Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,388
edits
Covert Affairs: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (update links) |
No edit summary |
||
| (16 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 8:
The [[Myth Arc]] concerns Annie's Dear-Johnning ex-lover Ben, who influenced her decision to join the CIA and has a [[Mysterious Past]].
----
{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Girl]]:
Line 65:
** Subverted when Auggie has his talk with Arthur. Arthur explicitly tells him that "The chair's right in front of you." so that Auggie can sit down.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: In "Bang and Blame", {{spoiler|the leak at the Farm that's revealing potential trainee's on line (and thus effectively destroying their career at any sort of clandestine organization forever)? One of the trainee who wants to be number one. Yeesh.}}
* [[Do You Want to Haggle?]]: At one time both Annie and Eyal are trying to [[Manipulative Bastard| charm]] a Syrian employee, Annie posing as a glamorous socialite, Eyal as a cosmopolitan and very available bachelor. Whereupon the Syrian [[Cutting the Knot| comes right out and says]] in effect that she is not stupid, she knows what they both want and she wants them to bid for her service.
* [[Doesn't Like Guns]]: Annie, technically, but it's justified in that 1) she's suppose to be a museum curator in most of her covers so guns would break her cover and 2) she never completed gun training before being brought up from the Farm so she probably isn't even allowed to use a gun unless she's forced to.
* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Episode seven features a lot of shirtless Auggie. And it's ''awesome.'' And apparently someone at USA knows how to [[Fandom Nod|play the fangirls]], because episode nine has this as well.
Line 84 ⟶ 85:
** Not to mention the fact that the show has gone out of its way to include a scene of Annie in a bikini in darn near every episode or, alternatively, putting her in short cocktail dresses showing off her legs.
** Heck, the season 1 premiere starts off with a several minute long non-speaking sequence of Annie wandering around a beach in a bikini. Complete with [[Foot Focus]].
* [[Femme Fatale]]: Annie seems like a [[Girl Next Door]] but she has no problems using her feminine wiles to manipulate marks.
* [[Foot Focus]]: Annie has to take off her shoes when stepping into a stream where a retired agent was fly-fishing. The camera focuses on her bare feet for a full minute.
** It happens again in an episode where she's in a bubblebath, and again in an earlier episode.
Line 95 ⟶ 97:
{{quote|"And this is when you steal some poor hapless peasant's vehicle; his only worldly possession."}}
* [[Grey and Grey Morality]]: Henry Wilcox
**He is strongly implied to have sponsored Ops that [[Even Evil Has Standards|even the CIA]] thinks are beyond the pale; a running theme is Arthur being in legal difficulties because of dirt that overflowed from Wilcox's schemes and Auggie once actually calls him [[Satan|the Prince of Darkness.]]
***Henry is later shown not to be just an unscrupulous schemer (which at least sort of comes with the job) but a traitor.
* [[Government Agency of Fiction]]: The Domestic Protection Division. Notable since the CIA is a foreign intelligence service yet for obvious reasons the show takes place mostly in the States. Something of [[Truth in Television]] as the CIA has 90% of its employees in the States. Most of whom are likely support for the operatives, analysts for the information, management/administration, or counter-intelligence rather than any sort of shadowy internal espionage thing (which, as mentioned above, is the FBI's purview).
* [[Handicapped Badass]]: '''Auggie'''. Just all the way through. He's the one who teaches Annie grappling, for one thing.
Line 109 ⟶ 113:
** In "A Girl Like You", {{spoiler|Annie does this to Eyal in an attempt to stop him from going after 'Cardinal'}}. Notable in that it's lampshaded and discussed.
** In "Good Advices," {{spoiler|Oded Fehr as Eyal Levin}} is a bit of a two-way [[Honey Trap]] {{spoiler|himself.}}
* [[Hollywood Tactics]]: Subverted. While there are enough seductions, gunfights, and car explosions to keep people happy, plots tend to center on soliciting of informants. In other words it is an espionage show about, duh, ''espionage''.
* [[Hot Scoop]]: Auggie's girlfriend.
* [[Hyper Awareness]]: One of Annie's skills. 1x04, "No Quarter", shows the problems with this; as ''[[Burn Notice]]'''s Michael Westen once noted, it's easy to become paranoid, interpreting even innocent gestures as evidence of a threat.
Line 134 ⟶ 139:
* [[MacGyvering]]
* [[Making Love in All the Wrong Places]]: {{spoiler|Auggie and his ex-girlfriend Natasha}}, on a train in episode seven. [[Fetish Fuel|More like all the RIGHT places]].
* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: Everybody. They're [[Captain Obvious| spies]].
* [[Moe Stare]] : Annie. What a gorgeous smile!
* [[Nerds Are Virgins]]: Awesomely subverted with Auggie, who is most certainly a ladies' man.
Line 142 ⟶ 148:
* [[Overt Operative]]: Annie seems to give out her real name to EVERYONE, which is actually Standard Operating Procedure for the CIA (and most intelligence agencies in general). One's "cover" usually does not consist of a fake identity but rather simply [[Spy From Weights and Measures|lying about one's job]]. It's too easy for a competent foreign agency to uncover an entirely false identity, and (more importantly) it can often be difficult to ''remember'' who you're supposed to be (especially for a newbie). In practice, it really is enough to say that you work for (for instance) the Smithsonian under your real name. They've handled it quite well.
* [[Part-Time Hero]]: Sort of but considering her normal job is a CIA operative, it's not really a part time thing.
* [[Punch Clock Hero]] The main characters including Annie.
* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: Zig-Zagged. Police whenever Annie is on the lam or in a jurisdiction feud. They are just cops and often [[Worthy Opponent| pretty good cops.]] Sometimes agents from rival states are punch clock villains though they are more unscrupulous then police [[Grey and Grey Morality| (as indeed is the CIA)]] and perhaps more to the point are often rogue agents with their own agenda rather then [[Just Following Orders]]. A lot of Annie's opponents however are criminals and terrorists which are definitely not Punch Clock Villains.
**It's a fairly safe rule that when an agent from another state is a [[Worthy Opponent]] he will usually be from a traditional ally(like Israel) that just happens to be competing at a given instance rather then a traditional enemy(like Russia or China) of the US. Eyal in some episodes plays in an ambiguous role like this.
***In seasons 3 and 4 the chief villains are Lena and Henry who are traitors, rather then Russia and China whom they respectively defect to.
* [[Put on a Bus]]: Ben and Annie reunite and Ben gets his job back. Yay! Except it takes a while to realize that Ben getting his job back means he's back to being a shadow non-existent presence (just working for the CIA again). Subsequently, the amount of flirtation that gets sent Annie's way has increased significantly while the initial trait of her being very guarded has also increased to be an actual character trait rather than as the plot demands.
* [["Previously On..."]]: Started popping up late in the season, so that the viewers were reminded of the [[Myth Arc]].
Line 158 ⟶ 168:
* [[Shown Their Work]]: They might play fast and loose with the CIA stuff, but Christopher Gorham has been going out of his way to do the research to accurately portray a blind person, including spending time at the Canada National Institute of the Blind.
** At the same time, some of the smaller details are fairly accurate. For instance, CIA agents are always referred to as operatives and case workers.
***Though there are the traditional car chases, gun fights, and seductions, much of the focus is on salesmanship and just plain hustling to get informers. Moreover there are no pulpish plots to [[Take Over the World]] but only gritty power politics.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: To ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'', so much so that several elements have been directly lifted from that show - most notably Jai Wilcox's father being a [[Magnificent Bastard]] of a [[The Spymaster|Spymaster]] and his mother being a double agent.
** The executive producer of the show is Doug Liman, who is also responsible for ''The Bourne Trilogy.'' In one of the preview videos before the show debuted, he likened the show to seeing what happened to Jason Bourne in between the movies.
Line 179 ⟶ 190:
* [[Your Cheating Heart]]: Actually portrayed semi-sympathetically with Arthur and Joan, as the two are now married. Doesn't mean they don't have trust issues, though.
** This forms the B-plot of one episode with Annie caught between the two. Joan (her boss) orders her to keep an eye on Arthur under the pretense of being point on an operation involving a female love interest from Arthur's past. Arthur (her boss's boss) orders her -not- to follow Joan's orders and plays [[Cowboy Cop]].
* [[You! Get Me Coffee!]]: Annie. She gets upgraded to walk-in work, though! And then lunch duty! And then in "Bang and Blame", she's back on the farm to finish training!
** Subverted on one occasion. A nameless jerkass agent disregards Annie's input and asks her to fetch him coffee. She springs up to grab the drinks, but [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Jai tugs her back into her seat.]]
** Starting to be used less in the second season. Justified of course - given the amount of field work she's had, it'd be difficult to explain why she'd still be so low on the totem pole. That said, it still occurs when other agents get involved.
Line 187 ⟶ 198:
[[Category:The New Tens]]
[[Category:Crime and Punishment Series]]
[[Category:
[[Category:TV Series]]
| |||