The question of how “Homeland” would proceed after its major flip last week was answered somewhat in Sunday’s episode, which ended with a blast of violence.
At this point, the CIA is trusting Nicholas Brody to provide information, but should they? And should Brody trust Carrie Mathison and the CIA? As in any relationship, they have to feel the situation out to test its reality.
As the episode begins, all CIA eyes are on Roya Nassad, the journalist played by Zuleika Robinson. She’s been the conduit between forces of terrorist Abu Nazir and Brody and so far he’s been following her occasional orders as he rises in U.S. government, now as a U.S. congressman from Virginia, perhaps soon as a vice presidential candidate.
She meets someone in a public park, but too close to a fountain for agents tailing them to pick up any audio. Worse, they lose the mystery man in the Metro, though he’s pictured getting out at the Meridian Hill stop (a stop that doesn’t exist but I wish it did; it’d be the closest Metro to my house).
Brody is called in to answer some questions and it’s surprising that he goes right up to the door of the makeshift operations center – if anyone of his terrorist pals were watching, it would give away his collusion with the CIA immediately.
Brody says he doesn’t know the guy, but pressed to give some kind of information, he mentions that the Gettysburg tailor who is tacked up to a bulletin board as a person of interest is actually dead from an accident.
That hothead Quinn is mad he’s withheld the information, but gets people inside that shop to look for clues, contacts and other scraps of information.
Meantime, in that embarrassing secondary storyline, where Dana and Finn are coping with causing a hit and run accident, Dana at first doesn’t want to go to school, and once there, after a brief talk with Finn, who doesn’t want them to ever talk about the incident, she skips school and goes to the hospital, where she finds both the accident victim and her grieving daughter upset that her mother will die soon.
Dana is freaking out. When she and her dad were riding to school, they were both dazed by their individual traumas – this is a truly wounded family.
Later in the episode, when Dana tells Finn the lady died and that they have to tell someone, he doubles down on the silence, saying, “If you say anything about this, I’m dead. I mean it.”
Carrie surprises Brody in the Congressional parking garage and advises him on confronting Roya for information on the mystery man. Brody seems confused when she puts her hand on him to reassure him. “What is this, sex?” he says to her. Or even worse: “Understanding?”
He does his bit and runs in to Roya but she reminds him this is not their protocol; she contacts him only. Still, he lets her know that Carrie had been told of a new Hezbollah agent in town.. She seems interested in the information, but also adds that she’s curious about why there was surveillance on the Gettysburg shop for two weeks only to be recently broken with the agents going inside. Does she also distrust Brody, who is supposed to be her agent as well?
There is a third storyline woven in as well. Brody’s troubled Marine buddy Lauder, played so well by Marc Menchaca, has been dogged in his insistence that Brody had something to do with the murder of their other buddy Tom Walker. Mike Faber, Brody’s best friend, who had an affair with Jess Brody while the sergeant was in a prison camp, has lately looked into the Walker death as well and seems to be close to thinking Brody did it too.
He assures Lauder he “knows a guy at the CIA” who turns out to be Saul, who quickly brings David Estes into their meeting and warns him in no uncertain terms to stop pursuing his “unauthorized investigation into matters of national security.”
Which of course only emboldens him. He goes nosing in the Brody house one after noon – he was practically a relative in the sergeant’s absence, if not de facto step father and finds one bullet missing from Brody’s ammo – the same 9mm that killed Walker.
Mike tells Jess of his dire suspicions and she tells him to leave. Even if she thinks he’s right, she’s in no mood to consider the possibility.
Back in Gettysburg, Quinn and his team are going over the tailor shop when Carrie calls to say that Roya was aware they were in there. If they are being watched as well, they need some backup. But as Quinn contemplates a false well that might be hiding something big, a big paramilitary squad crashes through the shop, killing all in their path.
In what may be the biggest massacre since the Civil War battle that lent the town its fame, six agents are dead; Quinn is injured. Then they remove that false wall to carry away the metal box behind it.
Carrie is shaken by the loss of agents, storms into Brody’s Congressional office and demands to know if he knew that was going to happen. He says no, she’s crying and got her crazy face on, thinking: this slaughter was my fault and everybody must think I’m crazy again.
This time it’s Brody’s turn to comfort her, so he reaches for her hand.
This is going to be some complicated relationship.
The gunning down in the shop may erase some fears that “Homeland” will now become some sort of talky procedural now that the two former foes and lovers are working side by side. It also reminds us that the show’s makers accelerate the action and plot points to keep the tension up as the top-notch season continues.