To remedy the fact that the first two episodes of “Homeland” this seasoned no sign of Nicholas Brody, arguably the show’s co-star, the third was practically all him.
He appears in Venezuela like a ghost, bald and in bad shape, barely breathing from a shooting at the Columbian border, being turned over to an armed force of some sort.
And we thought Brody was in Canada all this time.
He was on his way to Newfoundland last we saw of him at the end of season two, on the run because everyone knew he’d be accused of the CIA bombing. Since then he’s apparently traveled secretively from place to place ending up 2,684 miles away in Caracas and still very much the world’s most wanted man, with a huge bounty on his head.
To the group that finds him and gets him a doctor he’s another “anonymous stranger with two bullets in his guts,” and so he’s sewn up and shot up, with heroin it looks like. It’s odd that they identify themselves as people who also know Carrie — are these the kind of people she used to hang out with?
Brody begins to heal and wants to get out of bed before he’s fully ready. The daughter of the man in charge looks on and prepares another needle; Brody doesn’t want it. He wants to stay clearheaded.
It’s a frustrating episode in many ways because so much of it is in Spanish and none of it is subtitled. When people don’t subtitle or otherwise translate foreign languages on TV, producers want viewers to just think: Foreigners!
Brody may be there long enough for the girl to learn English, but not enough for Brody to ever say a word of Spanish. He says “thank you” a lot but never “gracias.”
The setting is pretty fantastic: A half-finished high-rise turned squatter’s tower, with all manner of activity from kids to prostitutes, hairdressers to the hideaway Brody is in.
Ever the Marine, Brody struggles to get up, get back in shape, and prepare some sort of exit plan. “I need my strength back,” he says.
“Don’t we all,” says his makeshift doctor.
Before long, he’s climbing the stairs of the high-rise as exercise though his minders don’t want him to go far. Brody is concerned about losing his wallet and passport, so the guys holding him find the suspect who might have taken it, and when Brody gives a positive ID, throws him from the high-rise. Brody is a little shocked by this.
He’s still being kept from leaving this building which may well serve his permanent home for the rest of his year. But when he hears the call to prayer from a local mosque he starts to think of a plan.
That’s a full half hour of Brody’s adventure before we even see what Carrie is up to.
And she’s the only other series regular we see in this very unusual two person episode (that mostly features one).
Incarceration is a theme: Both Carrie and Brody are prevented from leaving their individual cells. They’re both told it’s for their own good. And both are plotting escape.
When she’s first seen, Carrie is talking with a doctor after three weeks in a mental hospital and sounding much more normal than she did in the last two episode, where she was wide-eyed and crazy. She’s been taking her Lithium and settling down nicely, she says, but then she mentions that she knows that the doctor is writing his notes exclusively for Saul and the CIA and immediately it’s obvious she’s paranoid as ever.
Still, she’s befriended some nurses by then, one of whom tells her that a man has been calling. Carrie it is sure it’s Saul, seeking forgiveness, so she’s super anxious to see him. She arranges to go down once she sees a familiar black SUV drive up. It’s not Saul, though, but a new character, who says he’s from a law firm representing a client that can get Carrie out. Even on medication, Carrie is sure this is some rival intelligence group preying on her vulnerability for information (they make this all clear in the trailer for next week). But they also indicate she’ll finally get out.
As for Brody, he uses the girl as a cover to leave the deadly high-rise and find sanctuary in the mosque, where he talks to the Imam in some other untranslated and unsubtitled language — Arabic? What the heck, we get the message: Foreigners!
His bliss at taking his first hot shower in what? months? is interrupted shockingly first by police who grab him naked from the stall, and then by the local minders who shoot the police, the imam and his wife (what no child? that’s usually the “Homeland” trope: kill the children and make people feel worse).
Naked Brody is taken back to the high-rise where his future is in a more secure cage. Carrie meanwhile cowers in her own cage. And that’s it.
It’s not like you’re sitting around wondering what Dana is up to, but it is about the most irregular episode of the series yet. Saul doesn’t even show up.
Will things get back to normal next week? And what is normal nowadays in this paranoid, imprisoned world?