So, Chris Gorham.
I’ve been a fan since Popular, and seriously a fan since Jake 2.0, a sweet gem of a genre show, shot in Vancouver in 2003, that didn’t get past the first season on the nascent UPN. In that show, he played a meek IT tech for the NSA who couldn’t quite get into the agent circle, until he was accidentally exposed to nanotechnology that rendered him adept and powerful, a la Steve Austin.
Gorham has a physicality that belies his infectious smile and boy-next-door charm—it can be seductive and it can be scary. He’s very adept at using it both ways. Jake 2.0 worked it—putting Gorham in a variety of harm’s way and also bonding him to the lead scientist, Diane, played by Keegan Connor Tracy, with whom he had some lovely chemistry. None more so than when he was an amnesiac who found himself in a fight club, because his enhanced physical ability was the only sure thing he knew. Diane went to find him, and despite his inability to remember her as Jake, there was still a bond between them that was innately familiar and natural to him.
In the interim since Jake 2.0 ended, Gorham guested on Without a Trace (also in a heartbreaking role as a duped high school teacher) and appeared regularly on Ugly Betty, a show a bit too frenetic for my tastes, that I did not watch.
Then, last summer (MAJOR spoilers ahoy), he anchored the ensemble thriller series Harper’s Island, which was a Ten Little Indians riff on CBS about a wedding party at a beautiful destination wedding (also Vancouver) being picked off one by one by a killer or killers unknown. Gorham was the mild-mannered bridegroom, Henry, who fought alongside his friends to conquer the killer(s), only to be revealed as one of them in the series’ 12th episode. The moment where he flicks the switch from sweet, attentive groom-to-be to completely batshit crazy and stabs his fiancee is amazing to behold. And then he goes a little further into insanity, reciting his justifications in a wild-eyed yet innocent dialogue to the woman who had been his lifelong best friend and suddenly found herself his prisoner as part of a misguided soul mate quest. When she kills him and he doesn’t understand, until his last breath, what he did wrong, it’s crushing to watch.
Which brings us to Covert Affairs, the newest summer hit (already renewed for a second season) on USA. Gorham pays Auggie, a blinded former special ops soldier who now finds himself a CIA tech and confidante to the show’s lead, newly minted agent Annie Walker. He’s funny, competent, a bit of a ladies man, and itching to be a field agent again despite his inability to see. This week’s episode put Auggie in the driver’s seat, managing an operation on a hacker with whom he’d had an affair a few years prior.
The flame was rekindled, he did his job to get the data they needed from her, and then she got away, which gave him a sense of closure for his earlier betrayal that had locked her up for two years. In this episode, we also discovered that Auggie’s been running a play on Liza Hearn, a local D.C. journalist looking to crack the CIA wall. As the episode closes, Auggie returns home, defeated at losing Natasha again, and cognizant that he can’t do these ops every day, when Liza surprises him, already inside his apartment. She comes close behind him in an embrace, happy to see him. And, he smiles a wistful little smile, happy that she’s there, disappointed that she’s not Natasha, and sad that history’s about to repeat itself with a romantic betrayal in the name of the job.
We wonder whether Auggie can really pull off an operation on another woman he’s having a relationship with. I say yes. I want to see a flashback of special ops Auggie, where he’s able to see, yet blocks out what he does see in order to accomplish his (in all likelihood, quite deadly) missions vs. now, where he’s physically unable to see but also unable to manifest that same level of deception because the rest of his features give him away. Gorham can pull off this duplicity. I hope Covert Affairs lets him.
Jake 2.0 is not on DVD (Boo!) but does rotate on Syfy occasionally. Harper's Island is available on DVD. Covert Affairs runs through September on USA and rebroadcasts on USA.com and Hulu.com.
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