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I don't know if you've noticed this, but sometimes this show can be a little intense.
On his way back to the US with that all-important video confession where Nick Brody explains he is a dang terrorist, Saul gets stopped and searched by Lebanese TSA agents are Hezbollah. They locate an SD card in his briefcase -- his cover is ambassadorial, so they shouldn't even have been in there -- and take it, but luckily it was a dummy. Of the many excellent fakeouts this week, that was the worst because it's like, "This show giveth and this show taketh away, and now only Saul knows that Carrie was right, which means now they will both look crazy." But no, it turns out okay.
We don't see him again until the end of the hour, which is really clever because it informs Carrie's arc in this episode: After being turned away from a debrief about her mission to see Fatima that ended up in two good kills and a near-miss on Abu Nazir, she also has to live through the humiliation of David Estes pointing out how clearly she's been entertaining the pathetic fantasy of being asked to rejoin the CIA, and clearly he needs to disabuse her of this notion in the kindest way that it's possible for a person carved out of solid oak to do.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Nick Brody's in his own kind of hell. Jessica finds the speech he intends to give at her war vet fundraiser thing, and is moved by its candor about how weird and yucky their relationship is. It's a bonding moment, which results in one of their typically weird sex encounters, which ends in embarrassment and sad boners woggling around after they're interrupted by Dana and her Xander Kid. A short call from Roya later, Nick's on the road to get the Tailor -- last seen putting Nick's suicide vest together for him -- to a safehouse in Pennsylvania and very little time to spare if he wants to get back in time. Spoiler, this is the opposite of what happens.
After about a million very tense hours of the Tailor thinking about how they should probably just kill each other and get it over with, things go all kinds of Chrissy Moltisanti on him, and he ends up having to field increasingly bitchy phone calls from his wife while capturing, accidentally injuring, and finally neck-snapping the poor old paranoid Tailor. As things get worse and worse -- like at one point they cut back to him and he's digging a grave using some garbage, and it's started raining and you're like, "Of course it's raining" -- they also get funnier and funnier, right up until you hear that neck snap. And then it's like, "Oh, Nick." Oh Nick, sorry being an Al-Qaeda terrorist is so hard for you. Sorry about all the inconvenience. Oh Nick, why won't your wife leave you alone to commit sedition and murder.
Over at the fundraiser, Jessica -- under the watchful eyes of a pissy VP, his endearing wife, and Nick's old platoon -- opens up about her own experience welcoming her husband home, which garners major applause and probably fame in weeks to come. Sitting outside the house in Mike's car, it's only after Jess reveals Nick's affair with Carrie that he realizes he might still have a shot at her. They don't make it as far as the front door before Nick runs up, soaking wet and sad about all kinds of things. She yells at him about secrets, he dead-eyed tells her he has none, and she threatens him with divorce. The routinely unimpressed Dana Brody is, of course, unimpressed with this performance.
But the misery, it is spread all around. Don't you worry about that. Chafing under Dad's too-insightful surveillance about her wired behavior, and riding that apocalyptic edge of Claire Danes's cry-voice that we know so well, Carrie goes back to the apartment where she first fell in love with the man she so unfairly accused of being the total terrorist that he is. Bored immediately, she's almost out the door for some good old-fashioned fake-wedding-ring troll sex when she finally realizes that she is a hot mess with a sad life, and commits some solid suicide.
We watch her die for a while before she gets her ass together and barfs, passing out in her sexy dress until somebody -- it's Saul, but easily could have been Nick, given how WTF this episode was -- arrives, straight from the airport, because he wanted her to be the first to see what she found. Having spent the whole episode sharing her agony, the catharsis of realizing she was right about absolutely everything this entire time is catching. Her grin is our shout, it's lovely. She was right! And she knows it! And the whole world makes sense again! Her married boyfriend that dumped her is an Al-Qaeda terrorist! Hurrah! What a nice day!
week: Saul shows David Estes the tape, which may be good enough to get Carrie back into her job considering all of her crazy behavior was centered around the fact that she was right about this one thing she was right about, but does not entirely counter the fact that she is crazy anyway. Roya makes some ridiculous demand of Nick, presumably, and Dana and Finn apparently discover more about each other. My theory? Finn is dead, and only Dana can see or talk to him, in his realm of ghosts. He just has that look somehow, you know?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Carrie's mission to Beirut came close to taking out Abu Nazir, but thanks to a warning from Nick Brody, our characters had to content themselves with just a little less murder than they were planning. At the last second, though, Saul found a hidden SD card containing Brody's suicide note, a long video where he explains what a total terrorist he is. You know, like exactly the kind of thing you really don't want to leave lying around.
