Relationship Recap: Auggie and Annie, Covert Affairs 

It’s been a couple of years since I weighed in on these two in a formal relationship recap (and I was firmly anti-ship at the time), so I think we’re at a point that it makes sense to revisit them. We’re six episodes into the fourth season, and Auggie and Annie are a proper couple, but they’re on the down-low to everybody except the Campbells and their new boss, Calder. They’re happy, and I’m going to go ahead and say they’re in love with each other (and Auggie’s been in love with her for a while, and Annie loved him before Simon), but neither one has actually said it out loud yet.

When Auggie was upped to fill in for Joan, who’d been promoted into Arthur’s slot, that opened the door for DRAMA on the domestic front because it also uncapped some secrets Auggie’s been hanging onto. Annie wasn’t having it, though, and she told Auggie as much–that they had to be better together and better to each other together than the parameters of the job would generally allow. And so they cleared the air. Parker wasn’t Auggie’s only lost love. He also had a relationship with a fellow operative, Helen, that blossomed from a sham marriage into a real romance and then ended badly when bad intel from Teo got her killed. Or so we thought.

Then Annie nearly got herself killed when Auggie audio ID’d Seth as the mole and her attempt to ferret out his intel ended, again badly, with Seth in the drink. So Henry maneuvered to bring Calder to DC as the head of DPD, and Auggie was out as interim head and back on the intel desk. That created more DRAMA when Calder immediately sent Annie undercover and told her she couldn’t contact Auggie, but of course, she did. So, now they’re skirting whatever agenda he’s running and trying to be together without all the secrets and lies inherent to the job.

Last night, they hit another roadblock when Auggie couldn’t hack the FBI to alter Annie’s DNA on Seth. But Henry stepped in to help and present his own agenda. When Annie turned him down, he had the mother of all meltdowns (and kudos to Gregory Itzin for completely losing it in a scene driven by panic and grief more than rage). That dovetailed back to her relationship with Auggie when, at the last minute in the argument, Henry opened the door to the idea that Helen isn’t dead after all. And while Annie reeled, and we sat with that for a second, wondering whether Auggie would have lied, the promo a moment told us later it’s likely going to be news to Auggie, too. And so they roll on with more DRAMA, but they’re doing it together.

I like that they’ve played the relationship as still very much grounded in the BFF-dom that drove the first three seasons. They are still each other’s rock, just now with a heightened sense of concern for each other’s safety because the stakes are higher every time they are in peril. As a couple, they’re very sweet and familiar together and they’ve skipped right past the stepping on toes thing of new relationships.That’s sort of refreshing.

The one thing that nags me, that I’m likely alone in feeling, is that the show hasn’t completely pulled the trigger because Auggie and Annie haven’t said outright how they feel about each other (especially when Suits had Mike and Rachel put it on the table pretty quickly). It just seems to be a glaring thing not said. In one scene, Auggie carefully declared something about Annie to be one of the many things he liked about her, and in another, he said how much he was “into her.” Those felt like the wrong word choices when the right one is right there. When she was heading off to Switzerland and they’d been told they couldn’t talk, the timing was there for one of them to say “I love you,” as he walked her to her car, but the moment came and went without it. Call me old-fashioned, but I hope it’s said at some point. [Note: one of our readers reminded me that they said it in the flash-forward opener, which I’d apparently forgotten, so I’ll just add that I hope that’s not the first time they say it.]

All in all, I’m glad we’re letting it play out and that they’ve kept them together. I adore Piper Perabo and Chris Gorham, and after season three kept Auggie and Annie physically apart for so much of the season, I’m just happy to have them in the same room so often. Covert Affairs airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on USA.