Two Moments of Goodness from Covert Affairs “Grounded” 

We like to keep it family friendly around here, but I want you to imagine my Scottish/Texan vocabulary getting the better of me at 9:59 last night. Because, come ON. I have two moments from this episode, one that was genuinely good and one that was genuinely gahhhh!!, but since we don’t have a category for that, they’re getting paired up.

Annie and Roger

The writing was on the wall the minute they humanized Roger (Greg Gale), but I’m glad we had the scene regardless. Roger engages Annie to get him $100K for an information exchange, and McQuaid happily hands it over, but Annie doesn’t tell Roger how she sourced his request–in fact she never mentions McQuaid to Roger at all. And that may be REALLY crucial later on. So, Roger explains that he’s doing better, that being brought in by Auggie has equalized him in a way. He’s back on his meds and has regained some clarity

And then that all gets blown to hell when he has a meltdown in his hallway as he spies someone he believes has been following him (and Canadian casting 101 says he’s not wrong). Annie jumps in and stops Roger from assaulting the guy, and then they have a lovely, quiet scene in a coffee shop as Roger tells Annie that the thing he loved most–the spycraft–upended his mind and robbed him of himself.

He tells her how important it’s been to him to do this job well for Auggie, who he most respected while at the agency. He asks Annie if she’s ever been ill and she gently tells him not mentally, but that’s as far as she goes. He thanks her for trusting him, and she reassures him that she’s not the agency. They separate and he later calls her with news but is killed before he can reach her. McQuaid helicopters her to the meet and tries to help her find Roger on the train platform but it’s too late.

Annie and McQuaid

Y’all know that McQuaid has kind of snuck up on me. I’ve enjoyed wherever this thing has been going with him and Annie because we’ve spent enough time on them that I thought, while he’s clearly about the profit, he’s not a bad guy. Well, crap. I may have to rethink that, and that pisses me off because I’ve said all along I did not (and do not) want McQuaid to be Simon 2.0.

What’s worked for me is that Annie and McQuaid talk to each other beyond the initial snappy responses they started with. I like their conversations with each other–they’re genuinely friends now. So, it felt like a cheat that an all-nighter of drinking, eating, talking, and laughing between them was reduced to a montage where we didn’t get to hear any of their conversation. Booooo. As morning breaks, we finally slow it down, and Annie tells him she hasn’t stayed awake talking in forever and he teases her that he’s an exceptional conversationalist.

He offers her coffee, and she gives him the same look that she gave him when she showed up at his house with the news that she’d been suspended and he insisted she come in for a drink. I will give TPTB points that it didn’t immediately become a tryst in the kitchen, because the heat was certainly there for that scene to go very differently.

So, it’s daylight, and he offers her coffee and she says it’s weird to have nowhere to be, and he points out the positive–she can be anywhere. They kiss, and it’s a pretty good one, until there’s a knock on the door. He says he’ll get rid of whoever that is immediately. Annie smiles and waits. Her phone rings and Auggie launches into his own news that he’s also been up all night and thinks Roger was onto something. Annie turns around to see where McQuaid is, and outside on his patio, he’s deep in chat with the guy from Roger’s hallway. She tells Auggie, and he tells her to get out of there. She makes her excuses as McQuaid returns and then bolts.

And I yell at my TV.

Seriously, y’all. If Annie ends up having to put a bullet in McQuaid–mistakenly or otherwise, I am going to be mega disappointed.

I don’t need Annie and McQuaid to be lovers, but I do want their friendship to be real, and I want her to make smarter choices about her allies. I want this little moment on his patio to be a massive misdirect and to find out that he and Roger were searching for the same thing–the leak in his company. I want McQuaid to be a good guy who’s still breathing at season’s end, and I want his company to be an alternative for Annie if she can’t stay in the CIA. (No, I don’t want a pony, too.)

I feel like Nic Bishop was made a regular, sight unseen, for a reason, so I hope they keep him. Suits was renewed this week. Can we hear the same on Covert Affairs soon, please? Even when the show makes me rage, I love it.

You can watch “Grounded” again now on USA’s website, and it repeats Sunday morning at 10/9c.