Thursday, July 28, 2011

Covert Affairs - Welcome to the Occupation


When seven oil executives are taken hostage in Mexico City, one of whom is a deep undercover CIA operative (Sonya Salomaa) on a time-sensitive mission, Annie (Piper Perabo) is sent down to assess the situation and provide intel for an extraction. Just to makes things a little more interesting, her team includes Joan (Kari Matchett) and Ben Mercer (Eion Bailey).

Despite the uncomfortable plane ride, the team, masquerading as a news crew for an environmentally friendly network, gets into the building. However, things get even more complicated when Annie realizes the kidnapper, a professed eco-terrorist (Yancy Arias), has no interest in his supposed cause and plans to kill all of the hostages. It's here the episode kicks things into high gear.

The episode's B-story involves Jai's (Sendhil Ramamurthy) contentious relationship with his father (Gregory Itzin) and his discovery that Henry Wilcox is the CIA source of Liza Hearn (Emmanuelle Vaugier, who makes an all too short appearance here). As to what Jai decides to do with this information, we'll have to wait and see.

A strong episode all-around as this season continues to see Annie excel and even surprise Ben on how far she's come in such a short time. The stunts are well-done, including Annie and Ben's decent from the top of the skyscraper. I like that her feelings for Ben are still there, despite her burgeoning relationship with Dr. Scott (Ben Lawson), but she doesn't let them sway her from doing her job. The episode wraps things up neatly with a scene between Joan and Annie aboard the plane home to further cement that relationship as well.

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