This week on "Homeland" we pick up exactly where we left off, with Saul riding in the back of a police car. His arranged transport takes an unplanned detour, and he finds himself roughly pushed into a waiting van.
Saul is apparently taken captive, and his kidnappers snap a photo of him — just to make sure they grabbed the right guy — before putting a hood over his face.
Meanwhile, in New York, Sekou is being freed after Carrie’s strong-arming of the FBI worked. Carrie and Reda inform him that a condition of his freedom is that he not speak to the press. "Can you live with that?" Reda asks the outspoken young man. "I’m out, aren’t I?" Sekou answers.
In Washington, President-elect Keane is informed that word has leaked to the press that Iran is violating the nuclear deal, and that Keane intends to handle the country with kid gloves. This happens right as she is scheduled to address the media. "It’s an ambush," Keane says.
Before she meets the media, she sees Dar and surmises that he is the source of the leak. "I will not have my agenda mischaracterized and undermined before I even take office," she says, confronting him.
There’s a dangerous man in Carrie’s basement, and he’s having a nightmare in the opening scene of “Homeland” this week.
Quinn flashes back to being doused with nerve gas, and wakes up in fear. Carrie comforts him, and Quinn gets the wrong idea and tries to take her shirt off. No, no, no, no, no….
There’s a dangerous man in Carrie’s basement, and he’s having a nightmare in the opening scene of “Homeland” this week.
Quinn flashes back to being doused with nerve gas, and wakes up in fear. Carrie comforts him, and Quinn gets the wrong idea and tries to take her shirt off. No, no, no, no, no….
Dar apologizes, but Keane isn’t interested in hearing more from him. She asks for Saul’s report on her desk immediately, but Dar tells her that isn’t possible. Keane tells Dar that she and the current president are in agreement on how to handle Iran, and that she won’t rush to judgment without more than Dar’s word about Saul’s report — and she threatens Dar with his job to boot.
Carrie and Reda return Sekou to his home, where his family is waiting with a surprise party for him. While the family celebrates, Reda brings up the possibility of pursuing a civil case against the government, to compensate Sekou for his ordeal. Carrie tries to dissuade that notion. "Look at him, he’s free," she says. "This time, that’s going to have to be enough," implying that the deal that she made with the FBI was contingent on no further legal proceedings.
Greg Novik, the former owner of Greg’s Bagels, is helping the new owner get ready to reopen. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun video)
Greg Novik, the former owner of Greg’s Bagels, is helping the new owner get ready to reopen. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun video)
Reda chides her for making the deal behind his back, and tells her not to operate their organization as if it were the CIA. Carrie excuses herself from the party, and steps into a waiting SUV — escorted by a man wearing an earpiece, which Reda takes notice of.
After Carrie leaves, Sekou’s friends welcome him back but joke that he must now be an informant for the FBI, which irks him. His freedom came at the price of the trust of his friends. To prove to them that his ideals haven’t been compromised, he shuts himself in his room and records a video, telling the internet that he didn’t cut a deal or sell out. That won’t please Carrie, or the feds.
Saul’s apparent capture turns out to be an elaborate ruse, and his captors bring him to meet with an Iranian intelligence operative, as he’d planned to. He asks the man, and old contact of his, whether Iran is cheating on the nuclear deal, and confronts him with the evidence he obtained in Abu Dhabi. "You sound convinced already, so why are you asking me?" the man asks.
"Because the truth does matter. I will make it matter. That’s a promise," Saul says, and asks the man to find out whether Iran is breaking the agreement.
Back in D.C., Carrie meats with Keane, who asks her to provide some dirt on Dar so they can get him out of their way. Carrie says that if she gave them any information, she would open herself up to prosecution for violating the terms of her release from the CIA. But Keane assures her that she would make sure Carrie wouldn’t do any jail time if it came to that. Wow. That’s hardly a comforting assertion.
It’s time to catch up with Quinn, whom we see playing with his new gun. Still disturbed at the activity in the apartment across from Carrie’s house, he gains entry to the building and breaks into the apartment. The occupant returns to the building, and runs into Quinn as he leaves, threating to call the police if he sees him in the building again. As he should, right?
As Carrie picks Frannie up from school, she’s confronted by Dar, who accuses her of secretly advising Keane. "Carrie, I’m not Saul. I know," Dar says. Carrie reluctantly confirms that fact, and Dar tells her to "stop the bad advice. Stand down."
"No, you stand down. You had your turn, 50 [expletive] years of it, and look where we are now. You stand down," Carrie shoots back, ending the impromptu meeting.
Saul returns to his sister’s house, and she confronts him about his absence. "I’m just sad that the only time you come to see me in 12 years, it was a cover for your work," she says.
Their tense conversation is interrupted by a visit from Etai, of Israeli intelligence, who is there to escort Saul out of the area. He interrogates Saul and his sister about what Saul might have been up to, clearly upset that he was operating in the area without tipping him off, but Saul and his sister insist that Saul never left her house. Saul and his sister say goodbye, and Etai and his companions hustle Saul away.
On the car ride away from the house, Etai continues his interrogation, but Saul insists that he was not operating in the area. "I’m on the transition team," Saul says, explaining why he needs to hurry back to the United States. "I’m afraid the president-elect will have to do without you for a while," Etai says, confirming his intent to detain Saul.
"Hi Peter. Have you had your snack? Well, it’s snack time," Frannie says to Quinn as she and Carrie arrive home. That’s my favorite bit of dialogue in the history of this series. "A man came to school and he had painted hair and he scared Mommy," Frannie continues, explaining to Quinn why they arrived home a little late. This kid is on a roll.
Quinn informs Carrie of his afternoon activities, and if Carrie weren’t already suitably bothered, Reda calls to inform her that Sekou outed the FBI informant in his new video, violating the terms of the deal she cut with the government on his behalf.
Carrie hurries to Sekou’s house to convince him to take his video down, but Sekou isn’t having any of it. Carrie tries to appeal to him by expressing her solidarity with his beliefs, but says that she leveraged his release by holding compromising information over the government’s head. She urges him to understand both the intricacies of the situation, and how she left herself vulnerable on his behalf.
Another example of Carrie’s vulnerability is the fact that she has an unwell Quinn in her basement, and now he’s all riled up. Quinn steps up his private investigator game, snapping photos of the man leaving the apartment across the street in the middle of the night, and stealing Carrie’s car to follow him. He follows the man to a warehouse and takes photos of the building and its surroundings, including some catering vans, before a police officer interrupts and urges him to move along.
Sekou arrives at work the next day, and his friends commend him for his video post, but ask why he took the post down. "I didn’t want to go back to prison. … You have to choose your battles," he says. That’s enough to convince them that he isn’t an informant, so Sekou gets to keep his freedom and his credibility as an activist with his friends.
As the camera pulls away from Sekou, we see that he is working at the warehouse that Quinn followed the mystery man to. Hmm. Later in the morning, Quinn tells Carrie of his exploits, but Carrie seems remarkably unconcerned. "So, he’s a security guard?" she says. Quinn’s Spidey sense is still tingling.
Sekou starts his work day, and climbs into a catering van to start his deliveries. He turns on the van’s radio, triggering a detonator, and the van explodes in the middle of New York City.
Etai enters Saul’s detainment cell to deliver the news. "You’re needed back home. There’s been an attack in New York," he says.
Final Thoughts
We got some welcome story advancement this week, as the show did a nice job of tying all of these loose plot threads together. I hope our patience is rewarded, as four episodes of laying groundwork was trying.
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