Though Homeland’s Season 3 finale was disjointed, like two different episodes of two very different shows, it was definitely action-packed. The episode provided the necessary momentum to keep audience attention engaged for the next season, but not much else.

Picking up where last week left off, Brody (Damian Lewis) narrowly escaped Akbari’s (Houshang Touzie) office after completing the CIA’s mission to kill him. Now, thanks to Brody—former American prisoner of war, congressman, terrorist, outlaw, and most recently, federal hit man—Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub) will be promoted to Akbari’s position of power in Iran, ostensibly creating world peace (between the United States and Iran).

After clearing several logistical obstacles that could have (and in real life, probably would have) killed them both, Brody and Carrie (Claire Danes) meet up in a car and travel to a safe house to wait to be airlifted back stateside. Similar to the Season 2 finale, when Carrie stayed with Brody in the time between the Langley bombing and his “transfer” to Caracas, they wait together with nothing to ponder but the fiery chemistry that seems to only manifest when the two are in isolation. Finally, after four months, as in second trimester, as in too late to explore options, Carrie tells Brody that she is pregnant with his baby. And he seems happy! Just as soon as it looks like the two are ready to register at Babies“R”Us and stroll into the sunset, BAM! Dreams are crushed.

Carrie gets a call, and the two go outside, expecting the promised American chariot to safety, but instead, they’re surrounded by Iranian military and Brody is taken away for imprisonment.

Carrie runs to confront Javadi about his noncompliance with the CIA’s plan, and he tells her that Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts), who had literally JUST inherited the agency’s directorship from Saul (Mandy Patinkin), gave him the orders. The details of that order? Brody’s sentence to a public hanging set to happen right before morning prayers. Strangely, Carrie doesn’t have the full-blown meltdown that such a development would predictably procure—sure, she cries, her chin quivers, and her brow furrows, but for the most part, she keeps it together. Brunette Carrie must just be strong.

In her one last conversation with Brody, he asks Carrie not to attend the hanging, and in typical Carrie fashion, she disobeys his requests absolutely. In a very Scarlett Letter-esque public forum, Brody is quickly hanged to the soundtrack of a bustling, jeering crowd. Carrie looks on tearfully as Brody chokes his last breaths (and dies very convincingly—kudos, Damian, may awards come your way).

Now, in an unsatisfying, lazy ploy to move stuff along, the plot lapses four months, and the rest of the episode is garbage. Carrie’s now eight months pregnant with the worst prosthetic pregnancy bump ever to grace the silver screen. Seriously. I was half expecting the plot twist ending to be Carrie slipping a beach ball out of her maternity pantsuit.

But no, she’s really pregnant, and she hates it. After Lockhart asks her to head the CIA’s Istanbul bureau, she overcome with anxiety and hatred for the baby she’s only having in homage to Brody. All the sudden, she questions her maternal prowess and has the epiphany (!) that she didn’t think the pregnancy through.

Also, Saul no longer works for the agency and has been hanging with his wife on some kind of second honeymoon in Greece (or somewhere else beautiful that looks like Greece). Smugly, he appreciates that his operation worked: Javadi saw out Saul’s mission to dissolve the dangerous hostility between Iran and America, leaving Lockhart to enjoy the accolades. But, something tells me that somehow, Saul will be back in the mix next season.

But Brody is definitely gone for good, and apparently, his family is as well. Earlier this week, TVLine reported that Brody’s wife, Jessica (Morena Baccarin), and daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor) will not be regulars on the show next season. There’s no mention of his son, Chris, but that’s obvious: no one cares about weenie-Chris (Chris is the worst).

However, the Brody lineage will live on through Carrie’s baby—the not-so-compelling fate of which is pretty much the only development we’re left to anticipate for next season. So until then…

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All moments of uncertainty and romantically naïve implausibility that Homeland fans have endured throughout this season paid off in last night’s episode, “Big Man in Tehran.” There were still inconsistencies in the episode, but the last few minutes could have redeemed even the grossest of poor writing decisions (like, even if the first 40 minutes included only a dramatic reading of Dana Brody’s (Morgan Saylor) diary, it STILL would have been an amazing episode).

