#helesa

[mary-ploppins]

Someone made a comment on my Covert Affairs season 5 review that reminded me of this comic strip I made back in February.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I just laughed my ass off all over again.  That's all I'm saying.

[andrejia05]

Auggie, Belenko and their women

I've seen a lot of opinions about the treatment of women in Covert Affairs (other than Annie); it seems like even the career-oriented, smart & resourceful gal is a slave to love. Caitlyn, Britta, both killed for love. Olga resisted. First I brushed it off, made fun and that was that. But then I realized that Auggie's storylines with women (that are not Annie) are exactly the same.

Hayley, a driven NCTC official, promises Auggie she won't tell on Annie (because the sex with him is too epic to lose), but then does exactly that after she sees her beau with another woman (there was a huge incompatibility here between what Hayley said and how she acted).

Natasha, the smart, hacker anarchist, is okay with changing her core values as long as she gets the Auggie-sex.

Franka helps a total stranger in something that is clearly risky and not very legal, from a civilian's POV (couldn't she just think "Well, call the cops!") because she had the privilege of sharing the bed with him.

Helen finds out she's still in love with him after at least 6-7 years and chooses to sacrifice herself to protect the woman he loves (Annie, as Helen herself said during the talk in the graveyard), after it was clear to her that they don't have a future together.

At least Parker freaked out and ran.

Moral of the story: most women would do anything for great sex. And when you think studies say this about boys...

*eyeroll*

[andrejia05]

The Trial of Auggie

A modern Sisyphus lost in Kafka’s world.

If you’re really NOT into Auggie these days, please read this :)

Lately, Auggie finds himself in a Kafkian Universe. The always so lovable, fan favorite, blind tech with an interesting backstory and a rather unique sense of humor, is channeling the world Josef K. is living in in Kafka’s The Trial. Should he reach out and talk to Covert Affairs fans, he’d face a series of accusations he couldn’t really protect himself against. While these accusations are not hidden in the shadows, like the ones against Josef K., his only defense is ‘I hope you understand me’. I’ll get to that part soon.

Let’s just hope he won’t have the same fate as Josef K..

His fate, however, resembles more and more of a modern day Sisyphus. He builds, and builds and than this entire structure he’s built comes down crashing on him. Sometimes, it’s because of his choices, sometimes it’s because, as he said, some choices are made for him.

The CIA recruited him out of college (he mentions in S4 that he’s ‘been in intelligence since college’), so he’s been doing this for at least 10 years (double than Annie’s fun time) and this is the first life he’s tried to built.

Then Helen’s death happened, and he had to rebuild from there.

Then Natasha happened and, due to his own bad decision (choosing the Agency over her, which is the leitmotif of their relationship), he’s had to rebuilt from here.

Then Iraq happened; he bounced back and rebuilt. Same after Parker left him.

After all this, when Annie went dark against his wishes and recommendation (“We will find another way, you don’t have to do this”) and Helen resurfaced, it was the first moment on screen when we saw him actually losing it (on screen, because losing the most important sense must’ve taken a toll on him, given that he himself told the psychologist he had actually tried to kill himself).

The Helen fiasco

If we go back to the first paragraph, I compared Auggie to Josef K..While the accusations against Josef K. kinda didn’t make any sense, Auggie is accused of cheating on Annie. Which he didn’t.

It doesn’t make any of his actions moral; in a perfect world he’d run after Annie in Berlin and tell her not to fake her death, then they’d both flee to the Galapagos Islands.

But the world isn’t perfect, so people can’t be perfect. Him and Annie weren’t quite on a break. They were in this gray area that could’ve gone either way. They just needed time to talk things through. Their kiss and their mutual declaration of love came in highly stressed moments, as true feeling emerge in situations like these. But that doesn’t mean they were back together. I don’t think they were ‘on a break’, either. Their relationship was in limbo. In Purgatory.

Helen and Auggie weren’t about sex. He didn’t seek out company or sexual bliss; he thought he was meeting Annie. But Helen was there, and she started talking about their previous life together. She painted a picture for him, a picture with all the things he, by now, didn’t think he could get. He was already in an emotional roller coaster so that night they spent together, that was him clinging to any sort of normalcy. He took comfort. He hoped against hope, but it was that mistake that made him (and Helen) realize his heart belongs to Annie.

It doesn’t make it OK. It was still a mistake. But If Annie understood him (“I imposed this on you”), why can’t everyone? No one likes cheaters and for me as well as for most women cheating is a dealbreaker. But cheating implies actually having a relationship. All Annie and Auggie had at this point was a sort of promise they’ll talk things out when she’ll be back.

The Hayley in charge

With her, things are simpler.

They dated. Briefly. Then Tash was back. Then he wanted to break things off with Hayley. Then he found out about Hayley’s investigation. Which is when he started using her. He even sought answers to his dilemma from Joan, so if he’s going to be accused of using a woman and for having shady morals, Joan’s right there with him.

While Hayley had spoken some truths, her accusations of ‘having high morals’ were kinda off, because he had never claimed that. I think she was referring to his speech in 502, when he did come off as arrogant due to his time in the Army. And any accusations of shady morals coming from a woman who has slept with the man she’s investigating then decided not to keep his friend’s secret because he was cheating on her are only laughable.

More, if Auggie’s accusers are going to hang him for using Hayley as an op while praising Annie for what she did in Paris, stealing the code from Tash, they have to think a bit about their own bias: these two things are pretty similar and both done for some Greater Good – finding out the Big Bad.

He’s far from perfect. None of the characters on this show can claim to have moral superiority (remember how Joan and Arthur pulled Annie from the Farm because they wanted her to lead them to Ben?). Maybe Annie holds the power here (fewer moral mistakes than most, since she’s title character and this is TV - we should all love her; if the audience wouldn’t like her, they’d be no show).

—-

Unlike Sisyphus, the rock Auggie is pushing on the mountain is getting bigger and bigger each time he has to rebuilt it, which means each crash hurts more and more and each time he rebuilds and starts pushing up again, the rock is heavier and the effort required is bigger.

I’m just curios how many times does that rock have to come crashing down on him until he’s willing to destroy the core of it – his job.

"Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

-Camus.

[hellthenglory]

Annnd, here is one for Helen..

[hellthenglory]

I just don't know.

[nycrhi]

"Do you have any regrets?" “I’ve been able to do a lot of good things in this world, but leaving Auggie changed the course of both our lives, and I have to live with that everyday.”

You guys, I think Helen feels (somewhat) responsible for Auggie getting blinded…