Criminal Minds: JJ

None of the new fall shows have piqued my interest sufficiently to get me to, like, watch them, let alone recap them, so I’m switching gears and turning my attention toward Criminal Minds, CBS’s workhorse crime procedural about a gaggle of smart, adorable, boundlessly likeable FBI agents who profile serial killers. For the most part, crime procedurals simply aren’t my bag, but Criminal Minds, now in its sixth season, is a notch above the rest of the pack, thanks to consistently solid writing and an excellent cast.

Let’s give this a try, shall we?

A pair of smarmy young thugs are arrested in connection with the disappearance of Kate Joyce, a young woman who vanished while partying with friends in Atlantic Beach, Maryland. Kate was last seen leaving a club with the guys, Sydney Pearson (Michael Welch) and James Barrett (Christopher Marquette), who admit to having consensual sex with her, but deny any wrongdoing; the Natalee Holloway parallels are obvious and deliberate. The local police can only detain the suspects for 72 hours without formally charging them, and all attempts to wheedle out a confession have come to naught, so the BAU -- Behavioral Analysis Unit -- is brought in to continue the interrogation. While JJ comforts Kate’s anguished parents (Gil Bellows and Rya Kihlstedt), the rest of the team sets about questioning and analyzing the suspects.

Covert Affairs: When the Levee Breaks

A chemistry teacher named Anton Sabine gets kidnapped by armed thugs in Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter, Ben Mercer saunters up to the front gates of Langley, introduces himself as a former CIA operative, and surrenders, claiming he wants to come in from the cold.

Annie and Joan observe Ben’s interrogation. Ben confirms that he left the CIA two years ago during a mission in Sri Lanka, in which Jai was his handler. Ben’s assignment was to ingratiate himself to a dangerous arms dealer named Felix Artigas. Ben had planned to accomplish this by handing Anton Sabine over to Artigas for the purposes of making chemical weapons. After he fell in love with Annie, Ben was suddenly infused with a more noble spirit and decided he couldn’t ruin Sabine’s life in that manner. Instead, he went rogue and smuggled Sabine to Hong Kong.

Annie tries to grill Jai about his past with Ben. Jai claims he’d love to tell her everything, but the information is classified. (Annie grouses, “The problem with this job is that excuses like that are valid.”) I like how this scene plays out: Annie is enormously (and justly) ticked at Jai for withholding information from her, but she clearly doesn’t view it as a huge personal betrayal: She accepts that keeping secrets from each other is a necessary evil of their job. I’d been faintly worried all season that the Jai-Annie relationship would culminate in a huge, melodramatic scene filled with accusations of betrayal and preying on emotions; the show was smart to avoid this.

Covert Affairs: I Can’t Quit You Baby

A medical supplier named Donald Ridley is detained by Customs while flying back into the United States from London with a crate of undeclared diamonds in his possession, intended to finance Angolan insurgents. For whatever unfathomable reason, Arthur brings evil old Henry Wilcox out of retirement to consult on the case (Arthur: “I may not like you, but I respect your talent.” Henry: “Isn’t that funny? I like you, Arthur, but I don’t respect your talent at all”). Outstanding! Everything’s more fun when Henry’s around. Annie and Auggie are a couple of nice kids, but it’s the supporting characters -- Henry, Jai, Joan, Arthur -- who really make this show zip right along.

A chatty young vice-consul at the Embassy in London named Vivian Long (adorable former child star Anna Chlumsky, who has evolved into an adorable adult) has been routinely providing Ridley with a highly fishy surplus of assistance in easing his shipments through Customs. The CIA suspects Vivian is complicit with the smugglers, so Joan sends Annie to London, using her cover as a Smithsonian employee, to befriend Vivian and infiltrate the operation.

Psych: One, Maybe Two, Ways Out

Summer finale time, folks: Shawn and Gus walk along the waterfront, eating ice cream cones while Shawn mopes about how Juliet is now happily dating Declan. I hope Juliet continues dating Declan, just so we can have Nestor Carbonell around on the show for a good long stretch. He’s awesome. Anyway, as they chomp on their ice cream (Shawn contemplates opening an ice cream shoppe, and yes, he does pronounce the superfluous “e”), a slinky, black-clad, gun-toting babe (Franka Potente, hooray) approaches and claims she needs their help. Her name is Nadia, and she works with Ewan O’Hara, Juliet’s covert-operative brother (introduced in last season’s “You Can’t Handle This Episode”). She needs to find her former mentor, a man named Strabinsky (Jon Gries), who disappeared off the grid a while back, so he can help her erase all traces of her past missions and go on the run.

