Season 4, Episode 7, “Redux”
There are worse things than ending up in the lap of I.S.I. agent Aasar Khan (Raza Jaffrey).
You could be pelted with a sandal. You could be Saul Berenson chained up and forced to listen to terrorist Haissam Haqqani having sex with the wife he hasn’t seen in three years.
You could note Haqqani’s reaction, in a heated conversation that you, bizarrely, felt compelled to start about the evils of radical Islam, as he registers the fact that you’re a Jew: “Yeah. Well.” (Super scary.)
Or you could be Martha Boyd, an elegant, intelligent, forthright and principled ambassador — chic, too, in a State Department-y kind of a way — married to a malicious weasel (the ever-unwelcome Mark Moses, as Dennis Boyd) who, despite being a college professor, appears to find it quite a struggle to count to 10 in his head.
You could be the guys Carrie Mathison thinks she shot, or the man whose nose she appears to have broken, while she was under the influence of whatever drug Weasel Man substituted for her usual prescription.
You could be forever condemned to watching the C.I.A. director, Andrew Lockhart, laboriously put on his shoes. (Did you see the ambassador’s face?)
Just sayin’.
I should, undoubtedly, be in a more mournful mode, given the sorry states in which Saul and Carrie now find themselves.
But, having rewatched Episode 4 of Season 3 over the weekend (the one where we learn that Carrie’s stint on the psych ward was a setup by Saul and Carrie herself from the start), I’m now feeling a bit sour about the former C.I.A. director. It was painful to watch the scene in which he clasps Carrie’s face, draws her close and tells her she’s “amazing,” then takes her in for a “nice cup of tea” to avoid having to answer her pitiful “You should have gotten me out of the hospital, Saul. You shouldn’t have left me in there.” And it was just a bit too much like the ending of tonight’s episode, where poor Carrie, driven over the edge through a combination of poison pills and good old-fashioned gaslighting, seeks Brody-solace in the arms of oh-so-treacherously-cold Khan.
I don’t know about you, but I was really on the fence, until the very end, about whether to accept that Brody was real, and not just a drug-induced hallucination. Part of me always has felt that his return was a very real possibility — for no other reason than it would probably be the most outrageous plot twist that “Homeland’s” writers could come up with. But then actor Damian Lewis has so clearly moved on. His Brody tonight just wasn’t Brody-like. ( Yeah. Well, because it wasn’t Brody, you’re saying.…)
So what happens now? Whatever drug or poison Carrie has been given — any guesses? — will, presumably, wash out of her system. So, too, however, will her Lithium and what appears to be a tricyclic antidepressant. Will she emerge from this psychotic break in a state of mania? Of depression? I hate for Carrie to be treated as a chemistry experiment in this way.
That said: The hallucinations have to stop. Carrie’s bad drug trip, as television, is a bit like Tony Soprano’s dream sequences: tolerable in very, very small doses — potentially stultifying if allowed to drag on too long.
A couple of thoughts before ending. My weekend’s TV-watching reminded me of one key detail: Conducting spycraft via drone, rather than through personal relationships, was supposed to be Lockhart’s signature move, the point of demarcation between the Saul Berenson era and his own. Now that the Drone King is in Pakistan, will anyone make him a target? (“Mr. Lockhart,” a mellifluous voice will say, “I must kindly invite you, sir, to wipe that anemic smile of self-satisfaction off your pasty face.”)
Another thought, too: I feel like there’s some kind of drama behind the drama with Khan. There was the weirdness of this exchange with Carrie over Saul:
“Saul Berenson said you were smart.”
“I believe he called me a bright young man, which isn’t the same.”
Is Khan hypersensitive? Or is he just super-adept with the seemingly meaningful one-liner, like the ever-so-cool, yet forever unknowable Jordan Catalano of “My So-Called Life”?
Will he show us hidden depths next week? Or just sink further and further into evil? Your guess is as good as mine.