My Own Worst Enemy: Love in All the Wrong Places

Janus is a strange company. Things are totally not okay to do…unless you know, they're okay to do. Running rogue missions are definitely acts of treason, unless well, they're just totally cool with it in the end. Hey, I didn't know that it was fine to stray from the reservation as long as you just had a really really good reason. I just saw Edward go rogue to find out who killed his parents, and that transgression was forgiven because, hey – it's revenge. And now, in "Love In All The Wrong Places," Raymond and Henry fudge up their communication lines so that they can head off on a rescue mission against Tromboll's orders. In the end, it was fine. Mavis makes it clear to Henry that they went against orders, and then says "thank you" – since it was her ex-flame that they wound up rescuing. This secret spy op center runs their ops like a soap opera and it makes it a little hard to buy Janus as anything by a strange Dr. Frankenspy experiment center that sporadically helps keep the country safe from foreign enemies.

It was nice to actually see Edward make a promise to the American hostages in Congo. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Edward just blowing right past them, because he only had one mission - to kidnap the Congan Warlord, Serge Kubako (Bill Duke). It was a nice surprise to see him caring about anything else, given his previous nature. In fact, it was so out of place that I'd much rather chalk it up to character evolution than mere contradiction. But Edward did make a promise to return and free them, and Mavis, all full of nostalgia and regret over her lost love, sends him along his way to do it. The action in this episode was decent, but it still followed the same format. Meaning that it opened with Henry in a dire situation and then flashback to see just how this predicament came to be. This time around, Henry was about to be executed as a hostage.

One of the reasons this episode pulled its weight was due to the fact that Raymond got to use a sexy new gun that can track enemies inside a building and then fire rounds solid enough to bust through concrete walls. I know, it's not much – but this is the second to last episode of the series, so I don't mind grasping at a few straws. It was nice to see Mavis do something finally. Show some sort of outer-context. Her storyline has only singularly been tied to Edward and Henry and whatever it is that the two of them were doing or not doing. This was the first, and probably last, time that Mavis appeared to be human. People are softening on the show. I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but I do know that Edward is not the same person that killed Henry's old college friend all those episodes ago. And Mavis isn't the woman who induced a heart attack on Henry on a city bus in order to bring him in.

Angie wants to have a baby. Henry does to, sorta. Edward definitely doesn't. Especially now that he knows he'll have to be a somewhat active part of it. In fact, he gives a great line into his phone while leaving a message for Henry – "I'll gladly have sex with your wife, but raising kids is your job." Nice. Henry's mixed emotions over having a child only stem from him thinking he's going to get killed one day on a mission. Meanwhile, Mavis gives Skinner crap about sleeping with Edward, but takes it back in the end after she realizes that she misses…sleeping with men. The best scene of the episode came when Skinner had to talk Edward through a psych-interrogation of Kubako. Basically, Edward had to pretend he was a General and a friendly admirer of Kubako's. It was a great moment, right up until the end when I just didn't believe that someone like Edward, who tortures people for a living, would crack under Duke's off color rape remarks.

My Own Worst Enemy: Down Rio Way

You know what? This was a very nicely done episode of television. I wasn't a huge fan of the last episode "High Crimes and Turducken" due to the fact that my patience with Henry is waning. And to be truthful, it was Henry's reaction to his son's new fix-er-up car during "Down Rio Way" that lost most of the points here. Edward approved of his son buying the busted up Camaro, and at this point, Henry should be used to things happening concerning his family while he's, you know, Edward. There are decisions that need to be made that require Henry, and well, Edward just has to do his best. At this point, in this fantastical story, Henry is over-reacting. And that's something that, considering his circumstances, I didn't think I'd ever be writing.

This episode was strong because, at this point in the now-cancelled series, it steered way clear of the things that have been slightly annoying me. It actually had a great storyline concerning Raymond and Mary. Mavis tells Raymond to go home to Mary, as himself, and deal with an apparent hit-and-run that she might have committed. I think there's just a part of me that still enjoys seeing someone that was meant to look like a shlub "office-drone" character act like a completely badass. When Raymond actually finds out that Mary didn't hit someone, but instead suffered from traumatic stress due to robbery at an intersection, he goes to get her wedding rings back and tries and make things right for Tom. It was definitely the most satisfying thing about this chapter.

