Episode 'Covert Affairs' Season 2, Episode 1 - 'Begin The Begin' Recap

Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) is a 28-year-old CIA trainee suddenly promoted to field duty with the Domestic Protection Division, in order to help the CIA capture her ex-boyfriend. She’s guided in her new duties by blind military intelligence/special-ops operative August “Auggie” Anderson, who lost his sight while on a mission in Iraq.

Senior Officer Joan Campbell (Kari Matchett) is ever looking over Annie’s shoulder along with CIA officer Jai Wilcox (Sendhil Ramamurthy). Annie sometimes has her hands full enough maintaining her cover working in acquisitions for the SmithsonianMuseumand keeping her real job a secret from her sister Danielle, who lets Annie live out of her guest house.

That being said . . .)

We join the second season on a Guam beach, where Annie walks into the surf in a bikini. Off and on, we flash to Annie running alongside a stretcher-bound Ben Mercer (Eion Bailey) as he’s wheeled from a chopper to an ambulance, having been severely wounded. After a swim, she saunters up to Ben in a wheelchair, kisses him gently, and wheels him back toward a Naval hospital.

Back in Ben’s room, the two flirt mischievously as Annie puts him through a polygraph debriefing in which Ben reveals that he was in fact wounded during a Sri Lanka rescue mission at the close of the previous season, and abandoned other CIA operatives to do so; however, he reveals, he did so strictly to protect Annie in the midst of a hostage situation and not to deceive the CIA. As they kiss after more flirting, his heart monitor all of a sudden picks up the tempo. Oh, that Annie.

Ben delicately suggests that she dismiss the nurse, but she’s surprised to find she’s already gone. Annie gets up and checks the hall, finds nobody around and quickly disconnects Ben to evacuate the room. Not long after they’ve made good their escape, machine gun-toting assassins burst in and riddle the room with gun fire, but find only a dummy in the bed. Behind them, Annie and Ben slip through a door and down a staircase, but the assassins give chase themselves.

Annie springs from a doorway, taking both out with defibrillator paddles before getting Ben out the front door and within sight of the safety of a guard shack. An assassin approaches from behind, but gets gunned down by a guard.

“Let’s go home,” Annie says breathlessly.

Ben and Annie eventually arrive back at Walter Reed Medical Center, where Jai greets them and just can’t wait to talk a little smack to Ben, telling him he has a problem with authority.

It’s the ex-boyfriend you brought Annie into the fold to help capture. Why the Hell wouldn’t he have a problem with you?

Ben won’t accept the nurse’s help into his bed, prompting Jai to quip that it was pride that got him shot, and Annie to stop the pissing match before it starts, telling Jai to meet her in the courtyard. Jai says “Goodbye” by flinging some SuDoKu books at Ben and calling him an asshole. A little kiss from Annie to Ben, a polite request from Ben for a Five Guys’ burger, and Annie’s on her merry way.

In the Car Of Awkwardness, Annie warns Jai to make sure they’re not being tailed, followed by Jai commenting on Ben’s rudeness. Annie tells him Guamwas tough, Jai tells her Walter Reed will be tougher “for a guy like Ben” who is “only comfortable in the field, alone.” He tells Annie he doesn’t know just what happens from there.

Annie is greeted back home by Danielle, who’s bringing up all kinds of details about some Smithsonian-related venture to Missouri that it’s abundantly clear Annie wasn’t read into beforehand. She plays it off, though, only to become suddenly tense when she asks Danielle about a police report for a break-in while she was gone. She strides off quickly to “freshen up.”

And by “freshen up,” she means perform a personal bug-sweep of her guest house and search of her safe, finding nothing out of place.

Back at CIA HQ, Auggie somehow manages to sneak up on Annie, who compliments him on the details of her cover, right down to the postcards “Annie” sent Danielle from the Harry Truman Museum exhibit she visited in Missouri.

By the way, Auggie . . . those of us who live in Independence, Missouri salute you . . . but where the Hell is this World’s Largest Ball of Twine Annie apparently wrote home about?

She tells a suddenly concerned Auggie about the break-in, to which he replies that he’ll get a team on top of a bigger sweep and an investigation into the Guamattack.

They’re into a discussion about journalist Liza Hearn, leaked documents and “Hey, bright side: not as bad as WikiLeaks!” when Joan interrupts and hauls Annie into her office.

Before handing off Annie’s latest detail, Joan makes sure she’s ship-shape for active duty. Annie reassures her, and Joan fills her on Estonian contract killer/money launderer/drug trafficker/puppy kicker/kitten puncher Alo Morosov. His girlfriend, a Russian tennis pro named Nadia, has been informing on him to the CIA for some time but has come up dry on her last two contacts for intelligence. Annie is now to become her new contact and make her first meet at one of her workouts as an adoring fan bearing 12 red roses, one white one – her ID as a CIA operative, Auggie explains.

