'Covert Affairs' Season 1 Episode 7 'Communications Breakdown'

"Covert Affairs" Season 1 Episode 7 "Communications Breakdown" is an Auggie-centric episode in which the show employs a time-honored device of bringing in a long lost person from a main cast member's past to make trouble.

Spoilers surely follow.

The good news, as far as Auggie is concerned, is that he is returning to the field for a special operation. The bad news is that the target is Natasha Petrova, an old girlfriend whom he was obliged to break up with and abandoned to the tender mercies of the FBI some years ago.

Natasha, it seems, was responsible for bringing down communications in Washington D.C. briefly, everything from cable and cell phones, to the CIA's allegedly secured satellite lines. As is common with computer hackers, the Company prefers to hire them for a lot of money and use their skills to stop others like them. Auggie, with Annie in tow, is to offer her $2 million.

One problem. Natasha, having had her family suffer under the old Soviet Union, is about as opposite from a Communist as one can get. She is an anarchist who believes that information should not be property and should be shared by all. She will release a virus that will accomplish just that.

Even worse, Natasha kind of resents the way Auggie treated her way back when. Some women just cannot move on and see the big picture.

Complicating matters further, both the FBI and the Russian mafia are after Natasha. The latter is prepared to do violent things to her to get her to give up the hack virus.

At this point, the CIA is ready to just give Natasha up to the FBI. Thus Auggie is faced with the time-honored dilemma: Do I betray my friend or do I betray my boss?

It is not a hard choice.

Auggie goes rogue and goes on the run with Natasha. However, clever spy that he is, he leaves little clues for Annie and Jai to find. The idea seems to be that Annie and Jai will catch up with Auggie and Natasha at some stressful point and Natasha can then be persuaded to give up the virus.

And stressful the situation is when the Russian mob catches up to Auggie and Natasha on a train to Toronto. Auggie still has the skills of a special ops commando, but not, sadly, the vision. This prolongs the fight in the compartment just a bit, but it ends the same, with Russian mobster taking a reluctant leave of the train through the window.

At this point, Natasha, seeing that Auggie will risk her life for her no matter what, gives up the code, then she too vanishes into the night, just before Annie and Jai catch up to them.

Auggie, by the way, is in the midst of this sad adventure romancing the impetuous girl reporter who has been publishing CIA secrets; it's off the books, of course, and Joan does not know anything about it. As Annie warns Auggie, James Bond turned out to be a sad, lonely old man for all the women he manipulated. Of course many of the Bond girls wound up dead, but that is another story.

Source:

Covert Affairs, Communications Breakdown, TV.Rage