rock, and emerges triumphant.

Wrap-up: Auggie decodes Walter’s tapes, which concern a planned bombing outside a British bank in DC. Cahill was innocent all along; Elliott was setting him up to take the fall. Jai meets secretly with Arthur, who instructs him to get close to Annie, presumably in a between-the-sheets way, and find out all he can about her. And Annie finally agrees to be named the potential guardian of snitty Danielle’s kids.

A perfectly decent episode. Not as action-packed as the premiere, and with the exception of the business with the numbers station, there wasn’t much cool spy stuff. Still, they’re setting up some interesting ideas that might be paid off later, such as the presence of sex bomb Jai setting off potential shock waves in Joan’s department. We’ll see where it goes.
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Life Beyond Thunderdome: Dance 'Til Dawn

Dance 'Til Dawn. Anyone know this one?

1988 NBC made-for-TV movie? Alyssa Milano? Christina Applegate? Tracey Gold? Matthew Perry? Kelsey Grammer? Tempestt Bledsoe? Chris Young? Alan Thicke? Brian Bloom? Edie McClurg? Mary Frann?

If you have at least a passing familiarity with 1980s sitcoms, this is one to throw in your Netflix queue.

My review of this delightful monstrosity is up at Forces of Geek.

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Psych: Romeo & Juliet & Juliet

Hey! Psych is back, and it’s cute!

In the aftermath of last season’s finale, in which Juliet was kidnapped by the mysterious Mr. Yin, Henry has gone to work for the Santa Barbara police department as a consultant, Juliet has been reassigned to a desk job at City Hall until she recovers from her traumatic experience, and Shawn and Gus, optimistically (and erroneously) assuming Henry would send a bunch of fresh police cases their way, have hired (and fired) an awesome new assistant, Ken (Jerry Shea).

(I don’t know if there are any plans for Ken to last past this episode, but I’d be happy to see him stick around. Long-suffering and blisteringly funny, with a low tolerance for Shawn and Gus’s usual nitwittery, he adds a fresh dimension to the show. I found myself giggling at pretty much every one of his lines.)

The SBPD investigates the disappearance of Becky Cheng, a young woman abducted in broad daylight during Santa Barbara’s China Festival by a highly acrobatic young man. Henry refuses to let Shawn and Gus in on the investigation, due to their well-established knack for totally mucking things up. Shawn, naturally, thinks is way uncool:

Henry: Are you familiar with the term persona non grata?
Shawn: Why are we talking about food?

Shawn accuses his dad of perpetually expecting too much from him, citing the example of a childhood Easter Egg hunt in which Henry buried the eggs five feet under ground. (Henry: “I left loose dirt to indicate a fresh dig!”).

As is their wont, Shawn and Gus cheerfully disregard Henry’s orders and go to work on the case anyway. While searching Becky’s apartment, they find a secret desk drawer which contains a single Hong Kong fifty-cent piece. They take the coin to Juliet, still toiling at her dull desk job at City Hall, and try to get her to help them out. Juliet adamantly refuses to get involved, though she does immediately peg the coin as a counterfeit.

(Aaaaaaaand the counterfeit coin will never be mentioned again anywhere in this episode. If you’re a stickler for airtight plotting and neatly tying up dangling threads, you’d be better off staying far, far away from Psych.)

Lassiter (there is not nearly enough Lassiter in this episode, by the way), shows Juliet some photos of the scene of the abduction, in an attempt to entice her back to her old job as his partner. Shawn spots a sketch of a stylized Chinese dragon in one photo, which Lassiter and Juliet think might be linked to one of the two fierce Chinese gangs running amuck on the mean streets of Santa Barbara: the Golden Triad, and the Dragon Triad.

Shawn and Gus head to a pub rumored to be a key Golden Triad hangout and end up trailing an Asian kid with great spiky hair down to the docks, where they’re surrounded and captured by a group of heavily-armed men. Shawn and Gus are taken to the leader of the Dragon Triad… who turns out to be Becky Cheng’s father.

Mr. Cheng insists his daughter is not involved in any criminal activity. Shawn and Gus get nowhere with him, so they turn to Ken for help in deciphering the stylized dragon logo. Ken remembers seeing it spray-painted on the wall of a martial arts studio in Chinatown.

This, naturally, leads to Shawn infiltrating a martial-arts class for five- to eight-year-olds, which, also naturally, leads to Shawn and Gus breaking into the dojo at night, catching Becky’s kidnapper in the act of stealing from the safe, getting in the middle of a big Triad rumble, trailing the kidnapper back to Becky, and discovering that Becky hasn’t been kidnapped at all -- she and the young man, who turns out to be: a) the son of the head of the Dragon Triad and b) the father of her unborn child, have run off together, Romeo and Juliet-style.