To catch up: Brody (Damian Lewis) and Javadi (Shaun Toub) are in Tehran to execute the CIA’s plan to put Javadi into high power in Iran. Brody is to use his status as an international figure of infamy to claim that he wants asylum in Iran, which is reasonable, as everyone else in the world wants to kill him. Still, Iranian officials won’t be sure of him, so Brody, who will be subject to extensive questioning, is to get close enough to Javadi’s boss, Akbari (Houshang Touzie), to kill him, which would promote Javadi to Akbari’s position. Since the CIA found incriminating stuff on Javadi that, if publicized, would ruin his standing in Iran, Javadi is America’s pawn to play however it wants. So, once Javadi is in power, the United States would be relatively safe from its former enemy. The problem with this plan is all the moving parts that Saul (Mandy Patinkin), the brains behind the far-fetched operation, acknowledges. But Saul doesn’t care—his time as Interim CIA Director is dwindling, and he only has his starry-eyed optimism and selfish ruthlessness to rely upon, not only to restore his professional reputation, but his sense of self as well.

Carrie (Claire Danes) is needlessly in Tehran, sporting a comically unconvincing disguise of a hijab and brown hair (the only convincing disguise for Crazy Carrie would be enough Botox to keep that brow un-furrowed and chin un-quivered). While she’s acting like the reason for her presence is to keep tabs on the status of the operation, it’s obvious that she’s just drawn to her baby daddy even in the most illogically dangerous scenarios. But she’s not conscious of her motivations—while on the phone with Saul, Carrie’s rendered speechless at the sight of her baby bump in a window reflection.

When Saul’s crazy plan unsurprisingly didn’t pan out, it appeared that Brody gave up and truly did just want to seek asylum in Iran. After Javadi suggests that Akbari meet Brody in person so the Iranian official could decide if Brody should be granted asylum in Iran, Akbari and Brody meet in a public arena, at opposite sides of an open square, like an old Western film. Brody, armed with a syringe of poison, moves close to Akbari, who flees the scene when Brody gets close. Iranian officials bring Brody to a house to meet with Abu Nazir’s widow, who was probably instructed by Akbari to feel out whether Brody is genuine about seeking asylum. The two have a heart to heart about how since life has been so hard for both of them, staying faithful has been challenging.

After his chat with Ms. Nazir, everyone believes that Brody just wants peaceful refuge in Iran—and his shtick worked too well. Back in America, the president ordered Brody to be killed, identifying him as a severe liability that could publicize Javadi as a double agent, which would ruin everything. Saul doesn’t tell Carrie that America is going to kill Brody, but he begs her to get out of Tehran. Naturally, she reads between the lines and disobeys orders. She calls Brody and begs him to run away with her (to preserve her future family), and he refuses. Quickly, the American agents are on Brody’s tail, so he throws the burner phone into the bushes and he runs straight to Akbari’s office to spill the beans about Javadi and the whole mission before America gets the chance to kill him. Right when it appears that the CIA was right to try and kill Brody, as he’s acting like the liability they feared he would become, he hits Akbari over the head with an ashtray and suffocates him with a pillow.

Brody did it! He’s a hero—it’s just like Rudy or Miracle! And Saul’s plan worked! It’s unclear how Brody will get out of Akbari’s office alive (with Akbari’s dead body at his feet, and having just called Carrie from the office phone—also, how did he memorize Carrie’s Iranian burner cell number? I can’t remember my sister’s cell). But Carrie will undoubtedly do something crazy and dangerous, putting herself and Brody and national security in danger, but, hey, she’s in love!

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘Good Night’

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While last night’s episode of Homeland packed in a lot of momentum and suspense, most of it felt like the Cold War of watching and waiting. Brody (Damian Lewis) and the special ops team, which quickly transformed him from junkie to G.I. Joe, are now trying to move past the Iranian border so that Brody can carry out phase two of Saul’s (Mandy Patinkin) plan to save his own ass bring America justice.

But it’s not that simple— the nighttime blackness of the field that the special ops team must navigate to gain Iranian entry is full of land mines. Plus, Iranian forces patrol the border area. What ensues feels like one of those violent video games that upper-middle class mom’s fear will turn their sheltered sons into felons.

Back at mission control headquarters, Carrie (Claire Danes), Quinn (Rupert Friend), Saul, and other nameless important people track the whereabouts of Brody and Co. on a radar map that looks like a cross between an ‘80s video game and a sonogram. Speaking of which, Quinn approaches Carrie to chat about when he casually shot her and no one thought it was a huge deal, and admits that he looked at her medical records when she was in the hospital. When he suggests that maybe she take it easy on the work front given her second trimester cervical status, she’s immediately pissed (That he looked at her records? That he knows she’s pregnant? That he thinks Brody is the father? That he shot her? Who knows). She dismisses him and says that Brody is not the father. But, given her notable past in deception compounded by her constant furrowed brow and near-tears stress for the rest of the episode, it’s still obvious to us that she’s carrying little baby Brody.

