Covert Affairs – Hang on to Yourself

• Title: Covert Affairs – Hang on to Yourself
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After witnessing the death of a very paranoid Jai Wilcox (Sendhil Ramamurthy) in a car bombing, Annie (Piper Perabo) finds herself shaken and reassigned out of the DPD, as does Auggie (Christopher Gorham) who finds himself promoted into Jai’s role as head of Special Projects and tasked by Arthur (Peter Gallagher) to uncover the people responsible for Jai’s murder. This, of course, also leaves Joan (Kari Matchett) without two of her most reliable resources during a particularly stressful time in the agency.

Annie meets her new boss Lena Smith (Sarah Clarke) who encourages her agents to take risks, wants field agents in the field and not tied to a desk, and offers Annie a partnership and an assignment to do high security clearance on Simon Fisher (Richard Coyle), a Russian financial analyst, the son of a KGB Agent, and an extremely dangerous person of interest.

And so soon Annie finds herself in Africa trying to gleam whatever information she can from the man after arranging an impromptu meeting. Without the support of Auggie, even after two foreign agents have already made an attempt on her life, Annie chooses to go through with the mission and find out the real reason Simon is so intent on buying up 40,000 acres of African real estate, even if that means getting far closer to the man than she initially planned.

“Hang on to Yourself” proves to be an intriguing season premiere. Not only does it remove one of the show’s major supporting characters but it places Annie in a new role where her choices to follow her gut over protocol are encouraged. This will no doubt get her in (and probably out of) all kinds of trouble. As to the mysterious symbol in Jai’s files, that also appears as a tattoo on Annie’s new Russian friend, well, we’ll just have to wait and see where that thread leads.

Although I miss the regular back-and-forth from the Annie/Auggie relationship the show usually gives us plenty of (not to mention the episode doesn’t touch on the outcome of Auggie’s relationship from last season with Devin Kelley‘s character Parker), it seems the pair’s separation won’t last all that long as next week puts both Annie and Auggie in the field together – as a married couple.