Piper Perabo and Covert Affairs, you disappoint me :( And you too, Burn Notice.

After just two episodes of USA's Covert Affairs, I'm about ready to tap out. Sure, it's a spy show, and it's meant to be goofy and far-fetched. However, the show functions as a sort of Bizarro Burn Notice.

See, on Burn Notice, the main character of betrayed secret agent Michael Westin as portrayed by Jeffrey Donovan is boring as eff. Donovan is wooden and has the same reaction to just about any situation he's put in. The rest of the supporting cast - Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar - aren't too shabby though, even though they don't have a lot to work with. The first two seasons of the show, which deal with plausible spy issues delivered by Donovan in a dry monologue, are pretty solid. After that point, when the show has to rely on him to actually act, the quality rapidly degrades.

On Covert Affairs, Piper Perabo is stunningly awesome as CIA newbie Annie Walker. She is glib and charming, and she glows in every scene. She really is stunningly attractive, and someone smartly decided that because she is a CIA operative, she should be in hot dresses and business suits a lot. Whoever the wardrobe designer is on Covert Affairs should get a nice raise. (Even if it does look like she's using a Bump-It in some scenes [right].)

However, everything else on the show is pretty silly. In the pilot, we find out that Annie:

- Has an ex-boyfriend who dumped her in the middle of the night.
- Has a CIA handler that is blind.
- Her immediate boss and the head of the agency are married.
- She gets setup on a bad date by her well meaning sister.
- Of course, she bumps into that bad date on her first assignment.
- She has a long chase scene in which she somehow manages to keep pace with a trained assassin, even though she is wearing three-inch heels.
- Said ex-boyfriend is also a rogue spy who surfaces to save her at the end of the episode.

Jesus. I'm not sure what cliche they're missing, and it's only the first one-hour episode. I suppose they could have had her saving a kid (but they save that for episode two, seriously).

Speaking as a dude here, I will say that the cast is very easy on the eyes. Outside of Perabo, there is Anne Dudek (formerly of House) as her sister, and the icy blonde cool of Kari Matchett as her CIA boss. Wikipedia notes that Matchett "is probably best known for her role as Mariel Underlay on the cult TV series Invasion and as Kate Filmore in the science fiction movie Cube 2: Hypercube." This is a nice way of saying, "She hasn't really been in anything, sorry."

Among the male cast, there are two surprises. One, Peter Gallagher brings his eyebrows to the show as the husband of Matchett's character, and also the director of the CIA. He is very much like Peter Gallagher in this role. (Let's be honest, it's not like he's going to play an emo guitarist or a heroin addict.) Second, Sendhil Ramamurthy, a.k.a. Mohinder "The Hulk Ripoff" Suresh from Heroes, stars as a rising agent at the CIA. He is OK in this role.

Anyway, Perabo is awesome as Annie Walker, but anything not involving her feels jagged and awkward. For every scene that features her glibly bluffing her way through a difficult situation, there is another that is just campy and cringe-worthy.

And beyond that, there are also shockingly intense fight scenes, at least for a cable drama. You know, like Piper getting the shit choked out of her:


These fight scenes are really good - They could legit belong in a decent action movie. However, they seem out of place, since 30 seconds before Perabo was shucking and jiving with her blind CIA analyst friend.

Since Burn Notice just got picked up for a fifth AND sixth season, it wouldn't surprise me if Covert Affairs eeks out a couple of seasons. However, just realize it is on the second tier of cable shows, as opposed to the first tier with Psych, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Justified. (Hey speaking of that...)

(p.s. Also, since I can't seem to escape The Wire lately, I'll note that Lester Freamon guest stars in the pilot as Annie's college languages professor. She knows six, of course. He's good, but if I was him, I wouldn't bank on this earning him an Emmy or anything.)

Inexplicable TV Review: The Wire (will possess your television and life for a week)

Note: Significant spoilers throughout this entry.

So, I managed to steamroll through five seasons of The Wire over the past week. It's not as sad as it seems, since there are only about 12 to 13 episodes per season, as opposed to LOST, which took me a couple weeks last summer and has sprawling seasons.