BEIRUT
Saul's on his way out of Beirut when some sketchy-looking (redundant!) TSA guys pull him aside and shove him in a tiny airless room so they can touch his body and his luggage inappropriately.
Saul: "That briefcase is clearly marked as a diplomatic bag! Do not open it."
Guys: "No, I think we're going to open it."
Saul: "Hey, don't be dicks."
Guys: "Saul Berenson. That's Jewish, huh?"
Saul: "...Oh boy."
Saul: "Due to YOLO and whatever, I'm going to air my theory that a regular Lebanese security official would know better than to screw around with diplomatic carry-ons and such, and therefore you jerks -- like all jerks lately -- are probably Hezbollah."
Guys: "We don't feel like chatting about it."
Saul: "Well, I just hope you don't cut open the false lining and take out an SD card you find there. I sure hope you don't do that."
Guys, doing that: "In your face, Saul Berenson!"
Which, wouldn't that be cheap if this were that kind of show, and they took away the suicide tape seconds after he found it -- in what was already a pretty contrived way, to be honest -- so then it would just be Saul and Carrie sitting around going, "Yep." Yep, last season was totally Carrie getting cocked up and screwed around. Yep, now we both look crazy. Yep, David Estes is kind of the Agamemnon here. And Carrie saying, "You know what we should do is, tell a bunch of people. But do it in a raving, hysterical manner. Like maybe break into some people's houses and become obsessed with them. Or just run around on their lawn."
But on the plane, guess what. That was a dummy SD card in the fake lining, and in fact the real SD card is in a fake compartment of the lock on the outside of the briefcase. So if you ever have to sneak terrorism evidence out of a country where you should not be, past the Hezbollah thugs running airport security, so that you can prove your most brilliant CIA person is not crazy, I suggest you invest in one of those. How handy.
CARRIE
At 3:20 AM, meanwhile, is in bed upstairs at Dad's house, listening to her horrible jazz probably and finishing up her report on Operation Fatima Ali. That's not a time you should be up; in fact, it is called the Hour of the Wolf in my family, and what it means is that your ass should be at home in bed, dreaming of San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Brian Wilson and planning your baseball-themed gay wedding to him. Not writing about the fifteen times you nearly got your ass shot in the eye back in Beirut, not wearing a fake wedding ring and boning gross guys, none of that. Go to bed, Carrie. Go to bed, Carrie Mathison.
Dad: "Carrie, do you know the difference between what you're doing right now and what a crazy person would do?"
Carrie: "Yes, Dad!"
Dad: "Really? Because a crazy person would say that."
Carrie: "God, Dad! I'm just writing a CIA report. I just need like two more hours."
Dad: "One more hour. But seriously, how am I to know if this is actually important in a normal way, or important right this second because you are wired? There is no way for me to know that. And you acting like an exasperated child doesn't..."
Carrie: "My eyes light up the same way either way, Dad. I'm okay. In fact, I feel pretty great! Pretty grrrrrreat!"
Dad: "See, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about."
Carrie: "...Ah. Gotcha. Point taken."
BRODY
Jessica finds a speech Nick is writing for her veteran fundraiser thing, and -- one hand literally clutching at pearls -- proceeds to read it. Because he is a man who does not speak, really, she's surprised by what she reads. Less so than we are, because we know him better than she does and we don't even know him that well, but it's still pretty effective.
By my third year in captivity, I knew that this was where I was gonna die, that I had to accept that, make peace with it, so that's what I did. I prepared to die... But I didn't die. Somehow I got to come home to a wife and two kids I'd talked myself into believing would be just fine -- no, better off -- without me. I mean, how could they really know me anymore?
