Episode 02 | Aired Oct 6, 2013
Carrie breaks down over Saul's betrayal, while Saul tries to follow the money trail behind the Langley bombing
By Shirley Li @ EW.com
After Saul threw Carrie under the bus last week, I figured there'd be no way Carrie would let him get away with it this week. I could just see it -- Carrie banging down Saul's front door, confronting him, tears streaming down her cryface, insisting he take her side -- because a showdown between the show's two major players (save for a missing Brody, of course) had to be inevitable. Instead, we don't get a moment between the protege and her mentor until the final minute of tonight's episode, "Uh...Oh...Aw." And that intense frustration -- for us, as an audience aching to see them duke it out, and for Carrie, as a burned agent intent on convincing someone, anyone, with her side of the story -- propelled this latest hour of Homeland.
Carrie begins the episode by paying Saul a visit, only to find that he's not home. A bewildered Mira greets her instead, obliviously asking, "Are you okay?" and mentioning the "incident" at the restaurant. Now even more pissed off than before, Carrie takes her story to the press, but fails to explain everything without confessing her role to the skeptical reporter. Just as she begins talking about Brody's innocence, three security guards come to escort her out -- not to the CIA, but to psychiatric detention.
"This is complete bulls--t," Carrie cries as she walks away from the newsroom. "You know that right?"
No, Carrie, no one knows -- not the reporter, not your doctor, not even your family. Because as soon as you went to the reporter, you became the CIA's target, and an easy target to hit.
"I mean, I get it, someone tries to tell the truth, you counter by calling them crazy. I admire the move, it's elegant, but it's unnecessary," Carrie insists, rambling it all off in one breath. She can't win there, and she can't win over her doctor about staying off her meds either: "They dull my head," she says. "I miss things when I'm on them -- miss as in not 'yearn for them' -- but fail to see."
But just as Carrie refuses to see the big picture about her meds, no one is willing to listen to her story.
Until Quinn steps in, that is. "S--t, Carrie," he says, seeing her when he visits the hospital. "It's f--ked up, I know, but it's not going to get you out of here." He warns her not to spill CIA secrets just to get revenge for what Saul did to her.
Meanwhile, Carrie's father and sister start off on Carrie's side, but a surprise visit from Saul changes (dare I say "manipulates"?) their minds. "I know both of you hate me right now, but I'm on her side," he says, before revealing to them that Carrie went to a reporter. By the time the family attends her commitment hearing -- with Quinn sitting in the back as a "character witness" -- Carrie looks completely broken. Her face is ashen, her body's limp, and when she's just about to breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of her father and sister, she's knocked down again when they encourage her to take her meds. "I don't need anyone telling me what to do," Carrie tells them, echoing Lost's John Locke in the process.
By the end of the hearing, Carrie chooses to run away, only to be blocked by the orderlies. As she's taken away, she cries, "This is a f--king sham." Trust me, Carrie: I'm just as frustrated to see you dismissed so easily. What's Saul's plan with all this?
Let's move on to the Brodys. I can already hear your collective groans, but bear with me: I actually think it's... interesting what they're doing with Dana. (Wait, stay! I'm not saying her plot's interesting.) To me, it looks like Homeland is forced to find excuses to continue showing the other Brodys because Brody himself will show up at some point this season, and seeing as Jessica's basically out of the picture (along with Mike) because Brody isn't present to play off of her, the next possible Brody for us to watch has to be Dana. Phew. Does that make sense?
And highlighting Dana isn't a bad idea. It's a fascinating choice, because her conflict has to do with her feeling trapped in her own home, with no control of what's going on around her. That's a feeling Carrie shares at this point in the series, and the two characters mirror each other, helping the show drive that theme home.
But I'm not saying that using Dana as the focal point for the Brodys works successfully. Without Brody, Dana seems to fit too uncomfortably with the rest of the drama.
To break it down, Dana and Jess continue their miscommunication-fueled struggle. "Dana thinks she's famous in a bad way," Jess tells Dana's psychiatrist. "The word is 'infamous,'" Dana mutters with an eye roll. The situation only gets worse when Dana runs away to meet her boy (a.k.a. Leo -- he finally gets a name!). "I just really needed to see you," she whimpers to him, and they end up sleeping together in the laundry room.
Okay, then.