As Nadia explains this, a helicopter zips overhead. Someone leans out and fires an assault rifle down at Nadia and the boys, and… great merciful Zeus, it’s C. Thomas Howell! Cast your mind back to my recap of last week’s episode, in which I went on a tangential riff that ended with this eerily precognitive (appropriately enough, for a show about fake psychics) statement: Point being, I think we’re heading into a C. Thomas Howell renaissance, and the powers-that-be at Psych should put him on their short list of dream guest stars, right up there with Val Kilmer and Billy Zane. Wholly coincidental, I swear. I must use this power only for good.

Covert Affairs: Fool in the Rain

At the annual assembly of the World Trade Organization in Toronto, an amiable Persian man named Yahya (Mousa Kraish, who, by the way, has a totally adorable personal website, which makes me suspect he might be chock-full of personality) slips away from the rest of the Iranian delegation and pops into a taxi, instructing the driver to take him as close to the United States as his limited funds will allow. Next stop: the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

To distract herself from thoughts of Ben, Annie stays late at the office, steeped in unnecessary busywork. Joan convinces her to take a few days off to clear her head. Back at home, Hurricane Danielle bursts in on Annie while she’s taking a relaxing soak in a sudsy bath to rant incoherently about how Michael’s brand-new job is conflicting with their planned anniversary getaway. Note to Annie: Find another place to live, stat. Danielle goes on at some length about Michael’s utter selfishness, while the brief spurt of bonhomie I felt last week when she was gushing about Jai’s fabulous bone structure evaporates into acrid vapors. At least it’s now clear we’re supposed to find Danielle ridiculous and childish, but that doesn’t make her character especially less exasperating.

Determined not to waste the hotel reservation, Danielle drags Annie along with her to -- wait for it -- Niagara Falls.

Yahya contacts the CIA, wanting to defect to the United States in exchange for giving them intelligence about the Iranian government’s sanction-violating arms deals. Since Annie is already on the scene, Joan and Arthur ask her to meet with Yahya to assess the quality of his information. Annie, who is pretty good-natured about having her work life collide with her vacation in this manner, slips away from Danielle and meets secretly with Yahya. They chat in Farsi. Yahya is cute and likeable, and this is an agreeable enough episode, but I’m not going to expend much energy recounting these scenes in loving detail, because there’s nothing fresh or significant about any of this. We’ve seen this defection plotline many times before (general rule of thumb: if your plot idea has ever been the basis of a 21 Jump Street episode, it’s time to look for less-trampled ground), and Covert Affairs doesn’t make much of an attempt to put a fresh spin on it.

Annie explains away Yahya’s presence to Danielle by claiming he’s helping the Smithsonian recover some art looted from museums in Tehran. While Danielle and Yahya go off sightseeing together, Annie purchases a fax machine, hooks it up in her hotel suite, and faxes pages and pages of Yahya’s top-secret information to Langley. A fax machine? Really? Since we’ve already seen that Annie carries a souped-up, mega-encrypted phone, it seems like it would have been far faster and simpler and safer for her to photograph the documents and email them to Joan.

Yahya and Danielle hang out and bond and play skeeball and have a marvelous time together. Yahya confides in Danielle: He wants to go to the United States to find his childhood love, Roudibah, who currently lives in New Jersey.

Joan gives Annie the bad news: Yahya’s information, which involves a simple bootlegging scheme instead of the promised weapons deal, isn’t important enough to earn him asylum. The CIA thinks he might be more valuable serving as an asset back in Tehran. Upset, Yahya claims he’ll get to the United States on his own and flees from Annie.

Meanwhile, Auggie continues his unscrupulous affair with journalist Liza Hearn. Liza, who openly disapproves of Auggie’s CIA work, begins pressing him for information about a London-based shipping company called the Albion Group, which, we know from “Into the Light,” is something Henry Wilcox was/is mixed up with. Arthur calls Auggie into his office and confronts him with incriminating photos of him with Liza. Arthur is monstrously unhappy about this explicit evidence of Auggie’s treachery, and great merciful Zeus, Auggie, did you honestly expect this to turn out any other way? He had to know the CIA would be keeping close tabs on Liza. This whole business is not Auggie’s finest hour.