Since there’s no kidnapping, Shawn visits Chief Vick and tells her his psychic powers have commanded him to stop the investigation. Henry, however, produces a photo the police just received of Becky bound and gagged. When Shawn takes the police to the apartment where Becky and her secret boyfriend, Sang Tan, were hiding, they find the place newly wrecked.

Shawn and Gus visit Han Tan, the head of the Dragon Triad. They bring along poor beleaguered Ken to translate. (Ken: “I speak nine words of Chinese. Six of those are numbers.”) It turns out that Sang, Han’s chosen heir, has a hot-headed older brother named Teno, who kidnapped Sang and Becky in an attempt to incite a war between the two Triads.

It all culminates with Shawn and Gus trying to rescue Sang and Becky from evil Teno’s clutches. Shawn ends up fighting Teno and losing, badly, but Juliet rushes in at the last minute, gun drawn, and saves him.

Cute episode. Not earthshaking, and maybe they could have pulled out a few more stops considering this was the season premiere, but it was nonetheless perfectly enjoyable. If the lack of big guest stars in this episode is any indication, they might be getting away from the relentless stunt casting, which is probably a good thing: Last season stumbled a bit, and the focus on the guest stars might’ve been a cause of that. The new season is off to a decent start.

Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn (preparing to attack Teno with the Crane Technique): “If I execute this properly, no can defend!”

Gus’s fake name:
Jonathan Jacob Jingly Smith. And yes, Shawn does the obvious “That’s my name, too” riff on it.

Gimmicky opening credits:
Cast names are written in Chinese and English.

Pineapple spotting:
Missed it. Again. Nul points.
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White Collar: Withdrawl

Bad news first: At no point in the White Collar season premiere does Neal wander around shirtless. Nor does he get captured and tied up and/or roughed up by miscreants. There are certain reasons why viewers turn to White Collar, and the expected weekly dose of Nealsploitation ranks high among those reasons.

So that’s disappointing.

More bad news: This is a thoroughly okayish kind of episode, but nothing more. Really, for a season premiere, it’s a bit underwhelming. Still, Neal is his usual beautiful and irrepressible self, and Peter is his usual gruff yet sympathetic self, and they still have that same fun chemistry and snappy banter that made the first season so satisfying, so how bad can things be? Mozzie, Elizabeth, June and Jones are all back, and Marsha Thomason even returns as Peter’s smart and savvy subordinate Diana; it’s good to see them all.

It’s been two months since the plane explosion that killed Kate. After a brief return to prison, Neal goes back to working with Peter as an FBI consultant. Ah, the idyllic world of White Collar, where Neal’s biggest complaint about prison life is the inadequate coffee.

Peter and Neal investigate a series of bank heists pulled off by a criminal calling himself “The Architect,” who leaves personalized business cards at the scenes of his crimes. I’m a little confused as to how the FBI could possibly lump armed robbery into the category of white-collar crime, but let’s go with it. From the distinctive Cyrillic “A” on the Architect’s card, Neal figures the culprit is a fan of Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky. From there, Neal unravels the identity of the Architect: art buff and wealthy businessman Edwin Walker. Walker is played by Tim “Otter” Matheson, who: a) also directed this episode, and b) also directed the premiere of USA’s splashy new series Covert Affairs, which immediately followed. So Matheson pretty much owned Tuesday night on USA.

Neal and Peter visit Walker at his personal putting green, which is located on the rooftop terrace of a Manhattan skyscraper. This is a negligent homicide charge waiting to happen. Walker is smarmy and arrogant, and they get nowhere with him. Also, Walker pokes fun at Neal’s golf ability and the electronic monitoring device on his ankle, so Neal swears to take him down.

Meanwhile, in a side plot, Peter and Mozzie keep skulking around and having clandestine meetings to exchange worried observations about Neal’s mental state following Kate’s murder. They’re both fretting up a storm about this, but honestly, Neal seems fairly hale and chipper about the whole ghastly business.

Oh, also, Elizabeth only makes one brief appearance (possibly owing to Tiffani Thiessen’s late stage of pregnancy during filming), in which she and Peter chat about Neal over lunch at Rockefeller Center, or at least a reasonable green-screen facsimile. I could be wrong -- White Collar films in New York, so there’s no reason they couldn’t have used the real location, but it struck me as strangely flat and artificial. Here’s hoping they increase Elizabeth’s presence in the rest of the season -- she’s a necessary and welcome component of the show.

