Among its myriad virtues, Homeland is up there with the best when it comes to onscreen swearing. Even when parts of the episode lapse into tedium, proceedings are frequently reenergised by a high-octane burst of profanity.
‘The FBI better fucking find Walker is all I can say,’ Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) curses as her pursuit of the back-from-the-dead marine stalls in the face of a stonewalling imam. Understandably upset by two innocent members of his congregation being murdered, the prayer-leader will only play ball if the FBI confess their culpability – which they won’t.
‘Shit happens,’ the thoroughly loathsome and utterly unapologetic Special Agent Hall says, adding to the four-letter fun, ‘but if you think that I or the bureau are going to let the CIA come in and throw any of my guys under the bus, you’re fucking high.’
As a matter of fact, Carrie hasn’t taken her meds yet, but she has got all of Hall’s admission of responsibility on tape and is willing to use it as leverage. Yoda and Mace Windu Saul Berenson and David Estes, however, are a little sager than their pill-popping protégé and veto any blackmailing.
Fortunately, Zahira – wife of the imam – is willing to reveal what her husband won’t: that Tom Walker regularly met Saudi diplomat Mansour Al-Zahrani at the mosque – the same diplomat, in fact, to whom Brody paid a nocturnal visit to last week.
America’s most famous ex-serviceman (‘Hey, you’re that marine war hero guy, right?’ coos a checkout girl at the supermarket) makes a return trip to Al-Zahrani’s house this week, but not of his own accord; it’s after a parking lot beating at the fists and tyre irons of men working for Abu Nazir, Brody’s furtive fanatic fugitive friend.
Via a protracted flashback that is considerably more captivating than the parts of the story set in the present day (albeit with less swearing), we learn that at the height of his trampish-Mick Hucknall/ginger-Jerry Garcia period, Brody became English tutor to Nazir’s son Issa.
Although a wash, a shave and a series of unconvincing wigs are not enough to convince Issa that pep-talks (groan) about soccer from an American are of any use, a bond eventually develops between the two of them. When a US drone strike destroys the youngster’s school, killing him and many other children, Brody is heartbroken.
Despite the horrendous hairpieces and CGI anorexia he has to go through to portray his character’s detainee days, Damian Lewis is exceptional in the scenes opposite an equally-impressive Rohan Chand as young Issa – when the boy unexpectedly hugs him, the expression on Brody’s face is a masterwork of mixed emotions – and even better when he finds his pupil’s body amid the wreckage of the bombing.
When Brody sees footage of the US vice-president William Walden claiming that no kids were hurt in the attack, we see the blurred loyalties, confusion and sense of betrayal in the face of the actor who’s playing him.
Of course, the question is: what has he agreed to do in revenge? It’s the job of Tom Walker to kill Walden – not to mention a hillbilly hunter who happens upon him shooting pieces of paper in a forest – so where does Brody fit in? With three episodes left in the season to go, it’s getting easier to forgive the occasional dialogue clunkers (‘And they call us terrorists,’ Nazir laments at one point) and the ‘Duh!’ moments when someone, usually Dana Brody, reminds us of a plot point with blunderbuss subtlety, and progressively more difficult to wait a week to find out what happens next.
This week’s big Homeland question: It looks great whenever it happens, but how come none of the main characters ever notice when a car driven by one of their suspects/friends/pursuers simultaneously leaves the location at which they’re arriving?
This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: ‘VitaminWater’ – why, America? Why?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 15th April 2012 on Channel 4.
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