alias_sqbr: Torchwood spoilers for various episode numbers: Jack dies (torchwood spoilers)
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I've watched the first seven episodes of this show on the plane and while sitting around getting over my jetlag. I don't know how much I'll like it when I'm actually awake (for me) but so far I'm enjoying it well enough.

It's kind of like the story of Sarah from "Chuck" before she met Chuck (or some weird mixture of "Alias", "Spooks" and something girly and cheerful): the story of a young pretty kickass woman who's just joined the CIA. Piper Perado is quite likeable as Annie, and while the missions she goes on aren't SUPER original or anything they mesh well with the mixture of internal CIA drama and mildly soap opera-ish relationship stuff.

Christopher Gorham (The one from Jake 2.0, not the one on my flist :D) plays her handler Auggie, who is a moderately well written/acted blind character from what I can tell as a sighted person. Sendhil Ramamurthy is basically playing "the hot morally ambiguous coworker"(*) but his character has gained some depth beyond eye candy as the show's gone on :) I like knowing that if they do the "Oh noes female lead, let's make it more of an ensemble" thing their current options for increased plotlines are a disabled white man, a non-white/POC man, and the female boss :D

It gets a bit chick-flick-ish here and there (an odd complaint from someone who likes romance novels, I know), at this point pretty much every single character has romantic relationships (past present or anticipated) as a significant driving force behind their plots, and I'm just not convinced that they're quite such a major factor in most real CIA operatives lives. For example, Annie's motivation for joining the CIA was having her heart broken (and her ex is foreshadowed to be involved with the CIA in some way) and Annie's boss has Drama with her boss being her husband. On the other hand most of these romantic relationships are engagingly done and it does sometimes add very effective emotional weight to scenes. I was initially annoyed at the sexism of having all the female characters so driven by maternal/jealous/heartbroken etc feelings and still am a bit with the side female characters we meet, but at this point I've decided it's just set in some alternate universe where the CIA is driven mostly by The Power and Pain of Love.

Plus Annie wears ridiculously impractical shoes.

Which is not to say it's totally shallow and vague about the actual work the CIA does, there's even some (rather wishy-washy) references to the morally despicable things the agency has done and the justified resentment people outside the US have towards them. It's somewhere between Spooks and Burn Notice in terms of it's nuanced portrayal of international relations. Both those show have better action scenes imo but "Covert Affairs" ones aren't bad.

(*)Cam tried to lure me to watch the show by saying "Sendhil Ramamurthy is in it! Auggie takes his shirt off!". But the thing that got me to give it a go was this review at FWD saying it wasn't as bad as it initially looked wrt disability. Honest! :)

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