Homeland recap: season four, episode four – Iron in the Fire
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Version 0 of 1. It has become a bit of a Homeland tradition to nudge the pace up several notches in the fourth episode of each season. Back in season two, we had the sudden, shocking hotel room capture of Brody, an event that you might argue irrevocably altered the direction of the show. Last year, there was the big reveal that Carrie being sectioned was in fact a sneaky ruse dreamed up by her and Saul to dupe the Iranians, a twist that some found a bit preposterous but did at least give the meandering plot a sense of forward motion. This time around we have Iron in the Fire, which feels like a ratcheting up of intensity. It’s an episode filled with tense moments and juicy revelations, as the season’s plot strands begin to converge. The biggest of those revelations is that Haissam Haqqani – the terrorist the CIA presumed had been killed in the air strike – is still alive, having been spotted by Fara while she was trailing Aayan. It’s a development that casts the air strike, and indeed Sandy’s death, in a decidedly different light. Haqqani, the strike’s sole target, either escaped the incident unscathed, or was never in the farmhouse in the first place. “That’s when we stop tracking terrorists: when we think they’re dead,” Carrie says. What’s more, as Quinn points out, the ISI are themselves heavily implicated in all of this, given their role in the stage-managed killing of Sandy. Also involved (though you’d think/hope to a lesser degree) is Aayan, seen handing over a bag of unidentified drugs to Haqqani. Carrie knows that he is now the CIA’s best “in”, given that Farhad Ghazi, the local thug the ISI had orchestrate the attack on Sandy, has been tipped off about the CIA’s tail and has scarpered. Inevitably, then, she opts to go down the path of seduction, turning on the charm during a spot of bed-making in the safe house. Whether this is actually needed seems questionable, given that Aayan – now expelled from his university after they learned of his secret drugs stash – seems fairly amenable to the offer of safe passage and a place at King’s College London, but hey, that’s Carrie Mathison for you. The seduction scene itself was about as sexy as an episode of Railway Journeys with Michael Portillo, with the camera lingering on Carrie as she methodically worked her way through her moves. We’ve seen her do this with a target before, but not one quite as vulnerable-seeming as Aayan. It’s deeply unsettling, though convincingly consistent with Carrie’s character in a way that the baby-in-the-bath incident a few weeks ago wasn’t. Carrie is quite happy to wade through the ethical murk, but Homeland’s resident moralist, Quinn, finds some of her decisions unpalatable – most notably the “promise” to get Aayan into Kings. Lord knows what he’ll make of her seducing Aayan, if he ever finds out about it. Quite a few people in the comments last week disagreed with my assessment that Quinn’s unrequited love for Carrie had come largely out of nowhere, with many suggesting that there have been hints that he had complex feelings towards her for quite some time. Fair enough, but I remain unconvinced by the wisdom of bringing this storyline front and centre, as it feels like the show might be set on doing. Here, thankfully, it remains simmering in the background, though there was a certain sexual tension between the two in their pointed conversation about his disillusionment with the CIA. Saul’s still kicking about at the behest of Carrie, who asks him to arrange a meeting with someone in the Pakistani government. He duly does this, through his 9/11 truther general pal. I genuinely feared that Saul was done for when those menacing security officials cleared the fancy restaurant he was eating in – after The Honourable Woman, I don’t think I’ll watch any scene set in a posh dining room without feeling a lingering sense of dread – but it was merely them being thorough. Saul’s allegations about the ISI’s involvement in Sandy’s death didn’t go down well with the official – an “interrogation”, he called it – but at least he got his point across: the CIA knows the truth about the mob attack, and will be watching the ISI very closely from now on. Elsewhere, we finally know the identity of the person leaking state secrets. It’s the ambassador’s husband, Dennis, a disgraced academic who, like most disgraced academics, plagiarised a bit of his book once, and now finds himself stuck in a unglamorous lecturer’s job. Dennis thought he was out of the “leaking state secrets” game following Sandy’s death, but finds himself being dragged back in by a mysterious woman, who threatens to reveal his traitorous acts to the US government if he flees to the States. What she actually wants him to do isn’t revealed here, but it seems fairly nailed on that it has something to do with that mystery man Haqqani. Notes and observations • Nice to see Mark Moses, AKA Mad Men’s Duck Phillips, popping up as the ambassador’s husband. Though if I were her, I wouldn’t let him have a dog. • Good, too, to see Art Malik as Bunny (who, like Sandy, has an unsuitably twee name for someone in such a serious role). • John Redmond is in a more agreeable mood this week, identifying Ghazi for Carrie. He’s also having her tailed, sure, but it’s progress of sorts. • In related John Redmond news, he tells Carrie that the embassy has a tunnel (presumably the one that Sandy was seen using in episode one). Is that completely implausible, or entirely logical? I can’t decide. • Quinn subscribes to the Toby Ziegler method of stress relief. Quote of the week “Accountability isn’t in the job description, Carrie.” Which is lucky for them, or they’d be dragged before the Senate every other week. |