Auggie insists he’s been using Liza as part of his (incredibly reckless and idiotic and self-serving) non-CIA-sanctioned mission to find the source of the leaked information, though the only useful tidbit he’s unearthed thus far has been Liza’s mention of the Albion Group. Arthur orders Auggie to feed Liza misinformation about Albion, in the hopes of ferreting out the leak that way. Auggie meets with Liza and dutifully feeds her Arthur’s bogus story. To her credit, it doesn’t take Liza long to figure out that Auggie is just yanking her along.

Danielle fills Annie in on Yahya’s plans to meet Roudibah. In fact, Danielle has already tracked Roudibah down; Roudibah has agreed to come up to Niagara and meet Yahya by the falls. Ah, Danielle: Infuriating, but occasionally helpful in moving the plot along.

Annie stakes out the meeting spot while flashing back yet again to her affair with Ben on that beach in Sri Lanka: It’s the last day of Annie’s visit, but Ben convinces her to extend her ticket so she can spend more time with him. Ever mysterious, Ben then slips off by himself; Annie spots him on the beach in the rain, arguing with a mysterious figure. The figure has his back to Annie, but he almost looks like Jai, except he’s wearing an awful baseball cap. Impeccably-dressed fashion-plate Jai is surely not the type of man who goes around wearing silly hats. In the morning, Ben has vanished, leaving only the enigmatic note on Annie’s pillow, and is it wrong that my very first thought was to hope the airline wouldn’t hit her up with huge fees for changing her return ticket yet again?

Annie spots a mysterious woman approaching Yahya. On the phone from Langley, Jai tells Annie the woman isn’t Roudibah -- the CIA already contacted her, and she told them she decided against meeting Yahya. The woman pulls a gun on Yahya and, with the help of an armed henchman, marches him away from the crowd.

Annie trails Yahya and his captors into the tunnels leading to the observation decks. The woman attacks her. A not-bad scuffle ensues. When the henchman tries to shoot Annie, Yahya fends him off. They both topple over the edge of the observation deck; the man tumbles to his presumed death, but Yahya clings to the edge of the platform for dear life. Annie overpowers her attacker and hauls Yahya to safety.

Annie announces that NROC -- the National Resettlement Operations Center -- has decided to help Yahya defect to the United States after all. When she returns to the hotel suite, she finds Danielle shacking up with surprise visitor Michael. Feeling like a third wheel, Annie heads back to DC.

Annie, Auggie and Jai go out and swill some more conspicuously-displayed bottles of Bud Light together. In what is perhaps a (futile) attempt to temper his astonishing beauty, Jai is wearing, yep, a stupid baseball cap. Oh, Jai. I’m so very disappointed in you. Annie looks at him and realizes he was the man with whom Ben was arguing on the beach in Sri Lanka.

Okay! Mostly a filler episode, and, as I’ve said before, in such a short season, there shouldn’t be any room for unnecessary padding, but it was mostly enjoyable. Plus, more progress was made on the leak storyline, with a tantalizing implication that it somehow involves Henry Wilcox. Most vitally, the episode finally established some kind of concrete connection between Jai and Ben, which has great potential for future fireworks. The two-hour finale airs next week.

Psych: Shawn 2.0

We open with Shawn listening to an audio book: Internity, a teen-geared saga about vampire doctors. Aaaaaaand it’s already clear the Psych writers are fully caffeinated and at the top of their game this week.

This week’s crime: An elderly woman, Lucy Friedman, died at an outdoor Philharmonic concert. The Santa Barbara Police Department assumes the death was due to natural causes, but Shawn notices a can of bug spray beside Lucy’s corpse. He suspects her death is linked to two other recent cases in which aerosol cans were found next to the bodies. Before Shawn can dazzle the SBPD with his insights, his thunder is stolen by the arrival of famed criminal profiler Declan Rand, who proclaims that Lucy was murdered, then immediately sets about flirting shamelessly with an instantly-smitten Juliet. Why, it’s Nestor Carbonell! Nice to see him and his fabulous eyelashes back on my television screen (as Shawn puts it, Declan has “the most impossibly dark eyelashes on any man ever”). The combination of Declan’s crime-solving skills and his vast knowledge of pop culture minutiae leads Gus to dub him Shawn 2.0. This does not make Shawn 1.0 happy.