Soon, Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts) joins the party. Though he wasn’t originally down with Saul’s plan, it’s happening anyway, and he decides to jump on board. Saul lets Lockhart, who pushed back the start date of his directorship (because Saul blackmailed him after discovering that Lockhart was illegally tracking his personal affairs), sit around and watch the operation play out, but it’s clear that he is hopeful for redemption so large that he will heroically retain the job for himself. But when things start going awry with Brody and the special ops team, Saul quickly loses his confidence.

While the ops team is driving around in the dark trying to navigate the field, they catch the attention of the border police. A member of the ops team shoots the border officer, splattering blood in Brody’s face, and Brody flips out, dashing from the car. The operative chases Brody and convinces him to continue their mission. But quickly, they drive over a mine and the car explodes. There’s silence back at the CIA while everyone, most notably Carrie, waits to learn the status of the men.

Upon learning that they’re both alive, Carrie tears up with relief, but the operative lost a leg in the explosion. With his inner-Marine ignited, Brody carries the wounded man to quasi-safety, calls for reinforcements, and prepares to move forward. But, given the disturbance that the land mine caused, it becomes clear to Saul that the mission is over and the Brody won’t be able to gain entry to Iran alive. He tells the general in the CIA room to get the men out alive and leaves the room, defeated.

Brody disobeys the general’s orders to move back from the border and presses forward. A fellow disobedient operative joins him and within seconds the two find themselves surrounded by Iranian forces. Surrendered and vulnerable, Brody tells the forces that he and the operative are members of Al Qaeda seeking protection in the country. They take the two men and Brody finds himself as a prisoner, yet again.

Some time later, Javadi (Shaun Toub) enters the cell and tells Brody to get ready to go before shooting the operative in the head. It’s unclear if Javadi does this as a small act of rebellion against the American forces that are puppeteering his life, or if he does it to uphold the appearance of being the Iranian national that he once was. Regardless, Brody and Javadi are now together, and just as before, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Saul.

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘One Last Time’

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Last night’s episode of Homeland, “One Last Time,” accomplished the impossible: it weaved together many of the show’s new plotlines, which were far less compelling when they stood alone.

Most satisfyingly, Dana Brody (Morgan Saylor) earned reprieve from her awful, season-long pity trip that made her universally unlikable. But more importantly, Saul (Mandy Patinkin) fetched a now drug-addicted Brody (Damian Lewis) from the Caracas slum in which he was being held to bring him stateside for rehab. In an exorcism-esque performance, we watch Brody go cold turkey in a timeframe so short, it could have killed him—or so says the CIA doctor. In light of his current pain, past demons, and bleak future, Brody wants to die. He tries to kill himself multiple times throughout the episode. After attempts at stabbing, drowning, and starving himself, Carrie (Claire Danes) talks some sense into him, getting him to listen to Saul.

What Saul wants is for Brody to reinstate in the Marines and kill Javadi’s (Shaun Toub) boss, making Javadi one of the top three most powerful people in Iran. Obviously, the plan in a long shot— Brody would need to be healthy and agreeable in a short enough time for Saul to still have reigns on the agency. He still has to get to Iran and complete the mission before he himself gets killed, while Javadi still has to honor his agreement with Saul to remain aligned with America. And, Carrie, who was recently shot in the arm by a fellow agent, is, ahem, 13 weeks pregnant with Brody’s baby so she’s obviously trepidatious to accept Saul’s orders, but she does anyway.

While transporting an ashy Brody through secret locations, their car randomly passes a slummy motel where Dana is walking between rooms as a housekeeper. In the tone of an evil Rocky Balboa, Brody screams for Dana from the backseat of the car. Suddenly, Brody remembers that he has a family—or at least a daughter (no one in the show has ever seemed to care at about little Chris Brody (Jackson Pace), the most annoying Boy Scout weenie to ever hit the screen). His contorted vision of Dana as “daddy’s little girl” motivates Brody to cooperate with the CIA with a delusional hope that afterward he’d return to a normal life. After Brody transforms from Requiem for a Dream to Saving Private Ryan in just over two weeks (!), he convinces Carrie to let him visit Dana before he travels to Iran to, in all likelihood, die. Because of her steep deficit of maternal instinct and general emotional warmth, Carrie agrees— maybe she hopes that he’ll be a “too little, too late” kind of parent to her secret bun in the oven as well. And, before Brody goes into the motel to see Dana, Carrie tells him about her hospitalization, suicide attempt, emancipation, and name change following the Langley bombing.