The stuff with Tromboll and Edward was nice too. I've been waiting for James Cromwell to have more to do here. And while I'm still not convinced that Edward is as "valuable" as they say he is – seeing Tromboll use Edward's parent's death to get Edward to kill off a "retiring" agent named Firefly was terrific. It reminded me a bit of Memento, where John Pantaliano's cop character kept using Leonard's burning desire to avenge his wife. Edward's been lied to a hell of a lot with regards to his parents death. First by Tromboll, in a flashback, when Edward was young and he was conned into joining Janus. Then he was conned into almost killing a KGB agent who he thought was responsible. Finally when Tromboll told him that the real culprit in the death of the Albrights was down in Rio, I thought to myself "why would he be telling the truth at this point?" And, as it turned out, he wasn't. And then he kills John Heard at the end. Man, I hadn't seen Heard in anything for a while, so I was surprised to see that he was only in two scenes as the mysterious bench-sitting pigeon feeder.

Of course, when it comes down to the actual killing of the man thought to be his parent's murderer, Edward is inconveniently...Henry. And Henry's failure to shoot the man in the hospital, while he looked upon his own newly born grandson, was a great scene. And Henry's shame over not avenging Edward's parents was, finally, a great and real emotion from Henry that I could relate to. At this point, I'm just hoping that the show ends on a somewhat satisfying note. The last episode is next and I don't see Henry or Edward getting "fixed" or any giant mysteries getting solved. Alas, we live in a time when networks do not profit a dime from DVR or Tivo viewings. Watching a show on the internet won't save it. Only live viewings at the scheduled time of broadcast from a TV hooked up to an assigned Nielson Box will make a show live on, and that's not how any of us truly live.

My Own Worst Enemy: High Crimes & Turducken

"High Crimes and Turducken" starts off with a pretty good action piece. Edward has gone off on his own and made a deal with the KGB to deliver a Maguffin-type object called The Falcon in exchange for information regarding his parents fatal 1986 "car accident" - and Henry is, of course, caught in the middle. Henry awakens during a foreign Falcon-exchange and is almost taken out by his own company Janus.

What I enjoyed the most about "High Crimes" was the momentary focus on Edward as an actual human being and seeing the flashbacks of his younger and fuller-eyebrowed self with his parents. Also, Tom's attempts to mend his broken relationship with Mary as touching as they are almost unbelievably naive.

The show's smallish formula during the short time it's been on the air is this: Some peripheral character on the show is going through some form of catharsis that exactly mirrors what Henry is going through, and thus is able to help Henry emotionally deal with a certain problem. Last episode, it was Mariam love of her "assigned" husband. This episode it's Angie's Dad discovering that the mother he never knew was Jewish. And it's able to help Henry come to terms with his own feeling about Edward's parents. This formula isn't overly annoying, but it sure isn't coy or clever anymore.

I really can't believe that during this time in Henry's life, when everything is on the line for him and his family's lives are in constant danger - that he would be so much of a proud patriot as to object so highly to Edward's "off the reservation" mission. The fact that he considers Edward a "traitor" is a strange breaking point for Edward. See, torture is fine. Black ops are fine. Killing his friends off and threatening his life are fine. But possibly selling secrets to the KGB? That's enough to actually make Henry go and...turn himself in? Really? Don't buy it. That should be the least offensive thing that Edward's done. And to actually attempt to turn himself in as a traitor to be executed, and lose absolutely everything he's been frantically scurrying to protect is ludicrous.

I've said before. This is a tricky show. Two personalities that need to have two believable character arcs that meet up in the name of suspense and intrigue. It's a rough ride. I sympathize. But for Henry to stand on such a skyscraper-sized high horse is absurd. Edward banging his wife into oblivion? Fine. Edward taking his daughter along on a mission? Sure. Why not. Edward selling a secret box to the KGB to learn why his parents died? Well then...just commit suicide. Henry waking up mid-coitus with Dr. Skinner was pretty good, but his level of taking offense to things needs to drop. He should be ready for anything these days. But things are actually falling into place a little too conveniently in this episode. It turns out that Edward actually gave the KGB a fake Falcon. It turns out that Henry didn't have to freak out and turn himself in because…well, everything's just fine.

My Own Worst Enemy: The Night Train to Moscow

I'm still not convinced that Janus is as great a spy organization that they claim it is. As much as I enjoy the exploits of Henry Spivey and Edward Albright, I would have to coldly agree that he needs to be put out of commission. I'm not sure why Mavis wants to protect him. Maybe if I was given something along the lines of "they could shut down our whole project" if Edward was discovered. But all I get is that Edward is just a really valuable agent and that he's worth keeping even though he's a malfunctioning head-case. I don't see the value really. I'm sure he's good at the spy game, and he's at least as capable as any of the other spy heroes I've seen on TV and movies, but I just don't see the appeal of keeping him.

