Covert Affairs - Man in the Middle

After learning about a potential terrorist meeting from Eyal (Oded Fehr), Annie (Piper Perabo) puts her career on the line to turn an asset and discover the truth in the next twelve hours. Joan's (Kari Matchett) concerns about the validity of the intelligence and Annie's recent decision making forces our protagonist to go over Joan's head and present her plan directly to Arthur (Peter Gallagher) to turn the girlfriend, a Staff Director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Michelle Nolden), of a State Department protected Middle East asset (Haaz Sleiman) in order to prove that he's funding terrorist activities.

After Annie misses on her play to turn the asset she doubles down by getting Arthur's permission to present proof that the woman's boyfriend is much more dangerous than she realizes. Based on their second meeting, and the intel Annie is able to provide, Arthur orders a drone strike on the terrorist's base that the oil exec leads them to. The drone successfully kills the terrorist, or so the CIA initially believes, but the oil executive escapes putting Annie's new asset in tremendous danger.


In the episode's B-story Auggie (Christopher Gorham) is surprised by the sudden return of Parker (Devin Kelley) who needs his help with her parents money troubles after the government checks stop coming. This leads to an awkward, but final, conversation between the ex-fiances. We also get Arthur's continued frustration, not aware of Joan's struggles with pills, over what he sees as Joan reconnecting with her old boyfriend Seth Newman (Tim Griffin).

As the episode comes to a close Joan and Annie hash it out, perhaps irreparably harming their working relationship, and that's before Annie discovers the Mossad intelligence was faked by Eyal (Oded Fehr) who played Annie and the CIA into ordering a drone strike of a terrorist who was never at the compound. The episode's final scenes leave plenty of dust to settle as next week brings the return of Eyal and some big decisions concerning Annie's future role at the CIA.