The penultimate episode of the season splits its time between the show’s two modes of operation: high-octane action thriller and raw emotional relationship drama. I like both sides of Homeland (despite having to suspend disbelief a lot more when it comes to the action scenes), but pairing them in the same 60 minutes tends to highlight just how strong this show is at the latter, and render the former as somewhat cheap thrills.
We pick up where the last episode left off, as Carrie skulks around the dark empty warehouse where she was imprisoned by Abu Nazir. She sees a figure and follows him, only to stumble out a door and into the harsh glare of the SWAT team’s floodlights and Peter Quinn’s soothing embrace. The rough edges of early season Quinn are all but gone as he handles Carrie with kid gloves now. He does ask how she managed to escape but accepts her vague dismissals of the inquiries. When the SWAT team emerges without having found Nazir, she insists he must have had help escaping, and attention turns to the MIA Danny Galvez, who also happens to be a Muslim. They track him, but it’s a red herring, Galvez left the scene merely to get to the hospital for some busted stitches.
Dejected Carrie heads back to CIA HQ, and while Quinn suggests she go home and nap, instead she sneaks into the interrogation room where Roya Hammad is being held. Carrie tries her sympathetic listener schtick, assuring Roya that she must be a good person whom Nazir dragged into this. At first Roya plays along, asking Carrie if she’s ever had someone who takes over her life and gets her to do things that aren’t really “her.” Carrie nods emphatically, her trademark quivering lip already starting to dance, when Roya fakes her out and screams that she hasn’t and Carrie’s an idiot whore, and a whole bunch of stuff in Arabic that we can’t understand. Quinn comes in and subdues Roya (no pen through the hand this time), ushers a shaken Carrie out of the room and sends her home once more. (I have to admit, I was disappointed that they did not give Roya any deeper motivation. There’s a fair argument to be made that the show has never been great at, and has really dropped the ball this season especially, on depicting the terrorists with any kind of shades of gray or complicated motives as opposed to a more fanatical hatred.)
On the drive home, Carrie takes her medication for the first time in about 9 episodes (It’s a shame that the show practically completely excised her medical condition and the management of it, after those first few episodes of season 2.) Then she has an epiphany, replaying Roya’s words. She calls Quinn and says the journalist emphatically said Nazir would never run. She thinks he’s still at the warehouse. Quinn, who has lost all resistance and backbone in the face of Carrie’s wooby crying expressions, just asks her what she wants to do. When she says she’s going back there, he says he’ll meet her there in a bit. At the warehouse, the last tactical team is just leaving, and they’re pretty pressed that this random lady (whom somehow they don’t even know/recognize as the CIA agent who was held by Nazir) is putting them back on the clock.
But Carrie’s instincts turn out to be right once more (of course!) and she and one SWAT guy who got separated from the rest heedlessly go into a tiny hidden room without calling for backup first, and discover personal items and a bedroll indicating Nazir’s still there. As you might imagine, he then swoops out of the shadows and slices the throat of the marine, then chases Carrie around for a bit, but ultimately sits down in a prayer-like pose and waits for the tac team to come and get him. As they close in, he reaches for his inside pocket and they shoot him dead (as I’m sure he knew they would.) Abu Nazir is dead. Long live Abu—wait no, that’s not it. But his death is a hollow victory for Carrie, who can’t manage much more than a wan smile for Estes’s even more wan congratulations.
Estes has been a pretty busy boy this hour, though, after he begrudgingly tells Carrie “good job,” he tells his flunkie Quinn that he still wants him to kill Brody. Quinn notes that it’ll be much riskier now that the world will want a soundbite from Brody about Nazir’s death and Estes just tells him to get ’er done. Then he goes back to the CIA where poor Saul is enduring a polygraph that is pretty much pointless, but does allow for this delightful exchange:
Interviewer: Is your name Saul Berenson?
Saul: Yes.
Interviewer: “Are you sometimes called the Bear?”
Saul: Fucking hope not.
Hee! But anyway, they also ask him a bunch of questions about whether or not he gave Aileen the means to kill herself. Saul fails the polygraph, to no surprise of his own, as he tells Estes, that the fact that they made him do that just means he was right about Estes ordering an illegal hit on the life of a U.S. Congressman. Estes basically tells him to quit his job or he’ll fire him. Poor Saul, and man, Estes has really, slowly become the big Bad here, eh?
And finally, over at the Brody home, emotions are high. Dana—and well, the whole family—ends up literally crying over some spilled milk as she has a pretty righteous tantrum and assures her father that they’d all be much better off without him. And apparently all Jess really needed was a good romp to start getting real about shit too. I jest, but the conversations between her and Brody both at the safehouse and then when they finally get to go home are really the highlight of the episode. It’s the most honest they’ve ever been with each other as they talk about how they loved each other so much once, but that as much as they tried they couldn’t get that feeling back. Brody assures Jess that no one could’ve made a difference, made him better, because he couldn’t even do that for himself, and he starts to tell her that what Carrie said on the front lawn back in season 1 about him being a terrorist was true. But she stops him, saying once all she wanted to know was the truth, but now she doesn’t care. Jess also says Carrie must know everything about him and accept it, and that he must love her very much. Brody doesn’t answer verbally, but maybe there’s a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod of his head. Maybe.
The marriage all but over except signing the papers, Brody heads to Carrie’s. She opens the door and assures him Nazir is dead and that he won’t hurt anyone ever again. Brody looks at her warmly and says that what he did so Nazir would let her go, came down to “you or Walden.” (Which, technically, isn’t quite a sacrifice considering he kinda wanted Walden dead anyway, but it’s a lovely long-awaited shippy moment where Brody actually declares some feelings kinda sorta, so let’s not ruin it by quibbling, eh?) And then Nicholas Brody lovingly cups Carrie Matheson’s face and assures her that it wan’t even close. (Awwwww.) She pulls him into the house, and we pan out to a pained Peter Quinn watching through his sniper scope and debating what he’s gonna do now.
Season Finale next week! Will Quinn pull the trigger? Will Carrie and Brody have wall-banging or tender victory sex? Will Saul find a way to stay in the CIA? Will Estes get his comeuppance? Will Dana freak out over some rancid butter? Hopefully all will be revealed!
Tara Gelsomino is a reader, writer, pop culture junkie, and Internet addict. You can tweet her at @taragel.