(Lengthy digression #1: Nestor Carbonell is one of a handful of Lost cast members who generated so much viewer bonhomie during his time on the show (throw Jorge Garcia, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick, and Ken Leung onto that pile, too) that, for the rest of his career, viewers are automatically going to perk up at seeing him appear in other projects. Last week, while my sister was visiting, I finally got around to watching the final season of Lost -- I know the critical reaction was mixed, but I totally dug it from start to finish. I particularly liked how many of the characters had pretty much gone bonkers by that point (shotgun-toting Claire! Unflappable killer zombie Sayid!). And then there was Carbonell’s Richard Alpert, who’d been perpetually competent and unruffled for most of the series, who spent the final season wild-eyed and excitable, scampering around with dynamite and trying to blow stuff up. Good times.)

Suspecting there’s a serial killer on the loose, Chief Vick and Henry hire Declan to help solve the murders. As all the victims were elderly and in poor health, Declan suspects these were mercy killings. He declares that the killer is likely a female in her mid-thirties.

All three victims were in need of liver transplants at the time of their deaths. In fact, they were the top three names on a list of potential liver recipients. Suspecting someone is trying to worm his or her way to the top of the list, Shawn and Declan focus their attention on the fourth name: Catherine Bicks (Meredith Monroe), who, at age 35, fits the criteria of Declan’s profile of the killer.

(Lengthy digression #2: While probably best known for playing Andie on Dawson’s Creek, Meredith Monroe also had a recurring role as Hotch’s wife Haley on Criminal Minds. Immediately before this episode aired last night, I caught a Criminal Minds repeat from last season on CBS, in which (hey, spoiler!) Haley met a violent end at the hands of Hotch’s evil arch-nemesis, played by former teen idol C. Thomas Howell. Howell, in his three or four appearances on the show, managed to shoot his way to the top of my personal list of all-time greatest television villains, in a balls-out bravura performance that finally managed to wipe the taint of 1986’s Soul Man from my brain. Seriously, he was awesomely creepy. As some inspired wag on YouTube quipped about the fifth-season premiere, in which Howell’s character captures and brutalizes poor Hotch in the nastiest possible way, “Ponyboy sure didn’t stay gold.” Anyway, last year I had lunch with Hal Sparks while he was still smarting from losing the title of Greatest Celebrity Magician to Howell in the poorly-named VH1 reality show, Celebracadabra, which is so delightfully random that it makes me grin stupidly just thinking about it. Point being, I think we’re heading into a C. Thomas Howell renaissance, and the powers-that-be at Psych should put him on their short list of dream guest stars, right up there with Val Kilmer and Billy Zane.)

It turns out that Catherine was in Switzerland at the time of the murders, which rules her out as a suspect and bursts holes in Declan’s credibility. However, a witness steps forward, claiming to have seen Catherine switching Lucy Friedman’s insect repellant for another bottle at the Philharmonic performance.

Shawn discovers Declan lied about his impressive credentials on his resume. (He also discovers Declan is a fellow aficionado of the vampire doctor book series. Great minds think alike.) Shawn and Gus trail Declan to his lavish mansion -- Declan, it seems, is filthy rich. He confesses to Shawn that he discovered he had a natural knack for criminal profiling, so he faked his credentials, much in the way Shawn fakes his psychic abilities. Shawn is in awe of Declan’s dream lifestyle -- for instance, he’s hired Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith to sit by his pool, singing “Everybody Wants To Rule the World” and “Mad World” around the clock. Shawn -- who, viewers will recall, once dressed up as Tears for Fears’ Roland Orzabal to perform a duet in a talent show (with Gus as Michael Jackson, natch) -- is overwhelmed by the total awesomeness of this. As am I. I love me some Tears for Fears.

Shortly thereafter, Catherine Bicks is found dead in a parking garage, with Declan crouching beside her corpse. He’s arrested for her murder. Convinced Declan is innocent, Shawn consults with the coroner and discovers Catherine was in perfect health at the time of her death -- she was somehow on the liver transplant list without actually needing a new liver.

The real killer turns out to be Catherine’s twin sister, Maddy, who was in severe need of a liver but couldn’t qualify for a transplant because of her alcoholism. Catherine put herself on the transplant list in Maddy’s place, while Maddy, unbeknownst to Catherine, set about murdering everyone ahead of her on the list. When Catherine confronted her about this, Maddy killed her, too.