Upon their meeting – complete with Morosov and bodyguards looking on from a distance – Nadia delivers the code-phrase for “I got nothin’” but flubs part of the script. It sends up alarm bells for Annie, who insists Nadia could be in danger.

Annie gets the green light to tail Nadia to the tennis club one day, trailing her into the club’s sauna under the guise of being a prospective new member. The two chat, Annie offers to sneak Nadia out of the club and into safety at Langley but Nadia tells Annie that the danger doesn’t concern her and leaves, telling Annie off.

Back with the others, Annie, Jai, Joan and Auggie reluctantly agree to step up the protective detail, but are warned to be careful.

Meanwhile, Auggie has gotten authorization for the security sweep but needs Annie to get her sister and two daughters out of the house. Annie gets the ball rolling by . . . . . . giving the kids huge glasses of juice, then sitting back and counting down to the inevitable crash and spill. Danielle comes rushing in, and apoplectic Annie apologizes profusely and offers to foot the bill to have the carpet cleaned.

Wait, what?

Anyway, she gets a call that Nadia is on the movie and Annie is needed immediately.

In a surveillance van, she, Auggie and a crew tail her and catch sight of Alo roughing her up outside a building. Their audio surveillance inside picks up a loud “pop” and Annie rushes into action fearing the worst.

She charges in, finds the room where Nadia would be located and is ready to bust a cap on . . . . . a champagne bottle. It was a champagne cork, people. Just a cork. Nothing to see here.

The next day, Joan informs her that the near-miss could’ve blown Annie’s cover and compromised Nadia. Hence, she’s out as an asset with no further contact, and Annie is reassigned to skimming Montrealnewspapers for intelligence on Qubecois secessionist activity, despite Annie’s protest that taking Nadia out of contact might actually put her in MORE danger, not less.

Back at Casa de Walkers, the “carpet cleaners” arrive and caution that if Danielle and her daughters don’t want to get light-headed, they ought to skidaddle for a few hours. That being said, they can now get down to the business of ensuring that Annie’s security hasn’t been compromised. Oh, that Auggie!

Annie has started trailing Nadia independently, but Joan has noticed her absence and started getting wise. Meanwhile, Annie intercepts Auggie during his workout and persists that something doesn’t feel right. Auggie tells her in few uncertain terms that she’s being paranoid after the Guam incident, and Annie actually starts to doubt herself at that juncture. Auggie explains, “There’s a fine line between intuition and paranoia. Our job is to walk right up to that line but never cross it.” He then informs her that the sweep of her home came back completely clean. He suggests she take a day-off.

She smirks a little. Clearly, she knows just how she’d spend such a day.

She strolls up to Ben’s room with his much-belated Five Guys’ burger, only to find a vacant, perfectly made bed. And no Ben.

She checks at the desk. There was no record Ben Mercer was ever there.

Clearly no longer caring about her own safety, she marches right into the den of a lion named Joan and demands to know where Ben is being kept. Joan calmly suggests she start separating her personal feelings for Ben from what she knows of Ben as an untrustworthy operative who will always raise questions with her. Annie persists that based on her intuition and Joan’s reaction, she can gather that Ben’s safe and that Joan knows exactly where he is. Joan says, “See you at the office, Annie.” She returns to her home.

Auggie and Annie meet at a pub and chat over beers. Auggie tells her that they were assaulted in Guam by “a Belgian and a Fin that had never worked together before,” but that the Belgian had extensive expertise in military access. That sets off a light-bulb for Annie and she drags Auggie away from his beer and out the door.

Hey . . . that’s just wasteful, is what that is.

Meanwhile, Nadia is mid-match and Annie is driving like a bat out of Hell. She’s explaining that it’s Nadia who is going to assassinate Alo, as a favor to her country. See, with the Euro so strong in Estonia, Alo wants to sell off his Russian land-assets that he’s been using to help the Russians secretly stimulate their nuclear weapons research, in order to make a mint. The Kremlin doesn’t like being double-crossed, and asks that Nadia do them a favor. Alo has been using Nadia’s tennis practices as a meeting place  for bidders.

As Nadia plays on, Auggie and Annie infiltrate the event from two angles. Auggie gets Alo’s attention with a ruse over a ticket mix-up and slips him a note to follow him out to avoid assassination – which, of course, he does. Annie works her way backstage under the guise of Nadia’s “personal concierge,” then intercepts her and talks her out of the assassination. However, the two are chased down by Nadia’s coach, who’s gotten wised and started firing a silenced pistol as the two are chased out of the front of the tennis club.

They get into a coincidentally running car and make a getaway, but are still chased by the coach until Annie leads the chase down a wooded dirt road, causing the coach to slam the car headlong into a tree.

All seems well that ends well, until a car carrying Joan’s husband and the CIA National Director of the Clandestine Service Arthur Campbell (Peter Gallagher, in what is now to be a regular role) picks up Ben at a place overlooking the Capitol. He admires the work Ben’s done in the past, and has some more for him to do. In exchange, he says he’ll see what he can do about letting Ben get in touch with Annie….