SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching the second series of Homeland on Channel 4. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode five – and if you've seen later episodes, please do not leave spoilers.
Rebecca Nicholson's episode four blog
Q&A
A classy move this week, in the sense that it tied up a number of loose ends while simultaneously unleashing new directions, not all of which were immediately obvious. Brody has confessed, he has switched sides, there's some possible rekindling of his relationship with Carrie, and Abu Nazir is now the principal enemy. At the same time, the show has managed to recreate what drove it so brilliantly first time around – the is he/isn't he mystery. Yes, Brody's confession and cooperation seemed real. But this is the same man who passed a lie-detector test in the first series. Can one emotional chat with Carrie really undo eight years of torture? Was his allegiance to the cause so fickle? It's smart to switch up the plot while maintaining those subtle seeds of doubt. But does this mean the future of America is now in the hands of two very damaged, reckless people? Good luck with that, everyone.
Brody
Damien Lewis deserves his own cryface blog after this week. For me, it's usually Danes' performance that packs all the emotion, but she was relatively subtle, and let him do all the carrying, so to speak. It worked a treat. His slow unravelling in a dark basement, shackled to the floor and the desk, was a direct parallel to his incarceration under Abu Nazir. A notable difference, for me, is that the moral queasiness of last series is still lacking – we are reminded of the VP's drone strike, but this feels less ambiguous in terms of who is good, and who is evil. It's America v the terrorists and Brody is given the chance, again, to pick a side.
I wonder if the CIA really played him as well as they think, though. Brody has been incredibly astute so far, and having Quinn play the bad cop (that pen through the hand was horrific, even more so because it was "theatre") to Carrie's good cop is a strategy that anyone who's ever seen a film could pick up on. Perhaps killing the tailor was the beginning of a disintegration (which means that episode was good for something) that culminated here, or perhaps it was Carrie suggesting that Issa was a pawn from the start. Or maybe Brody is continuing to play the game. I'm not entirely sure. Effectively, all he's done so far this series, for the benefit of Abu Nazir, is warn him not to get shot, move the tailor and steal some codes from Estes' safe. He never seemed invested in a new attack on terrorist soil, more trapped into cooperating with him. He's already given up Roya, and, in a nicely understated way, finally admitted to the bomb-in-the-bunker plot. Is he going to be capable of offering any more?
Carrie
Carrie's interrogation of Brody was so engrossing that I thought the producers should have had the courage to make this the entire episode, EastEnders-style. Their chemistry continues to be fantastic, and there's certainly something unsettling in the inappropriate romance of it all (and I don't think romance is the wrong word here). She says she loves him and still wants them to be together. He shows the most remorse, I think, that he's displayed so far, with that "I'm sorry I hurt you". The idea that an "affair" will be used as their cover is convenient for Carrie's unresolved feelings, and when he puts his bandaged hand over hers, perhaps it is for Brody too.
It's hardly professional though, and I imagine most of us spent that interrogation period waiting for her to go renegade and mess the whole thing up again. She did her job perfectly and gently, much to Saul's quiet satisfaction, and when Brody finally admitted the vest plot, her tone became instantly more clipped and business-like as she snapped back to work. There's another piece of validation, too, in the wall Quinn and Saul are assembling. It is sparse and incomplete, but the information they have is, at least, true, in the same way that Carrie's more messy effort was true at the end of the first season. Again, as with the surveillance, it's a nice nod to what has gone before, and an admission that they're retreading the ground she already covered. There was a note of gloom, however, in the ending, as Brody returned to his family, and she returned to her apartment, alone, quickly sinking a second glass of wine.
Notes and observations
• Claire Danes' pregnancy was a little more obvious this week, so it was handy that she spent most of it sitting behind a desk.
• The Dana subplot felt very Kim Bauer (24), but at least she has a break from being The Voice of All That Is Right and Good.
• I enjoyed Quinn's explanation that they could detain Brody, even as a congressman, because of the powers of detention that congress gave the CIA.
• Brody's options are a trial and lengthy prison sentence (or possibly even death), or cooperation. Obviously he's going to take the latter, but it makes the most sense for the CIA too, as it avoids an enormous, embarrassing scandal.
• When Brody says to Jessica on the phone, "We're going to be fine," he stares at Carrie. Is it meant to hurt her? It seems to do that.
• A small point, but if Brody had really been on a day-long bender, as he explained to Jessica, wouldn't he smell a little boozy?
• This is a very late realisation, but is the presence of Barack Obama in the opening sequence meant to suggest that he's president to Walden's VP? Has there ever been a name mentioned?