While Brody has to know that he was the force that drove Dana to attempt suicide, it apparently doesn’t occur to him that his pop-in visit may have adverse effects on her stability. So in he goes and she very rightfully freaks out. Broken down to tears, but maintaining her ground, she offers to give him whatever he needs to leave her alone forever. She tells him that she forgives him and hands him a notepad to write down whatever he wants her to say that will make him feel vindicated. Brody leaves feeling no absolution from Dana, but he probably feels that he’s leaving nothing behind no matter what happens in Iran. And, since Carrie doesn’t tell him about the baby, it seems that Brody’s only present purpose is to bring pain unto others. Plus, our future mother of the year is smoking a cigarette in the last scene, even though she doesn’t smoke cigarettes. C’mon, Carrie!

Since Brody is more or less helpless and his only options are not choices of his own, Saul has absorbed a lot of Brody’s first season anti-hero shtick. Are we rooting for him? It’s unclear—especially when Brody tries to stab himself with the chair and Saul runs into the room to stop him. Brody flashes back to when Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban) saved him from a similar breaking point many years ago, when he was a prisoner of war. The overlay of the similar situations that unite Saul and the terrorist explain Saul’s jarring shift in character, and growing theme of the show. Everyone has a personal agenda, and when the stakes get high, methods become ruthless and people remain selfish. Saul is tied to his goal—to put Javadi into Iranian power as an American force, which at this point, has become so much more than an exercise in national security. It’s security to his personal identity and sense of self, and no one is too sacred to be safe from his master plan.

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘A Red Wheelbarrow’

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Homeland, you’ve done it again. But, just as it would be silly to defend an SAT score as a measurement of real intellect, simply using a literary reference in an episode’s name is not enough to qualify a show as highbrow. Sunday night’s episode, “A Red Wheelbarrow,” is named for a poem by William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

“so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens”

The significance of this poem rests within its structure rather than the meaning of its words. Each piece of the simple sentence is necessary for the whole piece to work. The first phrase, “so much depends upon,” applies to the other three phrases, which relates to what’s happening in Homeland. It’s been frustrating that a lot of the developing storylines in the show have seemed implausible, futile, and illogical, but with every seemingly silly motivation that each character has, the circuslike CIA operation is compromised. With the delicate nature of Operation Javadi, so much depends on everyone involved.

While Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub) was smuggled out of the country last week to return to Iran as an American spy, Saul (Mandy Patinkin) has to explain to the chief of staff why he let this happen, rather than, predictably and appropriately, arresting Javadi.

Flabbergasted by the crazy, irresponsible extent of the mission, Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts) tattles on Saul. The chief of staff isn’t impressed, but he doesn’t have many choices outside of allowing Saul to continue the plan. With the truly disconcerting magnitude to which Saul is pleased with himself, it’s a wonder that he hasn’t transformed into a God complexed, Don Draper-type. But, he’ll probably fall from grace soon enough.

Angered, Carrie (Claire Danes) confronts Saul about why he didn’t disclose everything he knew from Javadi about Brody’s [lack of] involvement in the bombing. Eventually, Saul admits that he should have been forthright with her, but that he doesn’t completely understand why Carrie cares SO much—we do though. Drumroll… Brody is Carrie’s baby daddy, and she’s 13 weeks pregnant, and she admitted to drinking heavily after knowing about the pregnancy, AND she’s not considering an abortion.

Before he left for Iran, Javadi told Carrie that Brody was not the Langley bomber and that she could find the real bomber through Javadi’s lawyer (the one who put her and Javadi in touch). She meets with the lawyer, taps his phone, and follows him to the bomber. When she sees that the lawyer has a gun, she is intent on stopping him from killing the bomber, because without the bomber alive, it becomes impossible to clear Brody’s name. When Carrie disobeys orders to stop following the lawyer and to let him kill the bomber if need be (it’s more important for the agency to keep the lawyer than the bomber alive, as the lawyer has more knowledge about the enemy), Quinn is ordered to shoot her, so he does. She’s that in love! She willingly gets shot to try and absolve her sperm donor—Romance!

Speaking of romance, Mira Berenson (Sarita Choudhury) breaks up with her lover to give life with Saul another go. The lover isn’t happy about it, and later breaks into the Berenson home to either swipe information from their computer or install some kind of camera. Whatever he did, it was weird, but we don’t know yet if he’s a spy. So, either this is turning into The Truman Show: Terrorist Edition, where everyone’s involved, or Mira’s a serious heartbreaker. Whatever the case, it’s strange that the lover escalated from his super-minor role in the show so jarringly quickly.

