What's It About?
Steven and Samantha travel to Ireland and then England in their endeaver to find a very important CIA hard drive, which has gone missing.
Review
It's all gone a bit Pete Tong! (again). I genuinely enjoyed this show last week, it picked up the spy pace and injected some much needed life into the characters and their relationships. This week that's all been taken away again and replaced by another totally self contained story which really doesn't feel like it needs a full episode to be resolved.
One positive to note here: this episode neither begins nor ends with The Blooms in bed. That's a big tick because the way that previous episodes have been bookended has really grated on me, this week that has been drastically improved.
Now to the negatives: why does there have to be a character trait of the week on this show? Two weeks ago Steven was a technophobe; last week he was a technophile and this week he's a human lie detector. Let the guy be a real human being, he might be a spy but that doesn't automatically mean that he happens to have a character trait which is useful to the story of the week.
This doesn't help to make him believable to the audience and in a hyper reality setting there's not a lot of room for character flaws which help point out to you that this is a contrived narrative in a television show.
The writers don't seem to have the same problem with Samantha and as such she is a far more human character and the far more interesting lead in this show.
As always Leo manages to turn up from absolutely nowhere and four weeks on this really starting to bug me, apparently it's bugging Samantha as well as she actually pointed it out. If it isn't going to develop in to a point of the story then either stop doing it or... well... stop doing it! Having a character point it out makes a mockery of the it and just adds to the disconnection from audience to narrative.
There is some interesting dialogue between Leo and Samantha in this episode which alludes to further backstory which could interfere in the Bloom marriage, for a while I believed there was going to be a mystery added to the show which might drag on until such time as characters could not go on without revealing the truth. But by the end of the episode the secret has been displaced without ever being spoken in a sign of true love and strength of marriage.
Frustrating although it is I guess this does help to round out the marriage and show the belief that Steven and Samantha have in each other. Oh well, mystery unsolved... for now.
I want so much not to have to bitch about this show, particularly after the hints of potential brilliance from last week but we really have taken 5 steps back and its frustrating to see the problems this show is having eek themselves out on screen. Plus the theme tune... oh the theme tune!
There is some secondary character development this week and also some development towards some form of overall arc to the series, but I fear that judging by the dwindling ratings there won't be enough time for this to unfold the way it has been planned out.
There is some serious danger hanging over this show but I am still hoping that it can be turned around and have a chance at continuing the way it should but if the trouble I had even finding the below one-liner to describe next week is anything to go by then NBC is on the hunt for a midseason replacement as we speak.
Next Week...
What should be an easy mission for Steven and Samantha becomes more complicated by the minute.
Overall
Story 2.5
Character 2.5
Spyness 3.0
Overall 3.0
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