However, the shows do have one important thing in common - A large ensemble cast. LOST kind of lost its way (sorry) when it started focusing more on the "stars" of the show, like Matthew Fox (even though I loved him) and Evageline Lilly (meh) and that guy who plays Sawyer (maybe someday, he'll be known by his name as opposed to his character name).

In contrast, The Wire keeps the focus spread out, and it remains fascinating through five seasons. The quality level varies from a low of "really good" (the first half of season two, most of season five) and downright incredible (all of seasons one, three and four). Because of the show's focus on a large ensemble cast, it allows for multiple interwoven stories each episode. There are always some long, multi-episode arcs, mixed up with shorter arcs that are resolved in one episode.

The large ensemble also allows for different personalities to shine through. Touching on my favorites, Lester Freamon is quite possibly one of the coolest detectives ever. All he does is solve crimes, convince a stripper to drop that lifestyle and marry him, and carve miniatures that sell for hundreds of dollars. Lucky bastard. "Cuddy" goes from drug muscle to a boxing trainer - dude looks so much like Kimbo Slice that I looked him up on IMDB to make sure it wasn't him.

If the show has a "star", it's probably Domenic West as asshole detective Jimmy McNulty. The stress of the job normally has him destroying his personal and professional relationships in order to assert his own superiority. In fact, one of the best scenes of the show's run comes in the otherwise subpar by Wire standards fifth season. McNulty has made up a serial killer in order to get the police department more resources, an outlandish plot point in an otherwise ultra realistic show. However, the FBI does a profile of the serial killer, and it matches McNulty's character 100 percent.

Let's talk about the seasons, or specifically, why two of them are sub-par. Season two takes a bit to get going - The awesome unit from the first season has been disbanded, and it takes the story a couple episodes to get them back together. However, the final half of the season is awesome, as the shipping union tries to cover up its crimes, as Ziggy finally gets thrown in jail for being an asshole, and as we learn more about The Greek and his organization.

Therefore, it's definitely the last season that is the biggest letdown. McNulty going completely insane and fixing a case seems like such an outlandish step for his character to take. Also, seeing him bed random women and what not seemed like a step backwards, into the mess of the first two seasons. I think they should have just had him and Freamon doing an illegal wire without the mess of the homeless killer. Some of the other aspects - like the financial crisis in the department, and Marlo killing at will - also fell flat to me.

However, even a bad season of The Wire is still gripping to watch, and I have to admire the bravery of the show's creators and writers to not pull any punches when it comes to the characters. Just as you're really starting to like someone - Omar, Bodie - they get shot. Marlo Stanfield, the entire reason why McNulty and Freamon become ex-police, is a free man. The show is overwhelmingly cynical, but there are jussttttt enough satisfying moments to keep you interested. You know, like when Slim Charles kills the arrogant Cheddar in the final episode, or when Michael gets the jump on Snoop and kills her. (I totally agree with Steven King's write-up of the fourth season - Snoop and Chris Partlow are terrifying modern villains.)

So yeah. The Wire is definitely the strongest start-to-finish television drama of the past 30 years, with the caveat that I still have to watch through Homicide and The Sopranos. If you haven't seen it, prepare yourself to clear out plenty of free time to watch it, since it is addictive as hell. And tomorrow will be my entry about The Baltimore Sun and its presence on the show.

Getting hooked on The Wire (and McNulty and Freamon and Greggs)

Friends have been getting on me for months for not watching The Wire. I finally took the plunge last night, and immediately devoured six episodes. It is filling the hole in my viewing (and heart) LOST finally being over and done with.

Sure, it's only about eight years late. But still, it's a fascinating show because all of the various angles covered by it. Although the first season focuses mostly on the police and the police politics, there are also great scenes with the drug dealers and two addicts. The whole show is clad in layers of murky, morally ambiguous gray.

I'm trying to race through episodes as fast as I can, between work and other obligations - I'll be done with the first season in a couple days, hopefully. And at this rate, I can probably finish the show in about two weeks.