While the pacing in the show’s development feels weird, this week’s literary reference makes sense—it explains why we need to take Carrie’s bizarre pregnancy seriously rather than dismiss it as a low-hanging-fruit soap opera-esque plot addendum. The pregnancy (well, mainly Brody being the father) affects Carrie’s motivations and actions, and could compromise the state of the operation. The same goes for Saul’s new confident invincibility kick, which could blow up in his—and everyone else’s—face if he becomes too sure of himself. The far-fetched premise of the mission (let’s put Carrie in a mental institution, because obviously, it will draw the attention of a particular Iranian spy) invokes the order of the universe. In the operation, no task is too small, no motivation is too feeble, and no action is too trivial to disrupt the master plan—like the structure of “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘Geronation’

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Note to Homeland writers: upon pretentiously naming an episode after a T.S. Eliot poem, not only will the ears of English majors everywhere perk with excitement that their serially uncool literary prowess finally came in quasi-handy, but the expectation of quality for the show will likely multiply. So when the seventh episode of the season, “Geronation,” under-delivered in both plot and character, it was extra disappointing. In fact, the single unquestionable positive of last night’s show was the absence of Dana Brody.

Eliot’s poem, Geronation, is about an old man reflecting on a changed world he cannot control. This highbrow reference is—wait for it— a metaphor to our elder CIA bigwig, Saul (Mandy Patinkin). In an epic long con, Saul compromised the mental stability of his mentee, Carrie (Claire Danes), by portraying her as a bipolar reject of the agency on the national stage. When his secret mission successfully lured his Iranian counterpart, Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub), to seek out Carrie as an American intelligence source for Iran, Saul involved other agents, including Quinn (Rupert Friend) into the mix. All of this comes with Saul’s knowledge that his days as CIA director are numbered, Senator Lockhart, is set to replace him. So when he repeatedly compromises the safety of his colleagues, it’s unclear whether Saul’s incentive is a completely self-serving attempt to heroically save face professionally in the eleventh hour or it’s a completely self-serving internal struggle to prove himself to… himself.

Saul’s manipulations have proven reckless, as his efforts to get Javadi into the country allowed the Iranian official to find and brutally murder his daughter in-law and ex-wife, whom Saul helped to escape Iran many years ago. Since Quinn was photographed going into Javadi’s ex-wife’s house before her murder, he must admit to the crime to protect the secrecy of the CIA’s mission. By calling the murder a CIA operation, Quinn is safe-ish from repercussions, but attention is obviously negative for the agency and for himself. Despite his bravery and absolute innocence, when the FBI chastises Quinn about all the damage the CIA does, he agrees. He tells Carrie that he feels done with the job and all the harm that trails behind its actions. Quinn makes some good, honest points, but mostly it feels like he took a hit of whatever Dana Brody’s been smoking.

After we learn that Saul and Javadi were friends in a previous life, before Javadi took to mass murders—including the Langley bombing—we understand the personal connection Saul has to Javadi’s fate. When interrogating a bloody Javadi, fresh from his ex-wife’s murder scene, Saul attempts to level with him. He graciously commends Javadi for catalyzing his ascent to the directorship—without the Langley bombing, Saul would not be in power—and vows to return the favor. He tells Javadi to return to Iran, but as an agent under Saul’s own operation. The plan is to push Javadi to the height of power, so that the CIA can exert control over the enemy rather than the obvious move to kill Javadi with a patriotic hurrah, which would only put a new, and potentially more harmful, Iranian in power. If this concept seems novel or brilliant, please refer to the entire first two seasons to watch Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban) play out the identical story with Brody.

Nevertheless, Javadi agrees to the plan, despite the nearly definite probability that he will not act in accordance once on the ground in Iran. Carrie escorts Javadi to the plane, and while on the way, discovers that he knows about Brody’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the Langley bombing, and that Saul asked him what he knew about the topic. Javadi says that Brody did not put the bomb in his trunk, confirming Carrie’s wishful thinking that the potential father of her baby (!) is not a monster. It also confirms that Saul didn’t trust Carrie’s word—that he needed Javadi’s confirmation. And then her chin quivers.

Senator Lockhart learns about the entire secret mission as Javadi is taking off, and Saul is practically beaming. We watch, needlessly, as Saul catches up Lockhart about the entire operation and Lockhart reacts about as badly as expected, threatening to tattle to the president immediately—so naturally, Saul locks him in a conference room and turns the light off. “What the fuck” was the response of both Lockhart and the audience. Saul has a celebratory drink in his office before going home to reclaim his estranged wife.