I sort of get it. She needs to get away from Jess and the Brody house, he's someone she feels comfortable with, and while running away in the middle of the night doesn't help matters in any way, it helps Dana clear her head. "We're not defective, you know?" she tells Leo the morning after. "We're not. It's everything out there." So she wants to stay with him. That part I get.
What I don't get is why the show is spending this much time on these scenes, when the next scene, with Dana's cathartic confession to Jessica that she feels alive when she's with the boy, explains it all. When Dana finally breaks, dragging her mother to the bathroom and explaining that she wants to live because of Leo -- "I was happy last night for the first time since I don't know when," she says -- the release is powerful. Dana's speech is a thousand times more effective than anything she's done in the past two episodes, so again, it makes me wonder why we had to sit through the dinner with the grandmother and tonight's romp with Leo. Plus, she adds, "Dad was crazy. He ruined our lives. It's the truth, but I am okay now," which ties her storyline back to Brody neatly and finally clarifies what's been running through her head.
Then again, I might be too harsh with her plot. The later scenes, with her looking through old family photos (including some showing a long-haired Brody, who must henceforth be known as "Carrot Top Brody") and borrowing Brody's prayer mat, pack quite a punch. I'm not clear on what they'll be doing with Dana down the line, but I'm glad the Jess vs. Dana storyline is seemingly closed, or at the very least, healed for the time being. Using Jessica as the receiving end of Dana's frustrations made Dana just sound petulant and unlikeable. And I'm definitely keeping an eye on Leo, because my wariness of his role has only increased with this episode.
Back at the CIA, Saul's taken a new protege under his wing: Fara (Nazanin Boniadi, who How I Met Your Mother fans know as "Nora"), a young Persian transactions analyst brought in to help Saul trace the Langley bombing operation's funding and its origins. (Is it too early to call Fara the next Carrie? Not that they do the same job, obviously, but both are capable young women who Saul appears to trust and mentor. I'll put a pin in that thought.)
Fara is fresh-faced and impressionable, and when Saul chides her for not working hard enough, she nearly crumples under his glare. And who can blame her? He even points out her head scarf: "That thing you're wearing on your head... is one big 'f--k you' to the people you work with," he tells her. "Give me a goddamn plan or don't say anything." Ouch, Saul.
But Fara does have a plan. She tells Saul, teary-eyed, that she'd like to talk to some bankers who have been illegally moving money. When the bankers arrive, Fara proves herself, providing Saul the evidence he needs to corner the bankers. Even so, the bankers refuse to negotiate. "With all respect, miss, in this country, that's not the way we ask for help," one of them tells her. Saul reaches over and taps her on the arm in a gesture of reassurance, one we've seen him use on Carrie many times in the past.
It wasn't a waste of time, however, when Fara finds that nearly $45 million is missing among all the transactions, money pointing to the Iranian government. Saul tells her to track it down, because where the money is has to be where the mastermind behind the Langley bombing is hiding. "Make it your number one priority," he tells her, and then warns, "Keep it between us for the time being."
It's a breakthrough for the CIA, but the fact that Saul's keeping it under wraps rubs me the wrong way. I know many of you consider Saul to be the mole, and the show is definitely making him harder to read. Why keep the money trail a secret from the rest of the CIA? Does Saul fear that a mole will use the intel? Or if he's the mole, this is the perfect way to watch over a major development. It's hard to tell, and it's a question that will continue to crop up in the next few weeks.
Fara, meanwhile, is without a doubt a character to watch. When she inevitably meets Carrie, I'm betting Carrie won't take her presence lightly as Saul's new favorite in the agency. Of course, Carrie will have to get back into the agency first. Which brings me to...
Let's revisit Peter Quinn. He has always seemed like a background player, there to move the action along and provide a healthy dose of suspense while the drama surrounding Carrie, Brody and Saul plays out. But with Brody gone, and Carrie and Saul playing their game of betrayal, Quinn's coming into the spotlight, starting with this episode.
Sure, he spends multiple scenes as a spectator, simply sitting in the background and absorbing information, but he takes strides into handling the overall situation on his own terms. Not only does he visit and advise Carrie in the hospital (only to be spurned by her, of course), he attends her hearing and watches her struggle with the orderlies, drops by Saul and Fara's meeting with the bankers, and then confronts Saul about how they're handling Carrie.
