Although Homeland is rapidly building to a climax that will – presumably – make this week’s bombing seem as insignificant as Peter Kay jumping into a swimming pool to advertise beer, the show always makes time amid the intrigue, tension and violence for smaller, more refined moments of contemplation and melancholy that counterbalance the international terrorism and world-class swearing.
Having trodden water last week, Claire Danes comes into her own again as Carrie prepares for a hot home date with Sergeant Brody (Damian Lewis), dolling herself up and pouring a couple of vase-sized glasses of wine.
Unfortunately, as per Abu Nazir’s instructions, the ex-POW is running for congress, and his only purpose in visiting Carrie is to ensure that she never tells anyone about a weekend of cabin-based, booze-fuelled passion (not to mention a similarly-sloshed parking lot shag) that might one day come back to haunt a happily-married politician. The brief affair between the two main characters is very clearly over, and Carrie is genuinely distraught. Tipping the vino down the sink she cries desolately with Miles Davis’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ soaring on the stereo.
Danes’s fragile, traumatised performance is excellent, but the scene gets even better as it cuts to recently bachelorised Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) scoffing peanut butter and crackers in his office, staring sadly at a picture of him and departed wife Mira with Miles still wailing in the background. Emotional isolation subtly and splendidly portrayed.
But at the CIA, there’s little time for such introspection – particularly when there’s a gay, debt-ridden Saudi diplomat to be blackmailed into cooperation. Saul, Carrie and David Estes (David Harewood) are all, for once, playing from the same songsheet, and intend to use Mansour Al-Zahrani (Ramsey Faragallah) to flush out rogue gunman Tom Walker.
‘Eviscerate the motherfucker,’ Saul encourages Carrie, but Al-Zahrani isn’t quite as disembowelable as he seems. Despite the awful lines the writers give him – ‘I suck cock! I love it! Yummy-yum-yum!’ – and his ridiculous, high-pitched, Mel Gibson-in-What Women Want yelp of ‘Cuckoo clocks?’ he doesn’t back down until Carrie kindly threatens to have one of his kids deported. Then, finally, he agrees to help the team set up a sting operation to bring Walker out into the open.
Cue a tense but traditional takedown at a densely-populated location that contains all the tropes: snipers, undercover operatives by the score and a woman with a pushchair among the crowd – the latter a blatant clue to what’s about to happen. Sure enough, a decoy shows up at the meeting instead of Walker, carrying a briefcase filled with … boom!
The gruesome aftermath of the bombing, all flaming corpses and limbless survivors, is gorily well-realised, but the moment that lingers longest in the memory is much more modest: a bruised, dazed Carrie watching smoke spiral up into the clear morning sky. It’s these tiny refinements that make Homeland so special, and it must be hoped that the rush to a tumultuous season finale won’t stampede them into the ground.
This week’s big Homeland question: ‘Abu Nazir has someone inside the US government,’ Saul remarks at the end, but it’s been obvious for the last five or six episodes that somebody at a high level is helping out the bad guys. The question is: who?
This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: Why – given that nobody seemed to know he was Carrie’s unpaid go-to guy for technical assistance and surveillance a few weeks back – does nobody in the Counterterrorism team bat an eyelid at Virgil tailing Al-Zahrani to the meeting with Walker?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 22nd April 2012 on Channel 4.
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