With this uncharacteristic kick of confidence, Saul obviously believes that he is an old man who has changed the world, but something tells me that his troubles are far from over. The unfortunate growing theme of this season is that nice guys finish last. But, with every developing storyline and confusing addendums to existing plotlines, it’s increasingly unclear who exactly the “good guys” are.

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘Still Positive’

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The craziest revelation in last night’s episode of Homeland, “Still Positive,” had nothing to do with terrorism or national security. The bomb dropped in this episode didn’t kill any civilians—it created one. Ladies and gentlemen, Carrie (Claire Danes) is PREGNANT.

Last week, Majid Javadi’s (Shaun Toub) minions violently kidnapped Carrie from her home in the middle of the night. This week, they bring her to Javadi, who administers half a polygraph test before she rips off the sensors and turns the tables on him. We know that there is some scandal with Javadi embezzling money through the Iranian soccer team, which makes him an enemy of his own state. But because completely understanding the entirety of this plotline requires remembering a platoon of names and details, it’s tough to identify and boil down what the actual problem is. Maybe it’s not actually that confusing, but I’d rather not worry about it and depend on the stares, silence, and eye bulging to convey intensity in lieu of actually following the plot.

Anyway, Carrie pulls the ol’ power-struggle switcheroo on Javadi, and he understands that he is the target of the CIA’s secret mission that Carrie and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) have been operating for months. He agrees to meet Carrie at a coffee shop later that afternoon, and she goes home to catch Saul up on what happened. We learn that Saul and Javadi worked together a number of years ago, when Javadi agreed to help Saul transport hostages from Iran to America, but he reneged and shot the hostages in the head. Saul retaliated by helping Javadi’s wife and grandson escape to America. So, after we learn all of this, and Carrie and Saul get off the phone, she goes to the bathroom to take a pregnancy test. When it’s positive, she blankly stares at it and puts it in a sink drawer with dozens of other positive tests—she’s been pregnant for a while. While we have to wait to learn answers to the crucial questions, like if Brody is the father, consider the absurdity of how much money was spent on a drawer full of pregnancy tests, and how much Carrie’s bathroom must smell like a litter box what with all of that stale pee living in her drawer.

When Carrie goes to the coffee shop to meet Javadi as planned, he deviates and goes to a residential neighborhood where—shocker!—his estranged wife and grandson reside. He immediately shoots his wife’s roommate and then moves on to brutally slaughter his wife with a jagged broken bottle. Carrie and spy colleague Quinn (Rupert Friend) get to the scene just in time to find Javadi red-handed amidst the bloodbath that the CIA will hardly be able to clean up in time to keep its secret mission from the FBI.

When Carrie and Quinn deliver a bloody Javadi to Saul for interrogation, a generally calm Saul is overcome by his years of anger toward Javadi. In every aspect of his life, Saul has been overrun. He was snubbed for the directorship of the CIA in favor of Senator Andrew Lockhart (Tracy Letts), who vocally disapproves of the way Saul ran the agency in the wake of the Langley bombing. His estranged wife, Mira (Sarita Choudhury) admitted to being in love with someone else. And he just made a mess of the secret operation he was running, which would have heroically brought justice after the Langley bombing that served as the precipice to his professional demise. So, when faced with his enemy of so many years, Saul finally got angry and punched Javadi in the face. He has nothing to lose.

Also crushed by the rock-bottom state of her life, Dana Brody (Morgan Saylor) is back from her romantically irresponsible road-trip runaway with psych-ward boyfriend Leo (Sam Underwood), but not for long. She changes her last name from Brody to her mother’s maiden name—but that’s not good enough. She actually runs away again, eventually with her mother Jessica’s (Morena Baccarin) blessing. Jessica knows she can’t control Dana anymore, so she must let go. She gives Dana a $300 prepaid credit card and sends her on her way. With luck, that’ll be that last we see of Dana and all of her melodrama, but more likely, she’ll end up back in Leo’s arms in rehab. Regardless, it’s doubtful anyone will really care.

Previous: Season Three ‘Homeland’ Recap: ‘The Yoga Play’

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On the heels of last week’s episode, which unearthed the craziest plot twist ever (literally crazy—it included a mental hospital and lots o’ lithium), this week’s episode of Homeland, “The Yoga Play,” was a lot more relaxed. I’d even go so far as to call it melodramatic, pulling inspiration from My So Called Life or the Lifetime Movie Network.