Acting on his own, Neal orchestrates an allegedly accidental meeting with Walker’s attractive assistant. While Neal plies her with glasses of wine, Mozzie steals her phone and copies her schedule. Granted, Neal is just shamelessly exploiting this poor lady, but there are worse ways to kill an afternoon than hanging out in a posh wine bar while flirting with lovely Neal. After Mozzie successfully swipes her information, Neal gets rid of her by cheerfully telling her the truth about his criminal history. “You’re the first girl I’ve had a drink with since I got out of prison,” he chirps. She beats a hasty retreat.

Peter and Neal find a suspicious bank appointment on Walker’s schedule. They stake out the bank… you know what? I’m just not feeling this plot. I’ve been making glacially slow progress writing this recap, just because this episode really didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t bad -- it was just familiar, and more than a little dull. It’s the season premiere! I wanted more from the season premiere. Anyway, here’s the greatly condensed version of the plot: It turns out Walker is one step ahead of Peter and Neal. There’s another bank heist, and Walker gets away with the money, but Neal and Peter track down his accomplice and eventually manage to bring Walker to justice, the end.

And in another side plot, Mozzie tells Neal that the music box that Kate spent most of last season pursuing has been replaced by a counterfeit. And it turns out that Diana, of all people, is currently in possession of the original. I don’t know what that means, and honestly, I’m not all that interested. At this late stage, the whole music box plotline seems very last season.

So that was the premiere of White Collar. Not a disaster, but there’s certainly room for improvement. Let’s hope the rest of the season perks up a bit.
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Covert Affairs: Pilot

Aw, crap. I knew I should’ve joined the CIA, but noooooo, I had to pursue that important screenwriting degree instead. Just going by Covert Affairs, the CIA looks like great fun. Shootouts! Skydiving! Fistfights! Fabulous outfits!

We open with new CIA recruit Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) taking a pre-admission polygraph test. This gives her a handy chance to divulge a few chunks of her backstory right off the top: She’s 28, she speaks six languages, and her last relationship ended two years ago when the hot guy she met on a Sri Lankan beach (Eion Bailey) abandoned her without explanation, leaving an enigmatic note on her pillow: “The truth is complicated. Forgive me.” We see flashbacks of Annie frolicking around Sri Lanka with her beau while speaking fluent Sinhalese, so, y’know, she’s probably not kidding around about this “six languages” business. Perabo, by the way, is great in the role: She’s smart, she’s athletic, she’s goofy, she’s gorgeous. Thumbs up for the casting.

A month shy of completing her training, Annie gets mysteriously yanked off the Farm -- the colloquialism for the training facility at Camp Perry -- and sent to CIA headquarters for an immediate assignment. Upon arrival at Langley, she meets smug young agent Conrad Sheehan (Eric Lively), who flirts with her in a condescending way and announces, “I’m both lazy and predatory.” I have this sinking suspicion we’re supposed to find Conrad roguish and charming instead of dickish and off-putting. This is a bit worrisome, but there’s no sense getting too worked up about it: Conrad, rumor has it, is around for this pilot episode only, then will be replaced by some other actor. I’m not clear on the details. Hang on, let me do a quick search here… Sendhil Ramamurthy? Mr. Cheekbones? He’s going to be in this?

Why, I had no idea.

Annie dives right in to her new position in the DPD -- Domestic Protection Division -- which falls under the auspices of the DCD -- Department of Classified Services. Icy, brittle Joan Campbell (Kari Matchett) heads up the former, while her icy, brittle husband Arthur (Peter Gallagher) heads up the latter. There’s an attempt to explain away the problems in the Campbells’ crumbling marriage (Arthur might be unfaithful; Joan might be paranoid) as an inevitable byproduct of their high-stress Agency careers, but really, it seems far more likely the strife is caused by them being -- and I say this with love, because both Joan and Arthur seem sort of awesome -- moderately horrible people.

Annie also meets Auggie Anderson (Ugly Betty’s Chris Gorham), who works in Tech Ops and appears to be her new partner/mentor/confidant/best friend/prospective love interest. Blinded during a mission in Iraq, Auggie has a talking watch, a laser-pointer walking stick, and a Braille keyboard. He’s also got faint traces of Conrad’s smug skeeziness about him, but he comes across as a fundamentally cool, decent guy, so I’ll let it slide for the moment.

Annie’s super-important mission: Purchase vital intelligence from Stas, a Russian assassin. Joan instructs Annie to meet with Stas at his hotel suite. “Did you call me in here because I can speak Russian?” Annie asks. “Yes, and you can also pass for a call girl,” Joan blithely replies, then goes on to say, in response to Annie’s flustered query as to how she should dress to look appropriately whorish, “What you’re wearing now is fine.”

