“Elevate Me Later” was a great Covert Affairs outing for these reasons: Paris, solid Annie/Auggie time, the return of Natasha, Paris, Annie in a cute dress, Marton Csokas as the bad guy, no boring Calder side story, Annie in another cute dress, and Paris. Nic Bishop’s charismatic Ryan McQuaid set the episode out, but the City of Lights more than made up for it. And we get it again next week!
I was quite shocked when I saw old Natasha scenes shown in the “Previously On” segment. Her last appearance was her only one aka Season 1 Episode 7 “Communication Breakdown.” And out of all the women Auggie has been with on the show (excluding Annie), she’s my favorite. Liane Balaban brought a spunk to the character that I found incredibly appealing, and as the seasons went on I was surprised she never appeared again. Having Annie and Auggie in Paris was already exciting; adding Natasha to the mix made it better. Then to top it off, Marton Csokas is playing an antagonist! I’ve been a fan of his since Xena: Warrior Princess where he played Borias, the father of Xena’s son (more of you may recognize him as Celeborn from The Lord of the Rings). I mentioned previously that a bigger fish needed to be connected to The Postman since he was disposed of so easily last week. Csokas is the perfect actor to play that person (and Dracula; he’d nail that).
Bringing Natasha back into the mix and adding Csokas also ended up giving the episode a darker feel to it. Again, Annie is not the same girl now that she was before Hong Kong. I don’t think pre-Hong Kong Annie would have slipped in and stolen the key from Natasha while she and Auggie slept. The old Annie would have given Auggie the benefit of the doubt in securing the key from the Russian hacker even though she was denied what she wanted in return (having the charges dropped against her by the FBI). New Annie wasn’t going to take that chance. And while she did set things right by confirming to Natasha that Auggie was not a part of the plan, her original act was jarring (along with the rough fake make-out session with Ivan). I expect Annie will have another chance later this season to choose between the mission and Auggie– if she chooses him, then she’s back on the path of the woman we know she truly is; if she chooses the mission, bigger repercussions will be had most likely. When a television show gets this far into its run it’s never surprising to see the main character take a darker turn to shake things up. The question then becomes how long before the status quo is reached again?
More Thoughts After Going Back for My Christian Louboutin:
- Auggie now has three women he’s juggling (yes, I’m including Annie here). And while I’m a big fan of Natasha, I felt a bit bad for Hayley (especially if she ends up being a good guy- still leaning towards the opposite though).
- I’m curious where the scene with Arthur and Caitlyn was filmed. The show’s home base is Toronto which makes the whole “desert outside LA standing in for anywhere in the Middle East” to be less plausible. That whole scene reminded me of Tony Stark and his entourage being attacked in Iron Man (but on a tv level). Caitlyn received more dimension from the event too.
- No Calder side story this week: thank you
- So, where can I get Annie’s dresses from this episode?