It's entirely the acting, as usual, that sells the sexy sex that proceeds from this point. Not really recappable, except to note that Jessica hasn't ever stopped trying to welcome him home, and that his body is a strange diplomat from a foreign country that neither of them actually speak the language of, and it's always saying multiple things at the same time, and that's confusing, and scary, and there's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait and there's a lot of ow-you're-leaning-on-my-hair and basically watching them even get to first base is tremendously uncomfortable. So that happens, and then it's interrupted by Dana and that Xander kid coming home, and it's either a trick of the light or I am like the grossest person, or else -- and I'm pretty sure it's this last one -- we do the rest of the scene in the presence of Nick Brody's confused and dismayed, yet still hopeful, erect penis.
Brody Family: "How come we're all standing around the house in the middle of the day with boners? Haven't we heard of school and/or work?"
Xander: "I graduated last year. My prospects are few."
Dana, verbatim: "Slow day in Congress, Dad?"
Anyway, Nick gets a call from Roya Hammad and heads outside, while the people inside all simultaneously realize that, in the fury of the abortive lovemaking, Jessica and Nick managed to smash a coffee mug Chris made when he was just a baby. So now a shattered coffee mug has officially gotten more screen time than that kid.
TERRORIST STUFF
Roya: "Nick, don't talk just listen okay? The Tailor in Gettysburg that they keep showing in the Previouslies for no reason, now there's a reason. An email they found in Beirut put him on their radar so you need to move him to a safehouse 60 miles west of his little shop. Nobody else can do it because you are the only one who knows him or has ever met him, and I can't just call him and tell him to move because I'm a little intense -- quote 'I might unnerve him unnecessarily' -- and he's been embedded for like years and probably is going to get rogue and paranoid no matter what happens. So you need to go look him in the eye with those baby blues and weird mouth you've got, and reassure him, and put him in a truck and take him away, and hope he doesn't run off or smash you with a big rock. Is there a problem, Nicholas?"
Nick: "I have a speech at a dinner for wounded veterans tonight in DC that the VP's attending, I'm standing here with a boner and my kid is like ten yards away, I'm married to somebody I hate..."
Roya: "Think of it this way. He's the person who fitted you with your suicide vest. He's the only person who knows what you nearly did that day. Do you want him found and interrogated?"
Nick: "...Man, sometimes being a Congressman and a terrorist is a real hassle. You know that?"
MATHISONS
Danny: "Hello, Carrie's Dad. Is she here?"
Dad: "CIA never heard of email?"
Carrie: "Shut up and go make me a sandwich, crazy. Danny, here is that report."
Danny: "Okay, the debrief is at six. It would be earlier, except David Estes is totally freezing you out and it's actually like at three."
Carrie: "Then I'll see you at six!"
Danny: "Carrie, I know that you can't be trusted and you'll never have your job back, but I just wanted to say that you are better than everybody else. Good work out there."
Carrie: "As long as I get my job back! See you at six!"
TAILOR
Just like last time, Nick looks like such a fucking terrorist approaching the Tailor's shop he could have bought a Unibomber costume at the Halloween store on his way to Gettysburg.
Brody: "Hey, get your shit and let's go."
Tailor: "This is you reassuring me?"
Brody: "I'm not a very comforting person. I can be a little intense, I realize that about myself. Now pack a bag before the CIA shows up and takes us both out."
Tailor: "Can you give me any more information? Can you comfort me in any way?"
Brody: "They came close to killing our fearless leader in Beirut, and are onto you. I'm taking you to a safehouse."
Tailor: "The way you're saying it makes me feel like you are going to shoot me in the head."
Brody: "To be fair, the way I say most things comes off that way."
Nick spots a random truck outside with a random person inside, and kicks it up another notch.
Tailor: "Put me down! Let me pack a bag! I'm a grown man, not a kitten!"
Brody: "No time for a bag now. I saw a truck. Stop yelling. Stop breathing. Do everything that I say. Or you will die."
Tailor: "Yeah, this is way less stressful than a phone call from a beautiful BBC reporter."