"She didn't lose it; we did that to her," Quinn insists to Saul. "I want you to know what's going on here is not okay with me... When this is all over, I'm out." Though it may seem like Saul is losing an ally, Quinn is practically putting himself in the crosshairs if he decides to quit or even goes rogue. Plus, he's distraught over the accidental killing of the child in Caracas, which is making him lose his cool, for lack of a better word. He goes so far as to track down the corrupt banker who dismissed Fara, and threatens him outside a restaurant by giving him an ultimatum -- give up the information about the wire transfers or, well, die -- which forces the banker's hand. Quinn is stepping outside his boundaries, to say the least, and all of this makes me think he's going to be in trouble soon. He's becoming an enemy to himself, even if his motives are noble.
That said, his troubles are nothing compared to Carrie's. No matter what she does, she can't win: When she's in front of the committee lying her way through their questions, she gets thrown under the bus. When she wants to reveal the truth, no one believes her. And now we see her strapped to a gurney in a horror film-like setting near the end of the episode, being injected with sedatives. By the time she wakes up, she can barely string two words together, and sits limply in a hospital lounge, blankly watching the news. The camera lingers over her and her sunken eyes before revealing the moment we've been waiting for all episode: Saul appearing in the lobby to visit Carrie.
He crouches by her chair and whispers, "Carrie, I am so sorry."
She turns to look at him. "F--k... You... Saul..." she responds, glaring at him, jaw clenched, before turning away, her expression betraying her hurt and humiliation. Behind her, Saul closes his eyes.
The scene barely lasts a minute, but it's enough to show how irreparable Carrie and Saul's relationship has become. I don't know how the show's going to play this out, but I'm hoping Carrie's not trapped in psychiatric detention for too long. As for Saul, he better hope that his plan works so that, as he says, it will all have been worth it.
We end the episode with Carrie under scrutiny, Dana getting a small sense of freedom, and Quinn starting to pull the strings. And as always, there are many other questions left: Again, where is Brody? (Also, where is Virgil?) What's Fara's role in this beyond tracking the funds? Who exactly is Javadi? What is Quinn thinking? What is it about Leo that makes me want to get him as far away from Dana as possible? Will Chris Brody ever get more than three lines in an episode? Discuss in the comments below.
All credit goes to EW.com
Carrie breaks down over Saul's betrayal, while Saul tries to follow the money trail behind the Langley bombing
By Shirley Li @ EW.com
After Saul threw Carrie under the bus last week, I figured there'd be no way Carrie would let him get away with it this week. I could just see it -- Carrie banging down Saul's front door, confronting him, tears streaming down her cryface, insisting he take her side -- because a showdown between the show's two major players (save for a missing Brody, of course) had to be inevitable. Instead, we don't get a moment between the protege and her mentor until the final minute of tonight's episode, "Uh...Oh...Aw." And that intense frustration -- for us, as an audience aching to see them duke it out, and for Carrie, as a burned agent intent on convincing someone, anyone, with her side of the story -- propelled this latest hour of Homeland.
Carrie begins the episode by paying Saul a visit, only to find that he's not home. A bewildered Mira greets her instead, obliviously asking, "Are you okay?" and mentioning the "incident" at the restaurant. Now even more pissed off than before, Carrie takes her story to the press, but fails to explain everything without confessing her role to the skeptical reporter. Just as she begins talking about Brody's innocence, three security guards come to escort her out -- not to the CIA, but to psychiatric detention.
"This is complete bulls--t," Carrie cries as she walks away from the newsroom. "You know that right?"
No, Carrie, no one knows -- not the reporter, not your doctor, not even your family. Because as soon as you went to the reporter, you became the CIA's target, and an easy target to hit.
"I mean, I get it, someone tries to tell the truth, you counter by calling them crazy. I admire the move, it's elegant, but it's unnecessary," Carrie insists, rambling it all off in one breath. She can't win there, and she can't win over her doctor about staying off her meds either: "They dull my head," she says. "I miss things when I'm on them -- miss as in not 'yearn for them' -- but fail to see."
But just as Carrie refuses to see the big picture about her meds, no one is willing to listen to her story.
Until Quinn steps in, that is. "S--t, Carrie," he says, seeing her when he visits the hospital. "It's f--ked up, I know, but it's not going to get you out of here." He warns her not to spill CIA secrets just to get revenge for what Saul did to her.
