Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 83 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT We Have The Technology
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.24.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Barbara Hall! I love to see her name come up, she's so great. Anyway, Saul brings back the pieces of Nick Brody and assembles them into a huge mess. With the clock ticking on Andrew Lockhart's confirmation, Dar Adal suggests giving Nick a banned psychedelic that will accelerate his heroin withdrawal, and after some nerve-wracking hallucinations -- including an extended sequence that rather pointedly parallels Brody's relationship with Nazir and Carrie's with Saul -- he's officially cold turkey and ready to be a person.
While in her own hospital room, Carrie was visited by Senator Lockhart, who leaks the news about Saul's trip to Caracas, which leads Saul to send Virgil and Max to sweep all of their houses. They discover Alain's secret mouse-transmitter, and track him to a Mossad safehouse... As well as lunch with Lockhart, and once they bring Alain in, he cops to all of it. The combination of "Israeli intelligence" and "spying on the CIA Director" is enough to sink Lockhart permanently, but Saul says he'll sit on it if the Senator gives him enough time to put Brody through rehab and some training montages alongside a team of the most charming doctor-soldiers of all time. I wish they had their own show, where each week they take very good care of strange/horrible people and situations.
Then Phase Two of Saul's big plan is finally revealed: Play Brody into Iran as an asylum-seeking, terrorist war hero, getting him close enough for an assassination of a General that will move Javadi up the ladder from #20 in the political hierarchy to #3. Nick's reluctant -- suicidal, in fact -- so they send in Carrie for a terribly awkward and sad reunion. Once she shows him the motel where Dana's been living and working as a housekeeper, she's able to get him back in the game. Whatever messes he's left behind -- his family, that Imam's household in Caracas, the people that Tom killed the day of the suicide vest -- are still what haunts him, and Carrie knows what buttons to push.
By the time he leaves for Tehran -- after a horrific meeting with Dana that ends with everybody in tears -- he's more like the man we never got to meet, and even able to think about a future with Carrie again. I mean, we'll see about that. Although Scott Ryan outlines an ambitious extraction plan, and Carrie seems optimistic, both of those things are characteristic and not so much believable. She doesn't tell him about the baby -- oh, and she's smoking now! -- but does promise several times to see him on the other side.
So that's the situation, heading into this final act: Lockhart's at bay long enough to rehab Brody, push through to his original Marine conditioning, and get him to the Iranian border. Carrie getting vocal about the fact that she and Saul can't run this operation -- one of the most audacious ideas I can think of ever coming up, on a show like this -- without learning to trust each other again. The possibility of public redemption for everybody involved, from the big offenders like Nick to the career-enders like the Bear, to whatever the fuck the CIA is going to do with Carrie. With everyone either neutralized or folded into the Javadi plot at this point, it seems possible that the operation might take up the majority of the remaining three episodes. More Quinn for us all.
Next Week: A team of like twenty people is required to make sure Nick walks across the border without fucking it up. I'm guessing he fucks it up.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Carrie thought the whole plan to return Javadi to Iran was interesting, but not as interesting as tracking down the Langley Bomber and clearing Nick Brody's name; Saul, secretly planning to do both, retrieved Brody from Caracas. Meanwhile, an obsessive Carrie tried to blow the entire season's operation in a single instant, forcing Quinn to shoot her in one of the show's most hilarious scenes to date. Oh, and it looks like Mira Berenson's side-piece is a spy, just like everybody else.
NAVAL HOSPITAL / DAM NECK
Carrie: "Sitrep."
Navy Doc: "You're awake, don't rip your sutures. The shot went straight through, missed the bones and nerves altogether. You are a lucky lady."
Carrie: "Lucky Quinn's such a great shot, you mean. Besides being perfect in every single other way."
Navy Doc: "Sit tight as long as you need."
Carrie: "You mean as long as the CIA needs."
Navy Doc: "I mean I don't give a shit. Spies are the worst. Oh, and your baby is fine. Or at least as fine as it possibly could be, given that your womb is a tequila-fueled dryer set to 'tumble,' every day of your life."
Also in a hospital bed, and if possible in worse shape, is the former Sergeant. He is surrounded by a group of hot docs who go everywhere with him and have beards and it's like, if Nick is Sleeping Beauty, they are the dwarves. Sexy, highly competent dwarves. The second he wakes up he starts screaming and almost being dead, and we learn that he got so freaky on the flight back to the States that some bright mister gave him a half-pint of vodka. But he doesn't want vodka, he wants heroin! To inject into all of his veins!
Grumpy: "Listen, seven days is not a long time."
Saul: "But it's 20 March, and Lockhart's getting confirmed in a week!"
Doc: "I admit, he presents a challenge. Due to having every problem, plus probably Hepatitis C, and also probably HIV. Literally everything bad, he has it going on."
Saul: "We're not taking him to a hospital."
Sneezy: "We can keep him stable, but... I mean, he's a junkie."
Saul: "What stage of withdrawal is this? This flopping around and screaming and trying to steal syringes even if they don't have heroin in them?"
Sleepy: "Um, like Day One. This is a hilarious birthday party with a pony, relatively. Can we give him methadone?"