Yeah, I sort of love Joan.

At the hotel, Stas and Annie make the exchange: Stas transmits spy secrets from his fake Blackberry/super-spy device, while Annie simultaneously transmits payment from her own identical device. In the middle of this, a sniper in a nearby building riddles Stas with bullets and tries to take out Annie as well. Annie gets out of the hotel in one piece, though she leaves the vital information behind. Joan is not pleased about this.

Ever plucky, Annie waltzes back to the crime scene and flirts her way past the FBI agents investigating the case, then waltzes back out with the intelligence. The intelligence turns out to be completely worthless, but nonetheless, full points to Annie for style and moxie.

(Insert unnecessary, lengthy, and inadequately explained car chase scene here.)

Acting on her own initiative, Annie investigates and determines that the man she thought was Stas was Estonian, not Russian, and thus might’ve been an imposter. To confirm her suspicions, Annie and Auggie break into the Federal morgue and examine Stas’s corpse. A series of wacky hijinks ensue, which I don’t especially feel like summarizing. End result: Annie confirms that the man who was shot in the hotel suite was an imposter, and that the real Stas murdered the fake Stas as part of a needlessly elaborate scheme to assassinate a Russian journalist at an awards dinner held at the Smithsonian.

The CIA thwarts the assassination attempt. Annie takes off on foot after Stas and chases him into the subway system. They have a rather splendid scuffle on the platform (Annie jumps on his back, he pulls her hair, they kick and scratch each other, he tries to throttle the life out of her), which ends when Annie’s mysterious ex-boyfriend pops up out of nowhere, kills Stas, and disappears onto a passing train.

Well! That was delightfully random.

Annie receives a commendation and a permanent assignment to the DPD. Joan tries to convince Annie she was saved by another agent, not by her ex-boyfriend. Joan then has a clandestine conversation with Arthur about their long-range plan: Use Annie to smoke the boyfriend out of hiding.

Annie returns home, where she lives with her sister (Anne Dudek) and her sister’s husband and kids. Annie’s sister, by the way, believes Annie has a dull desk job at the Smithsonian; I strongly suspect there’ll be a running zany and/or poignant plotline about Annie hiding her double life from her family while worrying about placing them in danger. Annie, my friend, perhaps it’s time to find your own apartment. Maybe something on the other side of town?

And in the final moments, we see Annie’s mysterious ex-boyfriend in a car parked on the street outside the house, watching her through the windows.

Good stuff. Pretty slick and fresh and entertaining. The script, by Matt Corman and Christopher Ord, is strong overall--snappy dialogue, crisp action scenes, nice pace, good characters. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
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Mohinder shops at the Banana (and other resale shop discoveries)

Oh, dear.

So this afternoon, I popped into The Best Store in Los Angeles, better known as the It's A Wrap studio wardrobe resale shop on Robertson. Seriously, this place is pretty close to paradise. It's just a big old thrift store, where all the clothes are provided by film and television wardrobe departments.

Here's the odd thing: Because this is Los Angeles, and because the entertainment industry is just another industry here, the whole studio-wardrobe/potential collector's-item aspect is rather aggressively downplayed. If you're looking for something from a specific show or film, be prepared to hunt for it. The price tags generally have a two- or three-letter code hand-scrawled on them; there's a key taped to the far wall that deciphers what the codes stand for (for example, wardrobe from Criminal Minds -- i.e. endless racks of Hotch's crisp white shirts -- is marked "CRI"), but you really have to search for it.

Anyway, this place is filled with awesomeness. This shop is why I'm the proud owner of three tiny, short, tight, skimpy, shiny, spangly, beaded, sequined, rhinestone-bedazzled cocktail dresses worn by the models on Deal or No Deal. They were ten bucks apiece. I wear them while vacuuming. Really, I do.

So I popped in today... and they had the Heroes wardrobe.

Oh, man.

I know I've criticized Heroes plenty, but the wardrobe was always pretty bang on. I had a blast rummaging through racks (clothes from all the shows are mixed together in no special order, so I just looked for "HRS" scrawled on the price tags), looking for trench coats and tailored shirts and cute halter tops and crisp jackets. Cool stuff.

The Heroes wardrobe also had the advantage of being labeled by character in permanent ink on the size tag or on the inside collar. Because I am no fool, I picked up two t-shirts labeled "SURESH": a maroon/rust Banana Republic crewneck ($10) and a dark teal H&M v-neck ($5). Both were size small, which totally dovetails with my recollection of meeting lovely Sendhil Ramamurthy during the WGA strike: He's not short (5'10"? 5'11"?), but, like almost all actors (except for Jack Coleman, who is much taller than expected), he's extremely petite and compact in person.