CARRIE'S CLASS
A very distracted Carrie, as the debrief looms and Danny still hasn't texted confirmation, runs through some basics -- "Bob kisses his wife and children goodbye. Bob drives to work in a red car..." -- and when one of them gets her attention and asks what her problem is, there's a big laugh from the group: "No text from boyfriend?"
Carrie: "I only have one boyfriend, and it is Justice. I used to have another one, but I kind of accused him of being in Al-Qaeda during a romantic weekend away. Also he is married and a Congressman and he put me in the booby hatch. So now it's just Justice. And Justice is not returning my motherfucking phone calls."
Her hope, however, is stronger than her fear. You don't want to borrow trouble, you understand, from the future: It can take a lifetime to develop this skill, of just saying to a given anxiety that either A) It's going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it but prepare, or B) It's not going to happen, and you should stop worrying about it over and over as your self comes undone. When your body feels anxiety it's because your mind has time-traveled to the worst possible future, and your body is reacting to a thing that is not actually there.
And Carrie knows this, so she's applying Occam's Razor: Danny said he would text confirmation of the debrief at six. Nobody at the CIA has contacted her, therefore there is no reason to presume that anything has changed. All true. But the bit is where Wired Carrie comes in, and that realism turns into optimism which starts looking like something else, a third thing. A little too bright.
BRODY
Interminably is how it goes. The safehouse is at the end of what seems like infinite road; like it's approaching a hyperbolic limit. And the more stressed the Tailor gets, the more stressed Nick gets, and like with anything else his responses are not the standard responses, so then he just stresses out the Tailor more, and so on.
Tailor: "What happens when we get there?"
Brody: "I drop you off. You sit there. I forget you exist."
Tailor: "And then what?"
Brody: "Bitch, I don't know. I'm just the Wheel Man."
Tailor: "Great. Because before you were the Wheel Man, you were the Blow Up The Vice President Man. And I can't help but notice..."
Brody: "Stop giving me the side-eye, man. If it wasn't [sic] for me, you'd probably be on your way to Guantanamo by now."
Tailor: "Yeah, you're a real human being and a real hero."
Brody: "I see what you did there. Hey, why don't you tell me your name? That's a classic way to make sure I don't just kill you."
Tailor: "No. Well, okay I will. It's Bassel."
Brody: "Nice to meet you, Bassel. My name is Nick Brody, and I am the craziest."
Boom! Flat tire.
JESSICA & HER NEW BFF
Waltz around the room for tonight's dinner, supervising all the finishing touches.
SLOTUS: "Did you bring his speech, for the teleprompter guys?"
Jessica: "I didn't even think of that! I am such a goddamn rube!"
SLOTUS: "It's fine. Let's just send somebody over to get it at his office."
Jessica: "I just remembered how my husband is completely unreliable. Dang it, he's going to screw this up for me, isn't he?"
SLOTUS: "Jessica, stop being nervous. Your marriage is 'a great American story that's just beginning.' You're a beautiful woman, Nick is so charismatic..."
Jessica: "Here we go with the swinger come-on. I knew it was coming. What's your angle, lady? He likes to watch? I bet he likes to watch. Well, let me tell you that watching me have sex with my husband is the least titillating thing that has ever happened on Showtime."
BRODY
They try to change the tire, but there's no jack in the car, and there's a whole bit where Bassel picks up a giant rock to murder Nick with, and then Nick makes him sit behind the car so he can drive it forward onto an ingenious log that will act as a jack, and they don't really trust each other because guess what, terrorists are not great guys.
Jessica: "Brody! Where is your speech and what is your twenty?"
Brody: "I can't talk right now. For reasons."
Jessica: "How many? Are they lies?"
Brody: "Fifteen, and all of them are lies."
Jessica: "You gotta see these tablecloths!"
Brody: "I don't have time to talk about your stupid tablecloths or your social climbing bullshit right now because I got a terrorist guy with a rock over here. Please shut up."
Jessica: "I would estimate that the ballroom could contain 850-875 people at full capacity, but of course a lot of these veterans are disabled so the tables are a bit bigger than usual, a little taller. How big would you estimate a table would need to be to accommodate..."
