Covert Affairs 5.01 "Shady Lane": Annie Are U O.k.?

Hahah goddamnit now I have that song in my head again.  I got it in my head before with a season 3 Covert Affairs review once, and it just popped back in there due to the nature of the season 5 opener.  The problem is, the version that gets in my head is never the original MJ version, it's always the cheese-tastic Alien Ant Farm version from like 13 or 14 years ago.  Fun fact: They were a local band from Riverside, where I went to college, while I was in college.  Oh shit Wikipedia just informed me it's technically Moreno Valley, a much smaller town right next to Riverside, which I also spent a lot of time in while in college.  Even more obscure.  But point being, their big hit was quite an achievement for the ol' Inland Empire.  A real flash in the pan.  Great job, Riverside (Moreno Valley).

O.k. I can't believe I just embedded that here.  I feel so dirty and embarrassed.  But I'm not taking it out because I can't get it out of my head now.  And the lyrics do really fit this Covert Affairs episode pretty perfectly.

So here we are.  Covert Affairs season 5 premiere, "Shady Lane."  Season 4 of this show had me so incredibly frustrated that I had kind of given up on putting much hope or care into season 5.  But guess what?  They just f*cking sucked me back in.  It's almost like they called me on the phone and asked me exactly the type of stuff I'd want to see in this show and then they did it.  Hold up, I shouldn't go that far, I'll just jinx it and it'll end up giving me just as much TV blueballs as season 4 did.

The Dying-slash-Thriving Art of the TV Title Sequence

It has been a thing as long as I can remember that a TV show will start off in its first couple seasons with a nice long title sequence, and then gradually cut it shorter and lamer and shorter and lamer as the series goes on.  It seems to me that that trend has reached an extreme in modern television, with shows keeping title sequences to the bare minimum to allow themselves more time for storytelling.

Err, but wait ... then why are there so many fantastic title sequences out there right now??  Oh right, it's the difference between shows that have a strict time constraint with ad time + traditional 30-60 minute slot, vs. the shows that ... don't.  Shows on premium channels like HBO and Showtime usually still stick to the traditional 30-60 minute slot, but they have the luxury of zero commercials taking away from their story-telling time.  And then you've got the basic cable networks, which can go either way - a channel like USA sticks to the traditional formula, where as a network like FX lets some of their shows (e.g. Sons of Anarchy and The Americans) take up all the time they damn well please.  Sure they've still gotta deal with commercials, but they also regularly run like 5-15 minutes past the hour mark.  Not all networks give their shows that luxury.  Oh and don't forget about Netflix!!  Talk about being able to do whatever the hell you want - these guys have it better than anyone in that category.  Must be nice.

The Dying Theme Song

On one hand, let's take a show like Castle, which I'm pretty sure never even bothered with a full title sequence in the first place, right?  Wasn't it always just that quickie little ditty with the ... OH wait!!  I just remembered, they used to start every episode off with that little backstory first!  But yeah, they stopped doing that quite a while back.

And then there's Louie, whose theme song was catchy as hell, but they seem to have cut it out entirely for its most recent season.  And New Girl, which started off with a pretty short opening theme, and only shortened it from there (it's gotta be like 10 seconds long at this point right?).  Didn't Breaking Bad go that same route?  Also Covert Affairs, which kept its full sequence for its first three seasons, but then just pulled the cord and cut it out completely in season 4.  Now they just do a fade in and fade out of the title.  In their case I was actually fine with the elimination of it, because I was never a huge fan of the original theme/sequence to begin with.  It was pretty cheesy.

This is Why No One Takes Your TV Show Seriously

I need to just take a minute to bitch and moan a little about a TV pet peeve of mine: When a show, at least in some respects, refuses to step outside its basic formula, like ever.

A perfect example is Castle.  If I had the energy, I'd try to figure out how many times Castle has done an episode without a case of the week which gets solved by the end of the episode (or by the end of the 2-parter).  It's extremely small, right?  Out of six full seasons of the show, at 128 eps total?  But haven't those very few episodes that have stepped at least a little bit outside of the typical formula been some of the best of the entire series?  I'm thinking like, "Knockdown," "Knockout," and "Always," as the examples that come to mind.  I'm sure there are a few others I'm forgetting.

So why the HELL don't they do this more often??  Why do they feel the need to do a new murder case every single episode and to always solve it by the end and to always structure it to follow the same Scooby Doo formula??  I don't understand.  Now, to be fair, Castle is usually cranking out 23 or 24 eps per season, so they do have to put a lot of filler eps in there.  But still, as the series goes on it feels like more and more filler/cookie-cutter formula and less substance eps.

In a sense, it's entirely unfair of me to lump Covert Affairs in with Castle on this topic, because Covert has actually done a FAR better job than most other shows at evolving and constantly striving to improve.  Not only did it step outside its original mission-of-the-week formula starting in season 3, it completely re-invented itself as a serialized and much more serious show.  It continued its evolution on that path in season 4, and while I don't think it has always been successful in its quest to give itself and its characters more depth, I still love the fact that it's at least making an honest effort to do so.  I didn't even bother watching the show until season 3 for this exact reason, and then I finally watched because I had major respect for the writers/producers/etc. for having the balls to kinda turn the show on its head a bit, with good results.

So then, given all this, why the hell are the season posters still so damn lame and generic looking??  Here's the first two seasons, for reference:

I mean, could these things possibly be any more generic??  "Single woman.  Double life."  "Under Cover Girl."  The only way they could be more bland is if they were literally just pictures of saltine crackers or like, Gap ads.  It's no goddamn wonder I refused to watch this show in seasons 1 and 2.  To be fair, the show itself was pretty generic too at this point, so at least the posters fit a theme there.  Still, it did have a bit more substance than you'd think just from looking at these things.