Homeland ramps up the tension as Carrie tries to identify a security breach within the US Embassy while struggling to keep an escaped Saul from harm.
If last week s episode was Claire Danes showreel for next year s Emmys then this week was Mandy Patinkin s as Saul is put through the emotional wringer. Carrie prevents her mentor from committing suicide at the expense of breaking a promise to kill him rather than let him fall back into captivity.
Carrie Mathison super spy
Homeland at times gets bogged down by the weight of its political intrigue and there s plenty of that in this episode but it s at its best when it combines this with its tense portrayal of contemporary spycraft.
In between her doomed romances and bipolar misadventures it s easy to forget that Carrie Mathison is a brilliant spy. She s at her best when forced to rely on her wits and come up with instinctive out of the box solutions.
Here she s once again three steps ahead of all her colleagues.
With Saul on the run having faked his own hanging to engineer his escape from Haqqani s camp it s Carrie who smells a rat when the Pakistani delegation seem unworried by their negotiations with Ambassador Boyd. And it s she who realises they are using the CIA s drone to lead them to Saul.
With Taliban forces swarming around the town to which he has fled for extraction Carrie has to talk Saul back from the edge of the cliff as he prepares to kill himself. To save his life she deliberately steers him directly into the heart of the Taliban forces realising that imprisonment is her best chance to keep him alive at the cost of breaking her promise.
This whole sequence plays out from a distance as Carrie and her team watch as a series of on screen markers converge on Saul s position like a real life version of Pac Man. If the Kabul control room from which she ordered the initial air strike on Haqqani was clinical and businesslike in Islamabad this time there s an unmistakable crackle of emotion and stakes that are high on both a geopolitical and personal level.
But now what with Lockhart agreeing to the terms of Haqqani s prisoner exchange Is it really game over
Who s on whose side
By the end of the episode it s clear that counter terrorism chief Khan and ISI agent Tasleem Qureshi are pulling in different directions.
Tasleem s plan to discredit Carrie and have her sent home is thwarted by Khan s intervention. He instead exposes Dennis Boyd as the security breach. But does he have an agenda of his own
What else is going on
This was a fabulous episode of Homeland the closest the show has come to the high points of its first season. Political power plays wrapped up in the twin guises of diplomacy and terrorism. Genuine uncertainty over key characters motivations and loyalties. And top notch performances from the entire cast but Danes and Patinkin in particular.
And there s a sense that the main event is still to come. Next week s episode is intriguingly titled There s Something Else Going On. Have the dramas involving Saul and Carrie merely been window dressing and if so who s planning to do what
Homeland just got seriously good again.
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