Showtime
Say Homeland, you’ve been missed. It’s 58 days since Durkas car bombed Langley and once they tot up the severed heads and orphan limbs the death toll is 219. “Boy, is my face red?” says the look on Carrie‘s face as she is questioned by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mount Rushmore glares back at her. The Committee have the memorandum on Brody’s immunity. What, they would like to know, did he need immunity from? “Oh you know, stuff…” stonewalls Carrie unconvincingly. She does manage to blurt out that she thinks Dickless Brony is an innocent man which on a list of Things the Committee Didn’t Want to Hear is only beaten out by the sound of Janette Krankie coming and Johnny Borrell’s solo album on an infinite loop. She blames herself – she should, it’s all her fault after all. But right now the issue is that she’s off lithium and is writing a mind map of crazy talk. Ah boy, she’s off again.
She does manage to blurt out that she thinks Dickless Brony is an innocent man which on a list of Things the Committee Didn’t Want to Hear is only beaten out by the sound of Janette Krankie coming and Johnny Borrell’s solo album on an infinite loop.
Someone who does appear to be taking their psychiatric meds is Dana, having just ended a stay at a high-end mental facility. The post Langley fallout got to her and she slit her wrists in what seemed like a pretty determined attempt to enter the afterlife. The death threats and bricks through the window from well-wishers didn’t help matters. Thanks dad! It’s not all bad news as she’s picked up a borefriend there (Sam Underwood who you may know as as Zach Hamilton, fledgeling serial killer from Dexter season 8). The moment Dana gets home she does what all depressed girls with daddy issues do when under pressure and sends topless photos of herself to her borefriend. This may well be the most plausible event of the entire series.
The moment Dana gets home she does what all depressed girls with daddy issues do when under pressure and sends topless photos of herself to her borefriend.
Back at the agency Saul the Bear is planning an attack, so please don’t poke the bear. The CIA’s very existence is under threat, the Senate committee is blowing smoke up his ass and he’s not getting any play off Mrs Berenson so he’s more grouchy than usual. Mastermind of the Langley atrocity Majid Javadi has vanished but the six others in the network that planned the attack are all very killable in their own way. The plan is to conduct six simultaneous assassinations on the Durkas giving no time for any of them to warn any of the others. Saul is wary. “You know what I think? I think you’re scared” special ops twat Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham) tells him.
“Six separate ops conducted on 3 separate continents, an untested command and control team and a short clock?” Saul shoots back witheringly. Adal tells him a win would be nice “A win would be nice.” says Saul “Another fuck up would be fatal”. Saul is crazy shook. Your place of work being blown to shit will do that to you.
Things don’t go any better for Carrie when she’s back in front of the Committee. They have evidence that contradicts her version of events, notably the 14 hours she said she was unconscious. “Ah right so” she responds “Well in that case your honours you leave me no option but to plead the fifth like my jaw was muzzled. Now suck my dick while I take a shit and do this crossword puzzle. God bless America”. The Committee chair is less than impressed and tells her that they will get to the bottom of all this and that she and all the other CIA bullshitters will all end up in jail. Why must America imprison all its strong female characters?
Later for that. Saul has made his decision. “Take ’em all” he says. It’s over to Agent Quim in Caracas. He motorbikes behind the limousine containing the Durka, sees a kid in the back and bottles it. You can’t kill a Durka in front of his kid because America’s certainly never done that before. It’s a tense time for Saul. It’s all six targets or none at all as far as he’s concerned. Quim’s Durka is inside his residence now. It looks like a fortress and he’ll have no satellite support. Going in would be be a suicide mission.
But fuck it, right? Saul gives Quim 10 minutes. The entire operation depends on him and just like Dana survived her suicide mission, he survives his by brilliantly breaking and entering, taking out the target and killing a bunch of bad guys like a live-action Doom level. He gets bonus marks for accidentally icing the kid he originally aborted the mission for. Oh well. That’s special ops for you – every step an adventure.
Quim gets bonus marks for accidentally icing the kid he originally aborted the mission for. Oh well. That’s special ops for you – every step an adventure.
It’s high fives and trebles all round at mission control as the target codenames are offed one by one: Tin Man, Scarecrow, Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Galinda and Toto (not Toto!) The CIA lives to torture another day. The world is a safer place.
But not for Carrie. When the press run a story about an unnamed CIA officer having an affair with Dickless Brony she confronts Saul and gives him a piece of her ass. It’s just like the old days – her going off on one, him placating her. It’s not very placating though when he throws her under the bus in the Senate hearings and testifies that, yeah, Brony was hitting that. All of a sudden it’s betrayed rubber face Carrie again and it’s like we were never away.
The verdict: That’ll teach you to bang traitors.
Marks out of 10: 7.5