Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Covert Affairs - The Complete Third Season

The Third Season begins with the death of one of the show's major supporting characters and ends with Annie (Piper Perabo) and Auggie (Christopher Gorham) finally admitting their true feelings for each other. In-between the season gives us love, betrayal, the return of old friends, murder, an escape from a Russian prison, and revenge. After witnessing Jai Wilcox's (Sendhil Ramamurthy) death, Annie finds herself reassigned to a new division run by Lena Smith (Sarah Clarke), an old rival of Joan's (Kari Matchett) who gives her agents far more freedom than Annie is used to. Under Lena's direction, Annie begins cultivating a new asset and lover, FSB Agent and master spy Simon Fischer (Richard Coyle) whose fate will be tied to Annie's through most of the season.

Season Three also returns Oded Fehr as Mossad Agent Eyal Lavine for several episodes including Annie's trip to Israel, rescuing his friend from a Russian prison, searching for a Mossad asset in Washington, and the season ending arc where he helps Annie take down a mutual enemy.

Highlights from the season include Annie attempting to turn Yemen's Chief of Staff (Omid Abtahi) into an asset for the CIA, Annie working the Staff Director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Michelle Nolden) to nail her boyfriend who the CIA believes is funneling money to terrorists, a botched CIA drone strike, and Annie's journey to Russia to kill the woman who killed her lover, betrayed her, left her for dead, and framed her as a traitor. Auggie gets some adventure of his own this season making it into the field in the season finale as well as getting kidnapped by pirates and working with Annie to find a hacker who has developed a nasty virus which could potentially cripple the United States.

The 16 episode season is strong throughout, with no weak episodes and several ongoing storylines involving Annie's troubled relationships with both her mentors, Annie's complicated affair with Simon that nearly costs her everything she holds dear, and the end of Auggie's relationship with Parker (Devin Kelley) who breaks off their engagement after she learns what her fiance truly does for a living.


The fallout of each relationship continues to effect the remaining episodes in the series and eventually leads to Annie and Auggie finally getting together as well as the season's final sequence foreshadowing an unlikely new alliance for a heroine and more complications to come when the show returns this Summer for its Fourth Season. Annie has done quite a bit of growing up over the show's run (Ben Mercer isn't even mentioned this season), and I'll be very happy to see Annie's adventures continue.

The four-disc set includes all 16 episodes from the show's Third Season. The only extras included are deleted scenes for select episodes and a five-part short film series featuring an adventure with Auggie before Annie joined the CIA which has an inconsistent tone (trying to be both humorous and serious) and is more awkward than anything.

[Universal Studios, DVD $39.98]

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