Maybe if I thought Janus was doing some good in the world. They just seem like a shady black-ops thing to me, and I just don't buy the "for good of the country" line. I feel like I need to like what Edward does a little more. Maybe that would help me not want to erase him. They did try and give Edward a little more "heart" in this episode. I find out that he really wants to track down the KGB baddies that killed his parents, and that he might actually be developing human feelings toward Dr. Skinner.

Henry, on the other hand, is a complete mess. He accidentally sees Angie out of the neighborhood, and catches her in a lie. After finding an old spy-coded photo, he spends the episode believing that Angie might be a planted operative from Janus. And if that wasn't bad enough, Edward/Henry needs to help KGB planted political-wife Mariam Shefer rescue her husband from…well, the KGB.

Mariam just conveniently happens to be an agent that was assigned to her husband as well, but shows Henry that it doesn't mean that she didn't grow to truly love her husband over the years. It was a little bit forced, but then I realized that the life lessons on a show like this would kind of have to come at you like a hammer.

In the end, Henry finds out that, not only is Angie not a spy, but that her super-sex with Edward actually made her feel close to Henry again. Edward's bedroom gymnastics actually might have saved Henry's marriage. It would be nice if this moment led to a better partnership between Edward and Henry. It already seems like they're working better together, and have put aside most of their resentment of the other's mere existence.

My Own Worst Enemy: This is Not My Son

I did get the big reveal that Dr. Skinner is actually a Systems Analyst for Janus, which makes total sense since someone had to assign her to be Henry's shrink in the first place. What was unexpected was her love affair with Edward - an affair that makes her feel the need to protect and save Henry as he bumbles his way through the entire deal. After she saved Henry from the phony FBI Agent, she then helped Edward pass a lie-detector test with regards to the agent's disappearance. It was only a moderately clever scene, since it solely relied upon the existence of a made up future-tech penlight/audio transmitter that provided Edward with alternate questions to answer.

Edward has really taken on a Tyler Durden-esque role - as extremely over-sexualized bruiser. There's no real reason given for Skinner's devotion to him other than the fact that he treats her like crap and gives her out-of-this-world sex. But, but by the end, Mavis figures out that Edward is definitely being protected by someone.

Some interesting developments came into light. One is that if Edward is ever discovered by boss-man Tromboll, he won't be executed like I originally thought. The Edward personality will just get erased, and Henry will live on. This seems to butt heads with the fact that the Systems Analyst agent was about to shoot him dead before he was saved by Skinner. There needs to be a bit of clarification around this. This is a very twisty plotline, and it can get muddled very easily. Agent Tom was taken prisoner in "Hello, Henry" and now Edward must head over to Beijing with a new Janus partner, Paula, to rescue him. The mission goes haywire when Henry appears in the middle of a gunfight and gets Paula all shot to hell. Tromboll seems so desperate to expose Edward that it seems a little far-fetched that he continues to accept the last minute saves and excuses that just manage to keep Edward off the chopping block. This organization seems like one that would actually just kill you if they suspected something was wrong.

While Paula lies in a coma, Mavis and Edward must make a decision about her dangerous knowledge of Henry, and Henry must try and figure out how to protect her from Edward and Mavis. In the best moment of the episode, Henry actually convinces Raymond that he's Edward, and makes Raymond leave the hospital without killing Paula. And that just leaves Skinner, to help Paula's normal alter-ego "Ellen" decide that she wants to snap and break into Janus and expose herself as being the broken operative. In the end, I find myself in a strange emotional moment when Paula is unjustly erased from existence, but the happy family gal Ellen lives on in her place.

Meanwhile, Janus must make it look like Tom had an affair to actually cover for the fact that Raymond was taken prisoner by the Chinese. And Henry discovers that his son has actually become secretly proficient in the martial arts and stick fighting. It's a revelation that he can't fully accept, since it means that Edward's genes are the actual DNA that's he's passed along. Edward is able to save the day by actually bonding with his son over the violent tournament fighting that he's been participating in.

I like this series, but I'm also waiting for both Edward and Henry to start acting smart in order to thrive, not just survive. The pettiness needs to get torched, and a new comradery needs to arise from the ashes.

My Own Worst Enemy: The Hummingbird

It's got to be a hard pill to swallow when you find out that you're whole life is made up. And an even harder pill when you're the so-called "normal" half of a split personality. Yes, on My Own Worst Enemy, it's the Jekyll personality "Henry" that has to deal with the fact that he's really a gun-toting torturing Hyde named "Edward." And to make things worse, the personality switcheroo chip in his brain is malfunctioning so he's becoming both Henry and Edward at ill-opportune moments. Like turning into Henry when on top-secret missions in Berlin, or becoming Edward when Henry's about to watch hours and hours of old home movies.

