Covert Affairs (Series Premiere) Recap 1.01 – Pilot

Posted by The Marksman at 14 July, at 00 : 01 AM Print

We see a young woman named Annie Walker in a room getting ready to take a polygraph test; she is going through the process to become a CIA agent.  The interviewer starts to ask really personal questions about the last relationship Annie was in, and that is when we are first introduced to her three week romance that ended with her lover leaving abruptly with only a note saying he was sorry.

After the poly graph test we see her completing her sky diving training at low altitude, which she handles like a pro.  When she lands at the training facility she finds out that she is being called away for a real mission, at first she does not believe it.  Her commanding officer tells her she is leaving for Langley immediately; she is excited that she will finally get a chance to do something other than training.

She meets a guy named Conrad as she is reporting for work, and she almost causes a security incident by walking through the entrance without getting security credentials.  As she is sworn in and getting her security credentials, we see that the CIA has a leak within its walls who is reporting on CIA business to reporters.  Annie meets a blind tech liaison named Auggie whom she will be working with; he leads her to her new boss’s office so that she can be briefed.

Annie meets her new boss, and they start to walk to the D.P.D. OPS Center which is where Annie will be working.  Annie is told that she has to meet with a Russian defector named “Staz” who wants to trade secrets for cash with the CIA, Annie is to meet with Staz and hot sync a fake Blackberry transceiver with him and bring back the sensitive data.  Annie can speak six languages, and Russian is one of them, but she finds out she will be impersonating a call girl when she meets with Staz.

Annie heads to the Capitol Grand Hotel, she sits in the lobby and waits for the signal to come for her to go up to the room to meet Staz.  While she is in the lobby a young man starts a conversation with her, and she rebuffs his advances.  This stranger will play an important role later in the episode although he seems not important at first.  She gets the signal on the pager and she heads up to Staz’s room to make the exchanged.

She enters the room and starts to look for Staz, she sees him lying on the couch and it looks like he is dead.  But he is just sleeping, drunk and half naked in a robe; she tries to dispel the pleasantries and asks him to get the PDA so that they can get the hot sync completed.  Staz keeps calling her “Kissu” which does not really seem very important at the time; they pull out the fake Blackberries and start to hot sync the data.  As the data is being transferred between the devices Staz is shot by a sniper, the CIA support team goes to extract her from the room as she is taking fire from the sniper.

She thinks about grabbing the device to take with her, but elects to get out of the room instead.  She runs out of the building and gets into a vehicle that takes her back to headquarters; she got out alive, but left the data behind.  The sniper packs up his gun and leaves the scene; we get not glimpses at the sniper so his identity is a mystery at this point.

We then see Annie’s boss Joan and her husband Arthur Campbell having an argument at their marriage counseling session.  Joan’s assistant comes and gets her as Annie has returned, Joan finds out that Annie did not get the data and that Staz is dead which makes her feel the mission is a failure.  Annie decides to go back in and get the device, Joan tells her she can’t just walk in and take it.  Annie says she will come up with a plan, and Auggie gives her a few tools to help her accomplish that task.  He gives her another “fake” Blackberry and she just needs to get within five feet of the other devices and activate it, then it will grab the data and put bogus information on the other two.

Annie dresses up in a fairly provocative outfit, and she goes back on the scene portraying herself as a call girl even more this time.  The FBI agent on the scene starts to interview her as she works her way slowly towards the two hot synced devices still sitting on the table.  She goes through the motions of acting like a call girl, and gives the detective the number of the “agency” that she works for.  As she is explaining what happened she activates the other fake Blackberry and it syncs the information with her device, and takes care of the other two.  She tells him she came back for her expensive heels, and leaves the scene with the mission accomplished.

When Annie gets back they find that the data on the device is useless, and that Staz must have been a great assassin or a complete dummy when it comes to covert information.  Annie is having a bit of trouble dealing with everything, seeing someone get shot, lying to a federal agent, Auggie helps her cope and takes her out for a few drinks.  Conrad joins them and they enjoy relaxing after Annie’s first day on the job, but she remembers she is late for dinner at her sister’s house.

She leaves and on the way home notices that she is being tailed, she ends up getting behind the person tailing her and a car chase ensues.  They drive all over the city as she attempts to find out who is following her, but they get away when she crashes into a fruit stand.  She makes it to her sister’s house to find a full fledged dinner party going on, and her sister has someone she would like her to meet.  In the meantime Joan confronts Arthur because she thinks he is having an affair, but the woman he is meeting with is for a work related reason.  Joan does not believe that, and Arthur asks her to trust him but she says no and walks off.

