Covert Affairs – Good Advices

• Title: Covert Affairs – Good Advices
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Annie’s (Piper Perabo) latest assignment sends her to Paris on her birthday where she’s given the task of cultivating a member of the Syrian Embassy (Helena Soubeyrand) as an asset for the CIA. The trouble is, she’s not the only one with that assignment.

This episode returns as Mossad Agent Eyal Lavine (Oded Fehr) who has plans to turn Salma for his government. There’s some nice positioning between the pair before things go awry for both the agents when she turns up dead.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the return of Fehr’s character. I like the pair together. There’s chemistry, understanding, and underlying lack of trust that gives the relationship an intriguing flavor. And I like the Annie/Lavine lighthearted chemistry far more than the what we’ve been shown of Annie and Ben (Eion Bailey) together.

Sadly this week’s B-story isn’t as strong as Joan (Kari Matchett) deals with Jury Duty while Auggie (Christopher Gorham) takes on new responsibleness in her absence. It’s not that the story doesn’t work. It does allow Auggie to be put in a situation he wouldn’t normally find himself, but it’s simply not as well written as the main story and feels more than a little tired.

Even if the backup story doesn’t pay off, the main story works well enough for me to forgive its shortcomings. On a story arc note this episode is also notable for Annie opening up slightly more to her sister (Anne Dudek) then we’ve seen before. She’s not coming clean about her secret life, but it is an intriguing first step. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the rest of the season.