In "The Hummingbird," Henry has become a bit more frantic. He might just be capable enough to not get killed in foreign lands, but he's still overly-anxious about the whole "we made up your whole life" thing. In fact, his memories are so real to him, that he just can't buy that they're fake. He sifts through his old childhood keepsakes, watches old home movies from when he was a child, and even tries calling anyone he might have ever known going back more than nineteen years - all in a desperate effort to discover the truth.

After all this, I buy that he might really have a reason to be paying regular visits to his shrink, Dr. Skinner . In the first episode "Breakdown," the visits were just because of his intense dream-age, but now he's got a lot to get off his chest. Not only is everything that Henry's ever known about growing up become a work of total fiction, but "Edward" seems to be getting more quality "sheet time" with his wife, Angie. And to make things even more horrible, Edward is a sexual dynamo who's taking Angie to new levels of ecstasy - with help of course from a depraved, yet titillating move known only to us as "The Hummingbird."

Slater is actually pretty great at being both Edward and Henry. Edward's disdain for anything mundane is quite palpable, but not overly-cooked and Henry's queasy quest for a small piece of mind is just as believable. Back at the secret underground spy lair, Mavis is doing her best to keep Edward's vulnerable condition a secret from her boss Trumbell. If it gets out that they are unable to control Edward's switch, he'll get put down like a sick dog. In fact, Edward's co-worker, in the spy world and the fake work world, Raymond, thinks he's too much of a risk and should just get executed. It's a nice little power play by all, with each character having their own reasons for either wanting Edward dead or alive.

And talk about a scene that plays on many levels - Henry has to interrogate a German prisoner to gain the whereabouts of a terrorist cell in London. But he has to act like he's Edward, since Trumboll is looking in on the brutal proceedings. Meanwhile Mavis is trying to tell Henry what to say through a hidden earpiece. It was quite good. And it would have been interesting, but also way too easy, to have Henry somehow use his "normal guy" smarts to get the info without using torture. He's just not that clever. He just needs to buy time until Edward re-emerges. And what gets the job done in the end? Well, torture.

Henry tries to hide from "the Agency" as he goes off to see his old college buddy, who's now a doctor, and get a cat-scan on his brain. It's an earnest attempt, but he learns a hard lesson after he gets gassed on a bus and taken back to headquarters, and the doctor himself winds up murdered, despite Henry's attempts to protect him. I'm not exactly sure what Mavis' motivations are for wanting to keep Edward alive, seeing as how she's pretty cold and condones torture and all that. But for some reason she's got a smidge of compassion for him. Either that or she just doesn't want her higher-ups to know she's totally screwed up.

My Own Worst Enemy: Breakdown

It’s easy to dismiss My Own Worst Enemy as derivative and while that’s true, it doesn’t mean the show doesn’t have value. How many times have great songs been completely derivative of other songs that came before them? This series unfortunately didn't survive. It stars Alfre Woodard and Christian Slater. It’s also slick, fast paced, and action packed.

Christian Slater plays Edward, a highly trained secret agent sent on various sorts of missions around the world. Slater also plays Henry, an identity created by the covert agency Edward works for. Henry is a mild mannered guy who works a job where he must travel all the time. Henry isn’t aware that he has an alter ego but he is aware that something is wrong because he’s started seeing a psychiatrist to discuss some very vivid dreams, so vivid in fact that he dreamed he was in Paris and he found a matchbook from a Parisian hotel in his pocket. Henry is literally turned off when Edward is needed and a fake story about Henry having to work late or travel for work is added to Henry’s profile. The only problem is that the chip in Edward’s head that controls all of these functions is failing and without going too far in spoiler-ville, Henry becomes aware of Edward. Once this happens, the two men find some entertaining ways to work together and exist in each others lives when the chip malfunctions causing that to happen.

While the action is fun and well executed and the characters are well portrayed and entertaining, there are several questions must be answered in future episodes for this series to work. First of all, why do this to Edward? It seems that he lives this other life as a really deep cover, a place for him to hide from his enemies until he is needed. If that’s the case then the cover, with all of its extreme measures, is a failure. Also, if the agency seems to be very detail oriented in its planning of Henry, down to shaving accidents, but they leave a stray matchbook in his pocket? Also, why would the agency allow Henry to go to a psychiatrist? Wouldn’t that jeopardize the cover potentially? Are they just so confident in their system that they aren’t worried about what might happen in the sessions?