‘Covert Affairs’ – ‘Communication Breakdown’: Blind man’s buff

A quick review of tonight’s “Covert Affairs” coming up just as soon as you rate this blog for enjoyment on a scale of 1 to 8…

Christopher Gorham has been very likable on a lot of TV shows I didn’t much like (“Popular,” “Out of Practice,” “Medical Investigation”) or that I quickly lost interest in (“Ugly Betty,” “Jake 2.0”), so I’ve been pleased to see him playing a central role on a show I quite enjoy, even on the superficial level “Covert Affairs” is working for me so far.

But Gorham’s big shirtless spotlight episode didn’t do a whole lot for me, alas.

A lot of that actually had more to do with Annie than with Auggie, as it feels the producers haven’t quite figured out the aggressive/naive balance they want to strike with Annie, and here we leaned way too far in the Pollyanna direction of her believing implicitly in Auggie and also being shocked (shocked!) by the concept of a spy seducing and bedding an asset. So the Annie scenes with both Auggie and Jai were kind of a drag.

Beyond that, Auggie’s super-competence works well when he’s a supporting character in Annie’s stories, less so when he’s the hero of the hour. It’s not that a blind guy with a Special Ops couldn’t win a fight with two armed gunmen in a train car, but rather that everything seems to come a bit too easily to Auggie – fighting, hacking, seduction, etc. – and that can suck some of the tension out of a story built around him. Even when his ex-girlfriend was resisting his charms, I knew it would be only a matter of time because, hey, it’s Auggie. It’s what he does. (Or maybe I was just bored because I didn’t find the actress all that compelling, with or without Gorham.)

What did everybody else think?

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