Brody: "Shut up shut up shut up"
Jessica: "Listen, I was going to wear this red dress with a giant rosette on the left shoulder but you know, I really look good in pink so I was thinking about wearing pink, Brody do you remember that dress I bought I guess it would be about six months ago now that time that we took Dana to the mall for school shopping and there were those ski pants, remember, and so do you remember that dress because I was trying to describe it to somebody earlier and I'm not sure but would you call that, in your opinion, was the color of that dress more of a dusky rose, or like a..."
Brody: "Shut up shut up shut up I HAVE TO GO."
LANGLEY
David's admin Lorraine does not seem too invested or interested in Carrie's nonsense, but she's friendly enough. Carrie's able to sit still for approximately one third of a second before she's up and at 'em. Maybe it's that intuition, maybe not, but either way she zeroes in on the debrief immediately. And how it's going on, even though she isn't there despite being the main star of the whole operation, even though it's only 5:45 and Danny never texted to confirm. The whole drive to Langley she listened to her jazz; she'd catch herself smiling, and shut it down.
Debrief: "...and Abu Nazir's network, which indicates that right now, Iran has mustered all hands on deck to strike us on our own..."
Carrie: "OH HEY GUYS AM I LATE?"
Estes: "Carrie, you can't be in here. This is a CIA conference room for CIA people."
Carrie: "Really? Because even the actual CIA manual says you debrief with the person who was in the field. Which was me. Awesomely."
Estes: "Yeah but it's you, so we're just using your report instead."
Carrie: "It's 'me'? What does that mean?"
Estes: "Just that your reports are always so good it's like having the person, you, standing there explaining everything."
Carrie: "Okay so like why am I here? Why did Danny drop off the map and not answer my messages?"
Estes: "Because I wanted to talk to you anyway and say thanks! Great job!"
Carrie: "Like a fucking pat on the back?"
Estes: "Well, yeah. You did great."
Carrie: "Okay, I can't figure out a way to have a problem with that without making myself look stupid."
It's not stupid to want to do the thing that you're good at. She's about to be very embarrassed for wanting things she shouldn't be wanting -- she is always embarrassed for wanting things she shouldn't -- but this part isn't stupid. When you were made to do a thing, there is nothing stupid about ignoring everything that is not that thing. And if you eliminate all other possibilities, all that's left is the impossible. She didn't walk in there like an idiot, she walked in there like a person with no other option but hope.
Estes: "The stuff you pulled out of the Beirut apartment, against expectations, was actually actionable. And that's all I can tell you, because none of this is your problem anymore."
Carrie: "Aw, come on."
Estes: "Carrie, you didn't come here today expecting to get reinstated."
Carrie: "No way! That would be crazy."
He offers to walk her out. I've always wondered if, and how, he loved her, long ago. Even when he's disrespecting her to her face, he does it with such respect. He doesn't spend a lot of time sparing her feelings, which I think is really respectful. Loving. It's how, I think, he would treat anybody, but somehow with Carrie -- of all people -- I've always thought he came across as a particularly good boss.
I find a lot of comfort in the unchangeable. I know that a lack of options is really scary for some people, because we think the world owes us, but just give me something hard to put my back against, to consider what's imperative among the things that are left. Once you know some things for sure, even shitty things, they just become constants in the equation and you can go back to focusing on the variables. The thing about rock bottom is that you finally have somewhere to stand.
She makes it to the elevator before she falls apart. The doors close -- they have to -- before Carrie can lean back, against the wall of the elevator. It's a long way down.
BRODY
Once the flat's fixed, it's time for gas. Nick instructs Bassel to stay in the car, and he throws up just enough random protests in sequence -- "I need to pee! I need more tobacco!" -- that anybody who's put a three-year-old to bed knows what's about to happen. Kindly enough, Nick gets the guy another pouch of tobacco on the way out -- but Bassel has, of course, since vanished.
CARRIE
Is packing a bag, with her back against the wall, when her Dad finds her. It's clear they've found another way to violate her, to humiliate her, and he's so mad he can't see straight. What he can see, though, is the way she's vibrating. He reminds her once again of the importance of routine, of sleep and schedule, but for once she's with him on that: Yes. In her own bed. The only thing, now, that is hers.
