Covert Affairs starts next Tuesday on USA, and I’m actually really excited because I love the spy genre, and also because I already like both Chris Gorham (loved him in Popular, never actually watched Ugly Betty, though) and Sendhil Ramamurthy (who deserved better than Heroes ever gave him, in my opinion).

At any rate, three scenes from the pilot are up on the show’s YouTube channel. :D

Introduction of Auggie (Chris Gorham), the snarky tech guy. All I can say is, I love this guy already.

Annie Walker’s first mission as a field agent. Included mostly for how it relates to the last clip. (Not to say it’s not cool, but not as interesting to me as the other two clips).

…And Annie talking to her boss about how it all went wrong.

First, I love her boss already, pretty much from the moment she opened her mouth. It also illustrates what I think will be the main thing differentiating Covert Affair from Alias: Annie Walker is clearly not Sydney Bristow.

It’s funny because it’s undeniable that Piper Perabo resembles Jennifer Garner a bit, and obviously the shows will have the same appeal (hot spy chick kicking ass). But when we met Sydney, she was already supposed to be an experienced spy; the focus was supposed to be on how good she was, not on her mistakes. Annie is a rookie. Interviews with Covert Affair‘s executive producer Doug Liman indicate that she will most definitely make mistakes, and that in fact it’s part of the point, it’s what he’s going for. So I think Annie is actually a lot more like the 5th season’s Rachel Gibson. Now, I realize that a lot of other Alias fans disliked the 5th season in general, and the new characters specifically, but personally I really enjoyed Rachel, precisely because she made mistakes and didn’t always know what she was doing. It made her easier to relate to.

At any rate, the image of the newbie agent with holes in her stockings having to explain to her exasperated boss why she didn’t get the intel is pretty my favorite part of these clips.