And I think I speak for all viewers when I say, "Mohinder shops at Banana Republic? Really?"

Neither shirt features the mad, crazy, bright patterns and colors that made Mohinder's wardrobe so, uh, memorable, especially in the first season (trust me, I was looking for his turquoise paisley shirt. Or his brick-red/burnt-orange vertically-striped shirt. Or his hot pink pullover. Or his olive-green corduroy blazer. Or his insane blue striped scarf), but these two shirts are nonetheless very late-model Mohinderish -- say, Season Three, at a guess. In fact, I'm relatively certain that maroon shirt is the one Ramamurthy was wearing when the paparazzi caught him making a variety of strange poses on set with Greg Grunberg during the third season. Awesome.

Edited on 7/13 to add:

Okay, one more. I stopped back in today and did a pretty thorough, comprehensive sweep through the shop, looking for gems. Plenty of Heroes stuff there. I saw a few more shirts marked "SURESH" -- weirdly, other than Mohinder's clothes, I didn't see anything else marked for a specific character. This might be because a lot of Mo's stuff was pretty casual (so many t-shirts!), so the wardrobe department might've had fewer reservations about marking them up with permanent ink than they would with, say, expensive dress shirts or blouses or suits. I don't really know.

There's nothing costume-y or immediately iconic in the shop -- you're probably not going to find, say, Claire's cheerleading uniform, or Peter's hospital scrubs, or Hiro's kimono. The place really specializes in wearable everyday clothes that just happen to have been used in films or television productions.

I picked up another of Mohinder's t-shirts. This one was on the clearance rack on the sidewalk outside the store. Eight dollars, bluish-teal, crewneck, short sleeves, Banana Republic again, size small again. This was a score: Some helpful wardrobe person had safety-pinned a handwritten note to the hem (blurry photo attached), reading "SURESH CH. 2." Easy process of elimination to figure out in which episode this shirt was used:

Volume 5, Chapter 2: Mohinder did not appear in the episode, being dead or in an asylum or whatever.

Volume 4, Chapter 2: Mohinder wore a baggy orange prison jumpsuit the entire episode.

Volume 3, Chapter 2: Mohinder was shirtless the entire episode while he swung from the rafters and sexed up Maya.

Volume 2, Chapter 2: Mohinder wore a blinding white tank top under a blinding white shirt while he was gallivanting around Haiti.

Volume 1, Chapter 2: AHA! No, this isn't the shirt he wore while threatening to bonk the faux exterminator over the head with an elephant statue. It's the shirt he wore while (adorably) crawling around on his hands and knees with Eden while searching for Chandra's missing lizard. Good episode. Good shirt.

Edited yet again to add: Oh, yeah, I also have this classic season one shirt (not the glorious paisley one, sadly, but the soft turquoise one beneath it):


And just to mix things up, a plain black t-shirt from American Apparel marked "PETER." Size small, again. Those actor boys are tiny little things.
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New content arriving soon! Very exciting!

Excuse me for a second while I dust off a few cobwebs.

The USA network is kicking off their summer lineup this week, which means fresh recaps will land here very soon. In addition to returning shows White Collar and Psych, I'll be recapping and reviewing their much-anticipated (around here, at the very least) brand-new series, Covert Affairs. It's a spy drama executive-produced by Doug Liman, director of Swingers, The Bourne Identity, Go, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. From the show's official website:

New jobs are tough -- especially when your new employer is the CIA. Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) is fluent in six languages, has traveled the world and is besting her fellow CIA trainees in every test. But that doesn't explain why she's suddenly summoned by CIA headquarters to report for active duty as a field operative one month before her training is over. She doesn't know there may be something -- or someone -- from her past that her CIA bosses are really after.

Annie's unofficial guide to the CIA is Auggie Anderson (Christopher Gorham), a tech ops expert who was blinded while on assignment. As Annie navigates this new world of intrigue, danger and bureaucratic red tape, Auggie is there to make sure this quick study won't be kept in the dark for long. Also starring Peter Gallagher, Kari Matchett, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Anne Dudek.

Reactions to advance screenings of the pilot episode have been pretty universally positive, and expectations are high. Could be good. Of course, it could also start out strong and then go off the rails, à la last season's FlashForward debacle. Just in case, I reserve the right to abandon ship at any time if it fails to live up to its potential; making it all the way to FF's feeble, sputtering finale ended up being an exercise in masochism. We'll see how this one turns out.
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