Undercovers

I decided to check out Undercovers despite the fact that the commercials made it look incredibly cheesy and, really, it wasn't too bad.

Undercovers is a show starring two married ex-spies. They have been out of the game for five years and are running a catering business at the start of the show. A veteran CIA agent manages to recruit them for one more operation to find a man, Leo Nash, that both Steven and Samantha Bloom know from their spy days.

Undercovers is yet another J.J. Abrams brainchild and his second foray into the spy world. Alias, his first spy-fi series, starred Jennifer Garner and had a couple of fantastic seasons to start off, but gradually declined over the following three. For those living under a rock the last six years, J.J. Abrams was also the creator of Lost, which is a show that I really enjoyed, and recently directed the Star Trek reboot. I have to admit that I'm a bit of an Abrams fan and I gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave the series a chance despite my reservations about the promo commercials.

Overall, I found the pilot to be a pleasant surprise. It was entertaining; there was a lot of good action sequences (some involving bazookas) and the dialog was fairly witty. I think the "sexpionage" gag missed the target, perhaps because it was overused the trailers for the show, but other than that, I thought the pilot was a solid episode and I'm interested in seeing where the story goes.

I'm not sure if Undercovers has quite the charm that Alias did early on (it was so easy to fall in love with Sidney Bistro and the SD6 plot was just superb). It certainly doesn't evoke the sense of suspense and mystery that Lost was famous for. What it does have is likable characters, pretty good dialog, and good action. I can already tell that I'm going to like Leo. Undercovers may turn out to be a bit of an eye-candy series, one that you don't have to think about too much, but it's not always a bad thing to keep one of those around for when you just need to unwind.

I'm going to check out the show again next week and see where it goes. The pilot was good, but not amazing, so I'm going to have to feel it out for a few weeks. After about a month, I'll probably know whether I'll stick with it for the season or not.