And that’s pretty much it, save for a bit in the end credits where James Roday, Dulé Hill and Curt Smith get together to perform a kick-ass rendition of “Head Over Heels.” Fine stuff.

Awesome opening credits:
Curt Smith performs a rearranged Tears for Fears-inspired version of the theme song. It is, as you might expect, totally awesome.

Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn, after Gus points out that Shawn has faked his credentials in exactly the same way as Declan: “This isn’t about me, or the fact that I wasn’t really a background dancer in the “Thriller” video.”

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
Lassiter is grumpy that he burst into Catherine Bicks’s apartment to arrest her based on Declan’s criminal profile, only to realize she’d been out of the country at the time of the murders:
Lassiter: I don’t enjoy pointing my gun at innocent women.
Juliet: You don’t?
Lassiter: No! I’m not 29 anymore.

Covert Affairs: What Is and What Should Never Be

We open with the plot already in full swing: Annie lies sprawled on the concrete floor of a warehouse, injured and dazed. There’s a gun and the dead body of a young woman nearby. Annie picks up the gun and gets to her feet, looking confused as all hell. While she tries to make sense of the situation, a group of uniformed police officers swarm the warehouse, guns drawn, and order her to drop her weapon.

Annie is taken into the custody of the FBI. Back at Langley, Joan and Arthur (hi, Arthur! Good to see you -- you were missed last week. Stick around for the rest of the season, will you?) discuss the situation. Joan expresses concern for Annie’s safety. Arthur, being Arthur, is more concerned about still being able to use Annie to draw out Ben Mercer.

Special Agent Rossabi (Noam Jenkins), the Fed who arrested Annie in the pilot episode after she and Auggie were caught breaking into the morgue, interrogates her about the incident in the warehouse. Joan arrives, in the flimsy guise of Annie’s lawyer, and shoos him away so she can talk to Annie in private. Joan demands an explanation for Annie’s actions. Annie still seems genuinely befuddled, so Joan gently guides her through the events leading up to her arrest.

Flashback to two days ago: As part of her Smithsonian cover, Annie attends an art auction. Between pretending to work at the Smithsonian and genuinely working at the CIA, Annie probably keeps some very long and very weird hours. She finds a mysterious handwritten note scrawled on her lot schedule, advising her to keep an eye on an auction for a specific painting. The painting in question eventually sells for ten million dollars, which is far above its expected value. Her interest piqued, Annie tries to wheedle details about the buyer out of the auction coordinator, Sophie Jacklin (Sienna Guillory), but gets nowhere.

Meanwhile, Annie and Jai fulfill their mutual duty as the two most exquisite creatures in all of Langley by going on their first date -- specifically, a backyard barbecue with Danielle and her husband, where everyone eats kebabs and swills from conspicuously-placed bottles of Bud Light. Annie’s family is suitably charmed and impressed by Jai, who claims to have a desk job at the State Department. Yawn. This totally blows my theory that his semi-permanent cover is as either a male model or a high-class escort.

Danielle drags Annie aside to gush re: Jai, “He’s like the George Clooney of wherever he’s from!” (Annie dryly points out that he’s DC-born and bred) and goes on to proclaim, “That bone structure is ridiculous!” Well, finally! At long last, I’ve found some common ground with Danielle -- we’re entirely d’accord on the subject of Jai’s absurd beauty. It’s like she’s reading my mind. You see that little search field in the upper left corner of this site? Type in “Sendhil” and “bone structure,” and see how many results it spits back.

When Annie retires to her room, blissed out on beer and barbecue sauce and Jai-induced pheromones, Ben Mercer pops in through her window. I swear, Ben is the most random character on television. He babbles on about how abandoning her in Sri Lanka was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, but he needed to protect her from danger. This fails to impress Annie. He also confesses that he’s a former CIA agent, though he’s been doing the whole glamorous lone-wolf thing lately. He left the note for her to watch the painting auction because he wants her help tracking an arms dealer, Seraf Murat, who uses the auction house as a cover for his illicit activities. The buyer of the painting in question, Ross Hilburn, actually purchased the schematics for a Russian missile guidance system. How much would it suck if you were a legitimate art collector who shelled out ten million for a painting and ended up saddled with a bunch of top-secret blueprints instead? Ben asks Annie to approach Sophie to get information about some other fishy past transactions.

