Why Annie Walker will never be as cool as Sydney Bristow

Annie Walker/Covert Affairs

Sydney Bristow/Alias

The Alias vs. Covert Affairs battle

Every time I watch Covert Affairs it reminds me so much of Alias in a this-is-nowhere-as-cool-as-Alias kinda way. Now let me first say that I don’t hate Covert Affairs, it is an enjoyable enough show with some good actors that I really like (Peter Gallagher, shirt-less Chris Gorham, Sendhil Ramamurthy… who could also be shirt-less once in a while). Piper Perabo is not my favorite, but I don’t have anything against her either.

It is fairly easy to draw comparisons between both shows since both are about a female CIA agent going around the world to complete secret missions. However the two shows are SO different in tone and everything else that it almost seems unfair to compare them…but I am gonna do it anyway!

One of the main reasons I think I will never be obsessed with Covert Affairs as I was with Alias is that Annie Walker is simply not as engaging as Sydney Bristow… granted, both are pretty and kick ass… and both lost their boyfriends and… both work for the CIA and… that is pretty much it. Now let’s see why Annie Walker will never be as cool as Sydney Bristow:

Annie is a mediocre spy at best, Sydney was a project Christmas baby

Sure, Annie is getting a little better but in the beginning she didn’t even know how to use a gun. Plus she always disobeys orders, gets too emotional and sucks in pretty much everything spy-related except for speaking many languages. Sydney was a super-spy since the beginning (because she was programmed to be a spy when she was a kid, remember?). She could do it all, fight with five guys at a time, shoot any type of weapon, hack computers, parachute into parties, breath underwater from a tire, deactivate bombs, climb walls, memorize binary code, destroy giant red balls… you get the picture AND like her partner Dixon she could also speak at least nine languages (although techno may not be one of them).

Sydney had cool wigs, Annie has… sundresses?

As Sydney, Annie often travels around the globe to complete missions. She gets involved in high speed chases, steals merchandise, infiltrates parties and flirts with foreign dignitaries in several languages. Sydney did all that too… but with wigs! And let’s face it, wigs are cool. How iconic was the ‘Run-lola-run-like’ red wig of the pilot? And while we are on the subject of proper spy attire, what’s up with Annie wearing an endless collection of girlie sundresses? They aren’t practical or professional. I really don’t get why the wardrobe people would decide to make a CIA spy look like Zoe Deschanel.  

Annie’s love life is all over the place, Sydney had a tragic yet compelling love life

OK, Sydney had a disastrous love life. She got one of her boyfriends killed, she killed another and the last one faked his death… but for the most part of the show Sydney had Vaughn, her dreamy French handler/love interest. Their story line progressed as needed going from forbidden, to sweet to tragic. The romantic aspect of the show took a back seat to the other storylines, but it was there in service of giving depth to the characters. Annie doesn’t really have a handler and her sexual tension with Auggie is criminally underused. Instead they keep showering her with love interests each week one more inappropriate than the next and not in the “it’s so wrong it is hot” way. It just makes me not care who she hooks up with and frankly she comes off a little slutty.

Sydney had family drama that we actually cared about, Annie has a sister

Sydney’s parents screwed her up in so many ways that it is hard to pick the most significant one. Her reclusive father seemed to have an endless pit of secrets; her mother was a murderous KGB spy who faked her death when she was a child. Needless to say, her relationship with her parents was deep, complex and heartbreaking at times. Annie’s big family drama usually involves her sister bitching about her cheating husband or something (and don’t get me started on how Anne Dudek could be doing something much better). Sydney had to rescue her sister from a mental institution in Croatia where she was pretending to be a vegetable… just saying…

Annie doesn’t have a nemesis, Sydney had to take on her own mother

Covert affairs is a procedural, so it is pretty formulaic. There is a case of the week, the sympathetic character, the evil character and some recurring characters; usually foreign ally spies. But I can’t really think of one recurring adversary or some sort of nemesis worth mentioning. Neither a person nor an organization. On the other hand, Sydney had plenty of nemesis. First, her goal was to destroy SD-6 from the inside, but she also had to worry about other organizations like K-directorate and their star operative Anna Spinoza (Gina Torres). She later found herself occupied with Sark and Andrew Khasinau, all working for the ultimate enemy “The Man” who turned out to be Sydney’s own mother.

Sydney had an awesome evil boss, Annie’s bosses are married

Due to the intricate plot of Alias, in addition to being a legit CIA operative, Sydney was also a double agent inside SD-6 where she had an evil boss in the form of Arvin Sloane (the awesome Ron Rifkin). Sloane was one of the most complex and interesting characters. He appeared to be pure evil, greedy and manipulative, yet he had a soft spot for Sydney, a true sense of friendship for Jack and an undying love for his wife Emily and his long lost daughter Nadia…. Until he pushes her into a glass table and kills her anyway. On the other hand, Annie is not a double agent or anything, and her CIA office life looks pretty much like when I used to work at a bank… no cool underground headquarters, flashing scanners or complicate sequences to access the building. In her more than boring office, Annie has two bosses Joan and Arthur, one more boring than the next. Oh, and they are married to each other. For some reason, they seem to think that giving them mundane married couple bits every once in a while makes them well rounded characters… it only makes them annoying! Some terminal illness, backstabbing and fake dying would go a long way for Joan and Arthur…

Sydney was the subject of a 15^th century prophecy, Annie has a lot of shoes

By now, it is quite clear that Covert affairs follows a pretty simple pad, while Alias was rich in complexities of all sorts. In addition Alias had a veiled Sci-fi element in the form of Milo Rambaldi. Sydney was the subject of a prophecy which stated she “would render the greatest power unto utter desolation”. Yes, it was a little preposterous, but it generated some of the coolest story-lines. The watchmaker dying, page 47, breaking into the Vatican, eternal life and so on. Annie wasn’t really of much interest to 15^th century prophets and that is just not cool. In all seriousness, the problem with Annie is that she doesn’t really have anything that makes her special. She is just a nice enough woman that speaks a lot of languages and has a lot of cute shoes.