rm | why you should be watching Covert Affairs (Reply)

1. Two strong, complex, hot female characters (Joan and Annie). It won't seem like this at all from the first episode. Or even the second. Stick with it. The women are smart and competent. One of them is even over 30!

2. Do you miss the cracky, cracky absurdity of early S1 Torchwood where anyone could sleep with anyone at any time and all loyalties are in question? This show is threatening to be just that, just without aliens (although no queer content yet -- on the other hand, no sort of "we're faking it with slash goggles" either (unless you wanna write Annie/Joan), which is oddly, somewhat a plus). Again, please trust it past the first fairly terrible episode.

3. Auggie. Auggie's about the most interesting thing the show has going. He may be the agency leak. He may have a thing for Annie. He may be at peace with his blindness (the result of an accident while on a Special Forces mission in Tikrit), but he may not much love his supervisors because of all the crap they don't think he's capable of anymore which leads him to break the rules, a lot).

4. Also Auggie? Is totally smoking hot and gets all the tail ever. Watch the video clip. Check out the tattoo. Hot, hot nerd action. Daaaaaaamn. (Note: Ausiello tagged this entry "free porn;" it's that hot).

5. Come to think of it, the show is really, oddly sex positive. Apparently dating within the agency is really encouraged. See what I mean about the Torchwood factor?

6. Jai (played by Sendil Ramamurthy who could get my attention reading the damn phone book). When he's first introduced it's a bit "oh shit, the villain is the one PoC? character Fuck you." Jai's not the villain (and the show has other PoC characters now). But he has a really interesting backstory and a lot of rivalries with a lot of people. Outcome, seriously unknown.

The show absolutely has problems (and some points of Fail), but each episode has been better than the last. And it's sort of the perfect antidote to White Collar (where no one fucks, but everything is about sex) by being the show where everyone fucks, but it's never about sex.