Annie is more than a little miffed that Ben has wandered back into her life specifically to use her for his own shady purposes. To her credit, she seems pretty immune to his hackneyed “I just wanted to protect you” line of crap. To her discredit, she agrees to go along with his request without tipping off Joan and the DPD.

Ben tells her the CIA is just using her to get to him (true enough) and warns her not to trust Joan and Arthur. He says, “Maybe I don’t deserve this, but I’m asking you to trust me.” Maybe? Maybe? Oh, Ben, honey, of course you don’t deserve Annie’s trust. Should be obvious, really.

At the DPD, Annie searches for information on Ben in the CIA’s database, but her access is denied (an alarm buzzes every time she does an illicit search; Auggie gives her the sage advice to maybe turn down her speakers before using her work computer in a crowded office to commit a felony).

Annie grills Sophie about the other suspicious auctions. Sophie pulls a gun and threatens to kill her, but relents when Annie mentions she was sent by Ben. Sophie was one of Ben’s informants when he worked at the Agency, though she’s been double-dealing ever since the CIA (erroneously, obviously) informed her that Ben was killed.

Hilburn’s men burst into the auction house, guns drawn, and chase Annie and Sophie into the art warehouse, murdering a security guard along the way. Sophie kills one of the thugs, but the other one bashes Annie over the head and goes after Sophie. Sophie manages to shoot him, but gets shot and killed in the process.

And we’ve reached the opening scene, in which the FBI discovers a dazed and gun-toting Annie in the warehouse surrounded by four dead bodies.

Still in Federal custody, Annie lies to Joan, claiming Sophie contacted her about the suspicious auctions on her own initiative and leaving out any mention of Ben. Oh, Annie. Don’t lie to Joan. No good can possibly come of this.

Back at Langley, Jai and Auggie hover around like a pair of concerned bunny rabbits and try to piece together what Annie was involved in before her arrest. It’s nice seeing these two working together for once, united in their common concern for Annie, though Jai does lie to Auggie about not knowing anything about Ben Mercer. Jai breaks into Annie’s room (we get scads of loving, lingering beauty shots of Jai’s BMW -- a 535i, for those interested in such things -- while he lurks outside the house, waiting for Danielle to leave) and snoops around. He finds her scrapbook filled with Ben-related memorabilia. “Wrong guy, Annie,” he mutters.

Joan tells Annie the CIA won’t protect her from Federal prosecution unless she starts telling the truth, so Annie finally -- finally -- ‘fesses up about Ben. Joan pretty much bites Annie’s head off and spits it back at her headless corpse, which is not entirely unsatisfying. I like Annie, and for the most part I’m in her corner, but this business about lying to Joan and going off on her own dangerous and non-CIA-sanctioned investigation on Ben’s say-so was pretty stupid.

To smooth over inter-agency tensions caused by Annie’s arrest, Joan assigns Annie to help Agent Rossabi with his investigation into the shootout at the auction house. Annie and Rossabi discover the painting containing the weapons system schematics has been stolen from the warehouse.

With the investigation at a dead end, Joan orders Annie to go home and stay there. Annie finds a matchbook Ben left in her bedroom containing instructions to go down to the pier and find a boat named Casablanca II. Annie slips on board the boat, expecting to meet Ben… and finds herself surrounded by Ross Hilburn, the buyer of the weapon schematics, and his goons. The goons head off in hot pursuit of Annie, who leads them on a merry chase over and around and across the boats docked at the pier. One of the goons gets the drop on her… but Jai, who has been sneakily following Annie on Joan’s orders, arrives in the nick of time and arrests him.

Good episode. Still, it’s a little disheartening to think there’s only three episodes left in the season. Short seasons can work very well for television shows (Doctor Who springs immediately to mind), and it might not be a terrible format for Covert Affairs… provided the overall narrative thrust remains consistently strong and driving. Of the first eight episodes, Covert Affairs had at least two -- “South Bound Suarez” and “Houses of the Holy” -- which did very little to further the overarching story and provided no essential character development (and which, frankly, weren’t all that good). In short seasons, there’s no room for filler. It feels like there might be too much ground still left to cover before the end of the season to reach a fully satisfying resolution.