Let’s start with Dana (Morgan Saylor), just to get her out of the way. She’s still on the run with her mental hospital boyfriend, Leo (Sam Underwood), and she’s still convinced that her life is SO hard, what will all her angst and self-importance. The two discuss how nothing matters because they’re together and in love and happy, so it’s fine that they only have $70 between them because that’s enough money for another tank of gas, which they’ll use to go find jobs flipping burgers. Ah, the American Dream. But when Dana hears information about Leo’s history on the news while she’s in a convenience store, she freaks out and creates enough of a scene to draw police attention within minutes. Dana learns that Leo was mandated to his stay in the hospital by a federal court after his brother’s death, and if he didn’t claim a psychiatric imbalance, he could have been convicted for the death.

Carrie (Claire Danes) has been helping Dana’s mom, Jessica (Morena Baccarin), find her daughter. Carrie balances helping out on the missing Dana case while sticking to her main role as CIA agent disguised as bipolar traitor. Her traitor act has been convincing enough to garner the attention of Bad Guy Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub). He’s enlisted her as an ex-CIA contact, who can help him out with inside information. Javidi, who waltzed into the country despite his highly dangerous background, spent most of the episode driving around spying. But, at one point, sauce dribbles down from his burger and onto his shirt while he secretly eats in his car. Maybe he isn’t anti-American after all!

Meanwhile, Saul (Mandy Patinkin), expecting to be promoted to director of the CIA, tries to play nice with his political colleagues. Looking like a lost member of Duck Dynasty, Saul suits up in outdoorsy garb to go geese hunting with Important Old White Men, including Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts), the head of the Senate committee that interrogated the CIA after the Langley bombing. Sadly, Saul learns that the president is nominating Lockhart for the position. After the announcement, Saul holds back tears long enough to give a bitter toast wishing the senator luck. Then, he huffily leaves the party, probably to go torture his Senator Lockhart voodoo doll.

When Saul gets home, he doesn’t even have the chance to wallow in the woes of his life’s work because he finds his estranged wife, Mira (Sarita Choudhury), having dinner with a male friend (i.e., a date), so he runs to his room. Poor Saul. But his wallow time is, again, cut short when he gets a call from Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend), who has been watching Carrie’s house and thinks he sees Javadi’s camp outside of it. But, he’s too far away to really do or see anything. Javadi’s minions sneak into Carrie’s house, strip-search her, and break her phone before kidnapping her. Eventually, Quinn disobeys Saul’s orders to keep a distance and enters Carrie’s vacated house. Standing over a pile of Carrie’s clothes and broken phone, Quinn notes to Saul, who is still on the phone, that Carrie is all by herself. Saul smirks and replies that she always has been.

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Just when it seemed like season three of Homeland was slipping into an irremediable black hole of far-fetched storylines (e.g. Lost) and stale character development (e.g. Weeds), episode four, “Game On,” shattered the monotony with a shocking twist. Of the three plotlines addressed in the episode, two were compelling, and one was Dana Brody’s (Morgan Saylor) contrived emotional circus.

Dana picks up her boyfriend, Leo (Sam Underwood), from the mental ward and they drive away together as fugitives on the run. They smoke joints, ride around, and exchange her mom’s car for a clunker in order to remain traceless. They have some deep conversations, but Dana’s eyebrows were the really the only fascinating aspect of this storyline.

Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) learns that the CIA’s recent hire, Fara (Nazanin Boniadi), made a breakthrough in researching the Langley bomb culprit, for which Nick Brody (Damian Lewis) is presumed guilty. Saul posits that the bombing order came not from Abu Nazir (who was already dead upon detonation), but his terrorist enemy counterpart, Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub). Fara discovered that the Iranian terrorists from Javadi’s camp were laundering money through American bankers, and five percent was getting skimmed off the top and stored in the soccer stadium in Caracas to be claimed as receipts from the matches. The soccer club hierarchy is structured in such a way that the majority shareholder is unidentifiable, but Fara had reason to believe that Javadi is in the mix, using a pseudonym. Also, Caracas is where Brody is currently stationed, which doesn’t make sense yet, but is important to note.

Meanwhile, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is locked in a prison of the CIA’s making. After she divulged agency secrets to the press, the CIA declared her a security threat and mandated a mental hospital stint with no specified discharge date. At a hospital hearing to discuss Carrie’s status and potential release, all of her caseworkers give glowing accounts of her progress and medical compliance. But since the agency put a block on her case, the judge couldn’t release her, explaining that when she began her job, she signed away several constitutional rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Hours later, a hospital worker lets Carrie know that a court in Maryland approved her release (from a hospital in…Virginia) and that she is free to go. She comes home to find a creepy lawyer with exquisitely manicured eyebrows (great brows on this show) sitting on her couch, asking her to meet with his boss the next day. Carrie wants to avoid him, but after he explains that his company was the culprit behind her hospital release (and that it held the power to put her right back in), she’s ready to listen.

