Well, we're back with another Homeland episode, and sadly, after the nice break last week when we caught up with Brody, it's another day, another unbearable and irrelevant Dana subplot. Thankfully, the Carrie stuff tonight is pretty good and comes with a great twist ending that I didn't see coming at all.
So we start off with Carrie waking up in the middle of the night at the psych ward after hearing screams and she sees the staff subduing another patient down the hall. She freaks out and runs back into the safety of her bed, obviously sick of being cooped up for so long (it's been a month, apparently).
Saul comes into CIA headquarters to meet up with Fala, who tells him she's been following the money as he instructed, and it's led her to the identity of the Iranian who ordered the attack on Langley. Saul plays teacher and tells her to keep at it, while waving a peeping Dar Adal out of the room, seemingly giving him the brush off.
Back at the hospital, Carrie's lawyer comes in to prep her for the hearing that's supposed to send her home, where her dad and sister are promised to show up and testify for her. In the boardroom, the nurses and staff testify as to her improved condition in front of the judge, while Carrie zones out and thanks everyone for their support, but she's disturbed by the fact that her dad and Maggie never showed. The judge says he's going to review the case as Carrie leaves in frustration and helplessness.
Oh boy, here we go. Dana's boyfriend Leo pulls a fire alarm and breaks out of the rehab facility to hop in Jess's car with a runaway Dana at the wheel. I can't tell you how NOT excited I am for the adventures of Dana and Leo tonight. Meanwhile, Carrie sees Dar Adal walking out of the hospital and the next thing she knows, the judge has called her back into the boardroom and is telling her she's been deemed a threat to national security and he's been ordered by the Justice Department to keep her there. Carrie is distressed, but manages to call her dad on her lawyer's phone to find out that he and Maggie were told the hearing was canceled. Carrie tells him to get a hold of Saul to tell him that she's giving up and she'll do anything he wants in order to get out of there. Then she slowly walks back to her room in distress, taking her pills and surrendering to her fate (once again) on her bed.
Dana and Leo are on the run, and getting high in the car (smart!), but when Jess calls, Leo throws the phone out the window so they won't get caught. Jess and Mike (hey, where's he been this whole time?) are called to the rehab to meet with Leo's parents and the police to track the kids down. Leo's parents are supposed to be rude to Jess in this scene, calling Dana a bad influence and telling Jess to just report the car stolen so they can track it, but they seemed to be the ones making the most sense to me here. I mean, isn't that the obvious thing to do? Dana and Leo trade Jess's car in for another one (boy is that a shitty thing to do to her mom- Dana's such a brat) and take off before the dudes they sell it to recognize her.
Carrie is lying defeated on her bed, when suddenly the nurse informs her she's been sprung by an emergency court order. Carrie is thrilled and arrives back home to find that lawyer guy from last week sitting in her living room. Turns out the firm he's part of are the ones who got her out and in return he wants her to meet with his client. Carrie reluctantly agrees, since the furlough is only good for 24 hours if she doesn't, but the minute he walks out the door she bolts, packing up all her stuff and planning to flee the country. But, she can't do that either, because her car's been confiscated from the garage (presumably by the CIA).
Saul is in his office, trying to figure out who got Carrie out of the hospital when Adal comes in, telling him in really corny dialogue ("the agency could be killed by a common cold, she's a contagion") that Carrie's still a threat. Saul agrees to let him go after her. In the mean time, Carrie's trying to access her bank account, only to find out it's been frozen and all her credit cards canceled. She tries calling Virgil (hey, another returning cast member!) in a desperate move to borrow his van, but Virgil's under surveillance as well, which he at least manages to warn her of in coded language that lets her know his line is tapped.
Ugh, Dana and Leo are at a cemetery, mourning over his dead brother who apparently committed suicide. Dana tells him not to blame himself, blah, blah, blah. Moving on. Jess and Mike are talking about Jess's failure as a mother (by the way, the Jess stuff is only mildly more tolerable than Dana and that's because Jess isn't such a horrid little brat and Morena Baccarin is a much less irritable presence than Morgan Saylor), but we find out that she wouldn't let Mike move in and that if she saw Brody again she could kill him. Now, back to Dana and Leo again. Dana takes him to visit the air field where Brody deployed to Iraq when she was eight, and it was, in her mind, the last time he said anything true to her- goodbye.
Finally, we get back to Carrie, who knocks on the door of the Brody lookalike she slept with a couple episodes ago, begging him to let her stay with him for just one night. He's pretty happy to let her in, but he won't be the next morning when Carrie robs his wallet before sneaking out early. Just seconds after she gets out on the sidewalk though, the lawyer from the terrorist abedding firm pulls up next to her and she has no choice but to get in the car with him.
Saul and Fala are talking about the guy they've now identified as the second in command of the Iranian terror group, with Saul telling her he wants this guy brought in somehow so he can interrogate him. Carrie's meeting up in a gigantic mansion with another lawyer for this firm, a Mr. Bennett, who explains to her exactly who he works for (Iran) and what it is that his client wants from her. They of course want her to meet with their client and give him information about how the six terrorists killed in the recent CIA operation were discovered, tracked, etc. Carrie says no way, but the guy attempts to convince her by telling her she's been abandoned by her own agency, who would only lock her back up in the mental institution and probably even kill her when the time is right, seeing as they've already sought to blame her for all their screw-ups recently by throwing her under the bus in public.
Carrie seems to fall for this and sadly agrees to do it, as long as her conditions will be met- she must meet the guy face to face, be paid, and she won't name names and betray her fellow field agents. She's fairly convincing, but I didn't believe for one second that she was really going to do this, and assumed she would go straight to Saul as soon as these guys drop her off, which she indeed does.
In the final Dana development of the night, Mike finds out that Leo wasn't really in rehab for drug addiction, it was only a deal his parents got to keep him out of prison for homicide. Yep, that's right, he killed his teenage brother. We see Dana waking up with him in the car, and frankly, I know this is mean, but is it too much to hope for that Leo kills her too before anyone can find her? Yeah, It does seem too much to hope for. And this entire plotline has nothing to do with Homeland and belongs on a CW show.
Back to Carrie, who finally shows up at Saul's, confronting him on the porch after dodging the Iranian followers, but instead of offering up her services as a double agent, like I thought would happen, it turns out this was her and Saul's plan all along, as she tells him exhaustedly, "it worked." Wow. Didn't see that coming. So yeah, that's a pretty cool twist. As Carrie and Saul embrace, she cries and tells him he shouldn't have left her in the hospital so long (so I guess this plan formed just this episode, when she told her dad to get a hold of him?), and Saul tells her she's amazing and that she just has to keep going for a little bit longer.
So, Saul's kinda the master manipulator this season, huh? I'm already into the new terror foiling plot, but there continues to be no justifiable excuse for this much Dana screen time, unless Leo's going to kill her, which I refuse to get my hopes up for, knowing how much the writers love this character. Still, everything else is getting pretty good, so aside from the Dana stuff, I'm not hating this season as much as it seems a lot of other people are. Until next week!
