Through the stress of nearly being blown to bits and a prolonged separation from her anti-psyche meds, Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) blazes through the penultimate part of Homeland in a whirlwind of bipolar mania, her brain working at nine million miles an hour as she tries to work out what Al-Qaeda mastermind Abu Nazir is up to – and why staff at the hospital in which she’s being treated won’t give her the right colour pen.
‘My kingdom for a fucking green pen!’ she exclaims to a bewildered, concerned Saul Berenson when he arrives to pick her up, but there is – quite literally – method to her madness.
Homeland is far too clever a show to just chuck info dumps at the viewer, or fling us into flashbacks without good reason. Instead, Carrie blurts out the relevant data about there being more to the impending terrorist threat than just a single sniper as part of a huge glut of factoids bursting apace from her overheating synapses. It’s like hearing a director’s commentary by Dan Dotson from Storage Wars, and Danes’s performance is magnificently and disturbingly convincing, while Mandy Patinkin’s portrayal of Saul’s stoically distraught helplessness is equally exceptional.
This study in opposites is a delight to watch, and together, their characters guide us via Carrie’s colour-coded timeline (in which green is the crucial colour, of course) towards the vital piece of knowledge we have which the CIA does not: that a certain congressman-to-be is about to wreak terrible vengeance on America for the death of Nazir’s son, Issa. We know that Brody (Damian Lewis) has more sides than the draw for the first round of the FA Cup; what we don’t know is exactly what he’s going to do. Or rather, we didn’t.
Whilst on a weekend break in Gettysburg, ostensibly to have a bit of quality time before the maelstromic shitstorm of running for political office breaks over his family’s collective heads, the ex-marine takes possession of the titular vest – and it isn’t the kind of garment you can pick up off the peg at JC Penney. It comes with a handy built-in bomb, constructed in a baking tray like some evil flan by Nazir’s dope-smoking explosives manufacturer, and when Brody tells daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor), ‘I have a feeling that things are going to get pretty wild soon,’ he certainly isn’t kidding.
Credit to Dana, though. Unlike the rest of the Brody Bunch, who don’t see any significance in the head of the household’s mysterious recourse to portentous rhetoric and odd behaviour, the girl whose only previous functions have been to sulkily pre-empt potential viewer questions and explain them away (a role she continues to fulfil, pointing out: ‘Dad’s scars are so faded … you can barely see them’) is immediately suspicious of her father’s activities and almost discovers the suicide vest stashed in their car’s trunk.
It’s nearly a victory for moody, nosy teenagers everywhere – and it might yet be. With Carrie sacked from the CIA by David Estes (David Harewood) after the wholly dislikeable Vice President Walden (Jamey Sheridan) decides the best recourse to the ongoing terror threat is for Estes to ‘fire someone … I don’t care who’, and Saul reduced to bearded brooding, a hero is going to have to emerge from somewhere else. Why not the only teenager in recent history to drop the C-bomb on Channel 4?
It’d be yet another clever twist in a series that thrives on its own ingenuity, and while it’s as unlikely as Jess Brody (Morena Baccarin) going more than two episodes without her obligatory flash of boob, one thing that Homeland viewers have learned over the last few months is that the unexpected comes as standard. With one show left to go, anything is still possible.
This week’s big Homeland question: Will Brody carry out Abu Nazir’s plan of revenge, or will the better nature of this most multi-faceted of characters prevail?
This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: It was canny of Dana to spot her dad’s peculiar behaviour at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, but how did she manage to film him for so long without either her or any of the crowds of people coming and going around them noticing or saying anything?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 29th April 2012 on Channel 4.
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