The CIA and the FBI don’t get on. It’s either a well-known fact or something that’s been portrayed so many times on TV and in films that it might as well be a fact. The two agencies are frequently at each other’s throats and make little attempt to hide it. ‘Nothing makes me happier,’ Saul Berenson, CIA Division Chief, says, ‘than seeing the FBI stood around with their dicks in their hands.’
Of course, nothing in the world actually makes Saul happy – particularly now his wife Mira has upped sticks and headed for Delhi, 7503 miles away – but even the beardy sage might have cracked a wry grin at the scale of the Feds’ hideous incompetence. They’ve been brought into Homeland specifically to make an unholy fuck-up of things – and like this eighth instalment of the ever-compulsive thriller, they don’t disappoint.
So, Tom Walker is definitely very much alive and in the pay of terror mastermind Abu Nazir. (What seems like a very loosely-plugged plot hole, with Brody informed that Nazir had only ‘told him’ he’d killed his comrade-in-arms, actually turns out to have an exciting payoff at the episode’s climax.)
He’s also got an Achilles’ heel: his family. It’s through his ex-wife and son – who amusingly manages to annoy the permanently-scowling David Estes by asking, ‘Is this your office? I thought you were a spy. How can you spy on anyone sitting in here?’ – that Carrie and the Counterterrorism Unit (not a great band name) intend to bring him in, but unfortunately, the clodhopping guys from the Bureau manage not only to lose him but also wade into a mosque and accidentally slaughter a couple of praying innocents.
Unsurprisingly, when Estes arrives, his brow is even more furrowed than ever. It’s hard to see what Carrie ever saw in him romantically; but then, if she treated him like she did Brody, it’s not surprising that he’s always wearing a look that asks, ‘Who left that burning bag of dog shit on my doorstep?’
The poster boy of the DOD, meanwhile, is being groomed for a future career in politics by vice-presidential adviser and arch-manipulator Elizabeth Gaines, who wants him to replace a congressman named Dick Johnson – no, really – who’s been caught sending saucy pics of himself to young interns.
With his family life now back on track (and canny daughter Dana carrying out lampshade duties: ‘I swear to God, I must be adopted,’ she remarks in order to address the lack of family resemblance she shares with her parents) it seems as though Brody is as innocent as he protested to Carrie last week … until he breaks into the house of Nazir’s henchman, Mansour Al-Zahrani, kicking off about being made to believe he killed Walker. ‘Tell them it’s over,’ he roars, but it’s clearly a long way from that. Thank goodness.
Achilles Heel is two things: it’s the episode that drives forward the final section of the series, picking up from last week’s summer vacation with a fresh burst of pace, plenty of tension and a new character (sneering FBI git Agent Hall) for the haters to boo at.
It’s also what Peter Griffin might call a ‘He said it!’ episode, based on the number of times the title is mentioned in the dialogue. Thanks, scriptwriters, but we get it.
This week’s big Homeland question: What is Saul doing wasting his talents in the CIA? The guy is a poet. When Elizabeth Gaines asks what’s on his mind, he replies: ‘Thinking about all the things in people’s lives that pull them together and split them apart: a million little events … coincidences … outside forces …’ Seriously, he should jack in the Agency, go to Delhi with his wife, and write stuff.
This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: If Brody has been away for eight years, how come he doesn’t remember the first Ice Age film, which came out in 2002?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 8th April 2012 on Channel 4.
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