Meanwhile, Carrie's father and sister start off on Carrie's side, but a surprise visit from Saul changes (dare I say "manipulates"?) their minds. "I know both of you hate me right now, but I'm on her side," he says, before revealing to them that Carrie went to a reporter. By the time the family attends her commitment hearing -- with Quinn sitting in the back as a "character witness" -- Carrie looks completely broken. Her face is ashen, her body's limp, and when she's just about to breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of her father and sister, she's knocked down again when they encourage her to take her meds. "I don't need anyone telling me what to do," Carrie tells them, echoing Lost's John Locke in the process.
By the end of the hearing, Carrie chooses to run away, only to be blocked by the orderlies. As she's taken away, she cries, "This is a f--king sham." Trust me, Carrie: I'm just as frustrated to see you dismissed so easily. What's Saul's plan with all this?
Let's move on to the Brodys. I can already hear your collective groans, but bear with me: I actually think it's... interesting what they're doing with Dana. (Wait, stay! I'm not saying her plot's interesting.) To me, it looks like Homeland is forced to find excuses to continue showing the other Brodys because Brody himself will show up at some point this season, and seeing as Jessica's basically out of the picture (along with Mike) because Brody isn't present to play off of her, the next possible Brody for us to watch has to be Dana. Phew. Does that make sense?
And highlighting Dana isn't a bad idea. It's a fascinating choice, because her conflict has to do with her feeling trapped in her own home, with no control of what's going on around her. That's a feeling Carrie shares at this point in the series, and the two characters mirror each other, helping the show drive that theme home.
But I'm not saying that using Dana as the focal point for the Brodys works successfully. Without Brody, Dana seems to fit too uncomfortably with the rest of the drama.
To break it down, Dana and Jess continue their miscommunication-fueled struggle. "Dana thinks she's famous in a bad way," Jess tells Dana's psychiatrist. "The word is 'infamous,'" Dana mutters with an eye roll. The situation only gets worse when Dana runs away to meet her boy (a.k.a. Leo -- he finally gets a name!). "I just really needed to see you," she whimpers to him, and they end up sleeping together in the laundry room.
Okay, then.
I sort of get it. She needs to get away from Jess and the Brody house, he's someone she feels comfortable with, and while running away in the middle of the night doesn't help matters in any way, it helps Dana clear her head. "We're not defective, you know?" she tells Leo the morning after. "We're not. It's everything out there." So she wants to stay with him. That part I get.
What I don't get is why the show is spending this much time on these scenes, when the next scene, with Dana's cathartic confession to Jessica that she feels alive when she's with the boy, explains it all. When Dana finally breaks, dragging her mother to the bathroom and explaining that she wants to live because of Leo -- "I was happy last night for the first time since I don't know when," she says -- the release is powerful. Dana's speech is a thousand times more effective than anything she's done in the past two episodes, so again, it makes me wonder why we had to sit through the dinner with the grandmother and tonight's romp with Leo. Plus, she adds, "Dad was crazy. He ruined our lives. It's the truth, but I am okay now," which ties her storyline back to Brody neatly and finally clarifies what's been running through her head.
Then again, I might be too harsh with her plot. The later scenes, with her looking through old family photos (including some showing a long-haired Brody, who must henceforth be known as "Carrot Top Brody") and borrowing Brody's prayer mat, pack quite a punch. I'm not clear on what they'll be doing with Dana down the line, but I'm glad the Jess vs. Dana storyline is seemingly closed, or at the very least, healed for the time being. Using Jessica as the receiving end of Dana's frustrations made Dana just sound petulant and unlikeable. And I'm definitely keeping an eye on Leo, because my wariness of his role has only increased with this episode.
Back at the CIA, Saul's taken a new protege under his wing: Fara (Nazanin Boniadi, who How I Met Your Mother fans know as "Nora"), a young Persian transactions analyst brought in to help Saul trace the Langley bombing operation's funding and its origins. (Is it too early to call Fara the next Carrie? Not that they do the same job, obviously, but both are capable young women who Saul appears to trust and mentor. I'll put a pin in that thought.)
Fara is fresh-faced and impressionable, and when Saul chides her for not working hard enough, she nearly crumples under his glare. And who can blame her? He even points out her head scarf: "That thing you're wearing on your head... is one big 'f--k you' to the people you work with," he tells her. "Give me a goddamn plan or don't say anything." Ouch, Saul.
