- Title: Covert Affairs – Elevate Me Later
- wiki: link
A lead in the money behind the Chicago bombing sends Annie (Piper Perabo) and Auggie (Christopher Gorham) to Paris where Auggie is forced to balance his feelings for his recent ex and his new girlfriend Hayley (Amy Jo Johnson) while attempting to woo his old girlfriend Natasha (Liane Balaban) into helping the CIA break into the Paris bank’s security. How’s that for complicated?
As Auggie woos Natasha, Annie cozies up to a dangerous former Soviet spy (Marton Csokas) who, along with Natasha’s code, they hope will lead the CIA back to The Postman. With Auggie already hiding his relationship with Hayley, Annie steps in when the FBI refuses to honor the deal to clear the hacker’s record in exchange for the necessary code to complete the mission – despite Auggie’s assurances that honesty will get them the key without destroying a relationship he treasures deeply. Although Annie’s last-second appeal to Natasha allows the hacker to forgive Auggie for a betrayal he knew nothing about, it also puts Auggie in an uncomfortable position concerning a very much unexpected house guest.
When it turns out the account which paid for the bombings belongs to the man Annie used in Paris the season’s plot begins to thicken. The question is whether or not Annie can salvage the situation and continue the charade long enough to discover the identity of The Postman or if returning to Ivan will do nothing more than place her in danger. Other storylines involve Joan‘s (Kari Matchett) failed attempt to set-up Calder (Hill Harper) with someone (Melanie Merkosky) other than a high-priced prostitute (Nazneen Contractor), and Arthur‘s (Peter Gallagher) first overseas mission for McQuaid Security becomes more action-packed than expected when the company convoy in Riyadh with Arthur and Caitlyn Cooke (Perrey Reeves) comes under fire.
The friction between Annie and Auggie at the end of the episode works well and it allows Auggie to point out a fundamental difference in the spy Annie has become versus the spy he met back in Season One. Annie is certainly a more capable spy than the young woman we met in the show’s Pilot episode, but the character’s strength of doing right by the individual (at times in direction opposition to some of the mission’s objectives) is something Annie appears to have lost along the way. The return of Natasha is unexpected, as is her arrival in Washington. The lies Auggie told about Hayley will no doubt come out sooner than later but will the fallout destroy both relationships for Auggie or can one still be salvaged?
