Via Showtime.
Last week’s episode, “Tower of David,” was a fascinating, highly effective exercise for Homeland. After two languid episodes that did little more than set the chess pieces in place for this season, “Tower of David” was a bold bottle episode that focused entirely on Brody and Carrie and their helpless situations locked up (Brody, as a prisoner of his own saviors, and Carrie as a prisoner of her own illness). But it didn’t really do much to drive this season’s narrative, which hasn’t been entirely clear thus far. We’ve got a severely weakened CIA under great scrutiny from a Congressional investigation committee after the events of 12/12 (what they’re now calling last season’s Langley bombing), there’s the CIA’s war waged against Carrie to keep her quiet, meanwhile, they’re slowly tracking the mysterious Majid Javadi—the terrorist mastermind supposedly behind the 12/12 bombing—and finally, while Brody is MIA, his family is struggling to keep it all together.
“Tower of David,” while excellent, stalled all of these plot lines, and left me wondering when something was finally going to happen on Homeland this season. Well, last night’s “Game On” finally made some headway, and—spoiler alert!—some big twists! (Albeit a utterly ridiculous and a bit nonsensical twist). But whatever, I’ll take it. Are you starting to redeem yourself, Homeland? Could this season finally be taking a turn for the better? I hope so. Let’s analyze:
Carrie’s Free!
After last week’s episode, Carrie’s situation seemed pretty hopeless. No matter what she did, it was clear that she wasn’t leaving that psychiatric hospital for quite some time. But finally, after a month of treatment, she’s finally up for review. All is looking good until, F. Murray Abraham—in all his menacing, bearded glory—is spotted leaving the hospital right before Carrie is called back in to get the results from her hearing, which she’s ordered to stay in the hospital because she is a “security risk.” All is lost, until mysteriously, Carrie is told that she can go home—for 24 hours. How? Why? The mysterious lawyer who offered to get her free if she’ll meet with his boss to talk about a insidious proposal. More on that later.
Via Showtime.
Dana and Leo
Also front and center of this week’s episode: The ever-growing, doomed romance of young Dana Brody and her new boy toy Leo. What crazy antics have these kids found themselves in this week? Well, after stealing her mother’s car, Dana breaks Leo out of the psychiatric hospital and hit the road on a lover’s journey of things that young, crazy lovers do. You, know stuff like hanging out in a graveyard ogling at each other. Leo ditches Dana’s cell and they trade in her mother’s car for a far shittier, nondescript Toyota and drive around aimlessly. Meanwhile Jessica and Mike (Mike’s back! Remember him?) desperately try to find them, and have quite an uncomfortable meeting with Leo’s parents, where they learn he’s locked up because he might have killed his brother? It’s not entirely clear. Either way, I feel like this subplot is really dragging Homeland down. Much ink has been spilled about Brody and why the show should just kill him off. If that means they’ll also scrub out his family from the show, I’m all for it. Checking in with that family every week is just becoming a drag.
Where’s Brody (again)?
Speaking of the rogue Congressman, what happened to him? After two episodes of no Brody, we got one Brody-centric episode, and now, nothing. I’m really interested to see how he gets out of his situation (if he does), but Homeland is going to have a real problem if they can’t weave his story into an episode with the rest of the main story lines. It’s going to be a slow season if we’re only getting Brody bottle episodes after every two or three episodes.
Carrie Mathison, Double Agent
Back to Carrie’s release! After she’s let out of the hospital, Franklin tells her that she has to meet with his boss, Leland Bennett, a lawyer for a bank with ties to the Iranian terrorist network responsible for 12/12. Initially, Carrie refuses, but after the CIA froze her accounts, took her car, and generally made it impossible for her to go anywhere, she agrees. Bennett tells her that the CIA will basically ruin her life in order to keep their secrets safe, and that he represents someone who recently had “six business associates found dead,” and he wants to know how that happened. After much hand-wringing, Carrie agrees to help out the mysterious client, who, in all likelihood, is Javadi. So, Carrie’s now working with the terrorists to take down the CIA? Uh, ok.
Via Showtime.
The Twist!
But wait! All is not what it seems! At the end of the episode, Carrie visits Saul to tell him what she’s done, to which he says she’s done well. Wait, what? Yes, that’s right, all this time, the CIA’s war against Carrie to keep her quiet and send her to a psychiatric ward was all a rouse to get Jivadi to reach out to Carrie so she can infiltrate the network. Yes, this makes little sense, considering what’s happened so far this season. It’s not even clear how far back Carrie and Saul cooked up this scheme. It’s all extremely contrived, and I’m still scratching my head to try and figure it out, but you know what? It worked for me. At least something exciting is happening. Good job, writers. Now, figure out a way to explain it all logically.
Carrie Mathison Tear-O-Meter Rating: 2.
Via Showtime.
She only breaks down twice, but they were both pretty epic cry fests.