Annie meets the guy her sister wants to hook her up with, and the guy turns out to be a stiff that talks to much.  He spilled food on her and ran his mouth the entire time; it truly did not go well.  Dinner ends, but Annie is still a little bit troubled about whom the person was that tailed her, she then remembers something and heads to her old college to meet with one of her professors.  She asks him what Kissu means, and he explains to her that it is a word that is not used all that much anymore, and a person who would want someone to think they are from Russia would probably use it.

Annie then realizes that the man who was shot might not be Staz, as she leaves her professor asks her to not work for the CIA and of course she denies working for them.  Arthur Campbell brings in the reporter who is getting the leaked information, and she is not willing to give up her sources.  She agrees to report some good news about the CIA rather than all the bad news, and he is surprised at how good of a hardball player she is.

As Annie gets back to work, she gets bombarded by security at the gate.  Joan is upset because she shared information with her professor about CIA business, she tells Annie that she needs to gather her things and get ready to report back to the training facility.  Annie goes into the bathroom upset about everything that has happened; she tries to figure out how to cope with just getting fired.  Auggie comes in and tries to comfort her, and tells her she is not really fired; instead it is just the odd way Joan uses to motivate her agents.

Annie and Auggie set off for the Medical Examiner’s office, they decide they need to break in and get a look at Staz’s body.  Annie finds a clever way to get in using Listerine Breath Strips, and they get in and examine the body.  They find that the body has no tattoos on it, but Staz has tattoos all over his back.  So that means Staz is still alive, and the person who was shot is a poor stand in for Staz.  As they are about to leave the FBI catches Annie and Auggie looking at the body; they are taken into custody.

Annie acts like she is a call girl and Auggie plays like he is one of her clients, the FBI is working to get information out of them, but they are not giving anything up.  The FBI agent conducting the interrogation gets a call from someone in the FBI above his boss, and they instruct him to release Annie and Auggie.  The agent gets pissed and tells Annie he knows she works for the CIA, and that they should be sharing the information with them.  Annie denies even knowing what the CIA is, and they are released from custody.

Joan was having her husband (Arthur Campbell) wire tapped and she finds out that all of his conversations have been work related, so he is not having an affair.  She seems indifferent like she was so sure he was having an affair that she was disappointed.  They see that all databases have Staz listed as being dead, but they now know that he is not.  They look for possible targets he may be in town to kill, and discover Victor Petrov an outspoken Russina author.  They go and pull Petrov out of the book signing as Staz is preparing to kill him, they arrive in time and as they leave Annie notices the guy from the lobby in the hotel working at the event.  He makes eye contact with her and she realizes that he is Staz, and he starts to run.

Annie starts to chase Staz, she does not have a gun on her or anything when the chase starts.  She loses Staz in the subway, and as she heads down the stairs Staz ambushes her and puts a gun to the back of her head.  She thinks she is about to die, but on a whim she manages to disarm Staz and a fight ensues as she kicks the gun onto the subway tracks.  She holds her own against the bigger Staz, but he over powers her and starts to choke her out.  As she is losing consciousness she sees someone that looks like her former lover, pull a gun and shot Staz dead and then they board the subway train and leave.

Annie receives an award for stopping a criminal which the CIA immediately takes back because all awards must remain in CIA headquarters, she asks Joan who shot Staz for her.  Joan tells her that she has been through a lot, and that a guy named agent Baldwin shot Staz for her and she should thank him.  Her and Auggie leave the event with her not being sure what happened, we then see Joan and Arthur meet and indeed Annie’s former lover Ben Mercer saved her from Staz.  They have been looking for him, and he apparently came out of hiding when Annie started working for the CIA, they are going to keep her working to monitor his movements in hopes of catching him at some point.

Annie goes back home and sits and her memories start to wonder to Ben Mercer, and we pan to him sitting in a car outside of her home.  He was the person driving the car that she got in the high speed chase with earlier, he seems like he wants to contact her and talk to her, but knows it would be dangerous for him to do so.  She is left wondering if what she saw was a dream, or did he actually save her from Staz.

This was the debut of the series on USA, and I did not know what to expect at first.  I decided to watch the show and was pleasantly surprised at how good of a show it was, of course this is just the first episode let’s see if t passes the three episode test.  But the show provided a good mix of interesting characters, mystery, action, comedy, and multiple story lines.  It actually made me want to tune in to the next episode, so if the rest of the episodes are like this one then this may be a series that is around for a long time.

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Featured Articles T.V. Show Reviews annie walker, Arthur Campbell, Auggie, CIA, CIA Agent, Covert Affairs, Domestic Protection Division, Joan Campbell, Spy, Spy Drama, Staz, USA Network