When is a secret agent not a secret agent? Covert Affairs Season One saw CIA trainee Annie Walker prematurely promoted to Domestic Protection Division operative, in order to lure an agent/paramour out of the shadows; love is, after all, a manifestly manipulable thing. Season Two has made Annie an official shield-sporting super-spy. Too bad she’s sworn to secrecy about the whole thing. The new question: When is a secret agent nothing more than a secret agent? If Annie can’t balance her personal and professional lives, she’ll blow her cover and break her own heart. Love is in the crossfires: Did the cold war just get colder?
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There are three fictitious characters with whom I'd never want to go on a vacation. In no particular order, they are: CIA Agent Annie Walker; the Miss Marple-type lead character in Murder, She Wrote; and pretty much everyone from Lost. Why? The math is simple. Any of these characters plus vacation equals disaster, oftentimes death.
On the off-chance that you've yet to see last night's episode of Covert Affairs — the Season Two finale — then here is the most minor of spoilers: Annie and her sister go to Sweden on a work-mixed-with-pleasure vacation, emphasis on the mixed. How much emphasis, and how mixed? Danielle gets mistaken for Annie, by an assassin. What ensues, particular in the final act, yields one of the tensest episodes of this show ever aired.
So: "Annie's Reckoning." Indeed, my title for this week's installment, the final installment, of the Covert Affairs Season Two blog is nothing short of foreboding. I chose that name perhaps unfairly, but I did have my reasons. The term reckoning is, of itself, loaded with portent, and suggests confrontation with finality. As well, reckoning's lesser-used meaning is in the context of self-recognition, and general stock-taking and understanding in one's life. And if you're a fan of Athens, Georgia, alternative-rock icons R.E.M., Reckoning is the title of one of your all-time favourite albums.
No news, here, if we say that someone with a very high level of security clearance in the Covert Affairs script department loves their R.E.M. — after all, every episode this season was named after one of the group's songs. Last night's season finale, "Letter Never Sent," took its name from a deep-album cut on Reckoning. Similar to that album's modest hit single, "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)," it's a song about communication breakdown. In "Letter Never Sent," lyricist Michael Stipe considers personal reflections that he never took the time to share; even if he wrote the letter, he chose to not send it. The narrator of "So. Central Rain," possibly a member of a rock band on tour (though never specified), is "sorry" both in terms of personal regret for being away from home too long but also sorry that circumstance sometimes makes communication garbled if not completely misunderstood. (It also bears mentioning that the lyrics to "9-9," from the group's previous album, Murmur, are all garbled, muttered, indeed murmur-ed, and the only discernible words are "conversation fear.")
Above, I suggested that calling this blog post "Annie's Reckoning" was a bit unfair. To be sure, the identity crisis involving Danielle is the deserved focal point of the episode, and the repercussions of this reckoning are enormous. The thing is, Annie's not the only character who faces a reckoning in this episode. A quiet but building war between two major CIA players also comes to a head, with a fairly surprising strategic, almost overt, power-play.
And then there's Auggie. If Annie's the heart of the show, Auggie is the soul. His character hasn't been put through the wringer this season the way Annie's has, but he's endured a number of personal and professional setbacks, and seen his share of tragedy. "Letter Never Sent" is mostly about Annie, but there is a bookending sequence that opens and closes the episode and says even more about Auggie.
Like an unsent letter, Covert Affairs Season Two wrapped last night with many things left unsaid. Of course, many of them are felt, suspected, known and denied. Just like a CIA operation; and to a certain degree, just like life.
THIS IS THE COVERT AFFAIRS SEASON TWO BLOG, GOING DARK.