But Fara does have a plan. She tells Saul, teary-eyed, that she'd like to talk to some bankers who have been illegally moving money. When the bankers arrive, Fara proves herself, providing Saul the evidence he needs to corner the bankers. Even so, the bankers refuse to negotiate. "With all respect, miss, in this country, that's not the way we ask for help," one of them tells her. Saul reaches over and taps her on the arm in a gesture of reassurance, one we've seen him use on Carrie many times in the past.
It wasn't a waste of time, however, when Fara finds that nearly $45 million is missing among all the transactions, money pointing to the Iranian government. Saul tells her to track it down, because where the money is has to be where the mastermind behind the Langley bombing is hiding. "Make it your number one priority," he tells her, and then warns, "Keep it between us for the time being."
It's a breakthrough for the CIA, but the fact that Saul's keeping it under wraps rubs me the wrong way. I know many of you consider Saul to be the mole, and the show is definitely making him harder to read. Why keep the money trail a secret from the rest of the CIA? Does Saul fear that a mole will use the intel? Or if he's the mole, this is the perfect way to watch over a major development. It's hard to tell, and it's a question that will continue to crop up in the next few weeks.
Fara, meanwhile, is without a doubt a character to watch. When she inevitably meets Carrie, I'm betting Carrie won't take her presence lightly as Saul's new favorite in the agency. Of course, Carrie will have to get back into the agency first. Which brings me to...
Let's revisit Peter Quinn. He has always seemed like a background player, there to move the action along and provide a healthy dose of suspense while the drama surrounding Carrie, Brody and Saul plays out. But with Brody gone, and Carrie and Saul playing their game of betrayal, Quinn's coming into the spotlight, starting with this episode.
Sure, he spends multiple scenes as a spectator, simply sitting in the background and absorbing information, but he takes strides into handling the overall situation on his own terms. Not only does he visit and advise Carrie in the hospital (only to be spurned by her, of course), he attends her hearing and watches her struggle with the orderlies, drops by Saul and Fara's meeting with the bankers, and then confronts Saul about how they're handling Carrie.
"She didn't lose it; we did that to her," Quinn insists to Saul. "I want you to know what's going on here is not okay with me... When this is all over, I'm out." Though it may seem like Saul is losing an ally, Quinn is practically putting himself in the crosshairs if he decides to quit or even goes rogue. Plus, he's distraught over the accidental killing of the child in Caracas, which is making him lose his cool, for lack of a better word. He goes so far as to track down the corrupt banker who dismissed Fara, and threatens him outside a restaurant by giving him an ultimatum -- give up the information about the wire transfers or, well, die -- which forces the banker's hand. Quinn is stepping outside his boundaries, to say the least, and all of this makes me think he's going to be in trouble soon. He's becoming an enemy to himself, even if his motives are noble.
That said, his troubles are nothing compared to Carrie's. No matter what she does, she can't win: When she's in front of the committee lying her way through their questions, she gets thrown under the bus. When she wants to reveal the truth, no one believes her. And now we see her strapped to a gurney in a horror film-like setting near the end of the episode, being injected with sedatives. By the time she wakes up, she can barely string two words together, and sits limply in a hospital lounge, blankly watching the news. The camera lingers over her and her sunken eyes before revealing the moment we've been waiting for all episode: Saul appearing in the lobby to visit Carrie.
He crouches by her chair and whispers, "Carrie, I am so sorry."
She turns to look at him. "F--k... You... Saul..." she responds, glaring at him, jaw clenched, before turning away, her expression betraying her hurt and humiliation. Behind her, Saul closes his eyes.
The scene barely lasts a minute, but it's enough to show how irreparable Carrie and Saul's relationship has become. I don't know how the show's going to play this out, but I'm hoping Carrie's not trapped in psychiatric detention for too long. As for Saul, he better hope that his plan works so that, as he says, it will all have been worth it.
We end the episode with Carrie under scrutiny, Dana getting a small sense of freedom, and Quinn starting to pull the strings. And as always, there are many other questions left: Again, where is Brody? (Also, where is Virgil?) What's Fara's role in this beyond tracking the funds? Who exactly is Javadi? What is Quinn thinking? What is it about Leo that makes me want to get him as far away from Dana as possible? Will Chris Brody ever get more than three lines in an episode? Discuss in the comments below.
All credit goes to EW.com