After he leaves, Carrie runs to her safe to gather necessities: gun and passport. She finds out that the CIA has repossessed her car, frozen her bank account, is following her, and that she’s on the TSA’s no-fly list. Helpless and under complete surveillance, she runs to her Brody-doppelgänger supermarket sex buddy, and, in the morning, she steals his cash.

On her way out, the creepy lawyer pulls up in a big black car and he escorts her to a beautiful, scenic estate. As she waits in the living room, she eats a single grape from a bowl, as if submitting to the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Finally, the law firm bigwig greets Carrie and explains that his clients in Iran want to speak with her on an as-needed basis to discuss questions for which she has insider information. Her gut reaction is to shun the offer and patriotically uphold her allegiance as she waves off the risk for a jail sentence. But when the law boss notes that she’s basically already in jail, and that the people she seeks to protect are hurting her, she changes her tune.

Carrie decides that she’d meet with his clients (only face to face and she’d never name names) and then goes to pay Saul a surprise visit. And guess what? THE WHOLE THING WAS PLANNED. At some point after the bombing, Carrie and Saul agreed to see out the elaborate (and dangerous and nearly impossible) plan to appear as enemies while working toward a mutual goal. Carrie would allow herself to become the national scapegoat, to come across as a mentally unstable security hazard, and to knowingly submit to federally mandated institutionalization—all in the hopes of the Iranians seeking her out as a traitor. And they did!

If everything goes as planned, and Carrie doesn’t win a Nobel Prize and isn’t approached for film rights to her story for a biopic, it will be clear that there is no order in the world. But obviously, noting will go as planned.

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If only Ed McMahon had been available to open this week’s Homeland episode, “Tower of David”, which kicks off with a wounded, barely coherent, bald Brody (Damian Lewis) being carted around Venezuela by gangsters (they seemed like gangsters, anyway) in the flatbed of a truck. Anything that could have given the scenario context would’ve helped. Throughout the episode we learn very little about who these “gangsters” are, how Brody got to be where he is, and what may happen next, but here’s what we do know:

In the three months that have passed since the Langley bomb detonated, which killed a ton of CIA and government officials, and for which Brody has been deemed guilty by the United States government, he has been traveling from place to place to protect his anonymity. In the wake of the bombing, CIA Agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is still soooooo in love with Brody, despite him being a probable terrorist. Carrie uses her connections to get Brody a new paper identity and get him out of the country. During his Underground Railroad-esque travels on the Terrorist Trail, some Colombians shot Brody in the stomach, hoping to cash in on the $10 million bounty set by the United States on their global manhunt for him. Terrorism, traitors, bombs, and widespread death, maybe, but clearly there’s no debt ceiling on Homeland (ba-dum ching).

The Venezuelans, who we learn have some connection to Carrie, take custody of Brody. A creepy doctor, who may not actually be a doctor, who’s assistant is a second grader, and who sounds like Hannibal Lecter/Morgan Freeman, removes the bullet from Brody’s stomach and nurses him back to health. They live in Caracas, in a rundown, abandoned high-rise development that’s missing an entire side of it’s exterior. The man who runs the place has a scary spider tattoo on his neck, so he is obviously a badass. He also has a hot daughter, whom he does not seem old enough to father and who tends to Brody as a nurse of sorts.

Though the tattooed man orders Brody to stay put, escape is predictably his next move. He asks Spider Tattoo’s daughter to help him flee, and because she has fallen for him (Really? Another girl? Why?), she asks to join him. Brody denies her and continues his solo escape, so she runs straight to her dad—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Brody saw a mosque from the heights of the high-rise, so once he escaped, he went straight there to seek help from a fellow Muslim. Someone at the mosque takes Brody in, but right after he allows himself to enjoy the respite of the kind Muslim’s hot shower, he’s rudely interrupted by people trying to kill him. Quickly, the gangsters show up out of nowhere, shoot everyone else around and take Brody back to the high-rise. He endures another lecture from Dr. Hannibal Lecter-Freeman, who notes that Brody always survives; it’s only the people around him who die.

While Carrie is still alive, her involvement with Brody has landed her in a mental health facility, being pumped with the lithium that she previously denied. She so badly wants to leave this prison of her own making, and is even driven to hurt herself by smashing her head into a mirror out of frustration. Though separated continentally, Brody and Carrie are very much stranded in the same place.

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