BRODY
After some chasing, some running, some falling down and standing up, Bassel manages to impale himself on some old jagged fence metal, and Brody spends a fair amount of time trying to keep him alive, because he is decent.
Bassel: "You are gonna need to take me to the hospital."
Brody: "Well, that's not happening."
Bassel: "But I'm going to die!"
Brody: "That is a failure of will, Bassel the Tailor. Sack up."
Bassel: "No like I got a hole most of the way through me, see..."
Brody: "Kill that thought, mister."
Bassel: "Okay, Marine stuff. Got it. Very helpful, this yelling at me."
Jessica: "Brody, are you busy? I feel like chatting some more."
Brody: "I am cradling a terrorist's head to my bosom while he bleeds out from his abdomen. Make it quick."
Jessica: "The VP is on his way to this party and I am wearing a pretty dress..."
Brody: "Right, about that fundraiser. I kind of had a flat."
Jessica: "You're doing this to punish me. For what, I do not know."
Nick is physically unspooling right before our eyes, and Bassel is choking on blood, and it's kind of funny at the same time, and also but he keeps saying things in weird ways where the details don't add up, and the only reason she's not calling bullshit is that she's a little pissed and a lot scared that he's going to ruin this moment for her, and she has no idea how trivial this sounds to him, and he has less idea than he should how maddening his distracted, murderous air is getting, and I think it's about to rain... I don't know, it's hilarious in a way I don't remember this show indulging, but also well darker than most of the things that happen on this show. Maybe because it's also so funny. It's the kind of virtuoso shit where the balance itself is more important than what's even really going on.
Especially important when Nick finally has to just snap the guy's neck.
FUNDRAISER
VP Walden: "So what's the plan? Who'm I supposed to go up there and introduce now?"
MVP Jessica, awesomely verbatim: "Don't worry, sir. This is my mess."
She takes the podium, stumbling nervously over her words at first. It's a performance on par with the leads, this layered anger and nervousness and stuttering and rambling speech that slowly circles and then strikes at the heart of everybody in the room before they know what hit them. Gorgeous stuff.
"My name is Jessica Brody. My husband Nick Brody -- who most of you know was rescued and returned to us after eight years as a prisoner of the terrorists -- had prepared a speech about the challenges of coming home, but I'm afraid he's had car trouble and isn't going to make it here tonight. So I'm afraid this means you're stuck with me... Car trouble! Pretty sure when he was a prisoner in Iraq, he never thought he'd have to deal with something so humdrum as a flat tire again..."
Five-finger exercises and throat-clearing. She puts her back against the wall and considers her imperative and remembers the pages on the table. How it felt the first time she tried to touch him. The unchangeable fact is that he's not coming to this party; the facts are that these people are here to hear something good. She breathes, she focuses and dives in.
"You know, fundraisers and political speeches are great and everything, but I can't help thinking one of the best ways to help our wounded warriors starts with the family. Because one thing I do know... I'd have been able to support my husband better if I'd been more ready. After eight years of loneliness, eight years of not seeing each other... If someone had warned me how he'd look at me, as if he didn't know me anymore... How violent his nightmares would be, that he would attack me in his sleep. How he didn't know what to say to the kids those first few weeks, how hard intimacy of any kind would be for him... If someone had actually warned me in plain English how hard coming home would be for him, that I'd need to adjust my expectations..."
Cribbed from his speech, the parts that touched her. The parts that were most true. But this puts them at their level or below, which is not what the speech was meant to do. It's okay to say she's as wounded as the men out there -- Mike Faber, still in love with her; Lauder, beautiful and broken; the Waldens, looking at her like she's the last chocolate in the box -- but she can't stay that way at the end of the speech. They want her to welcome them, to play the hostess, to call them home again. With her back against something hard, she realizes her imperative: He's every soldier. And she's every wife.
You're a great American story that's just beginning.
"What I'm saying is what if, with some of this money, we could set up a place where families could get ready for their veterans coming home? An actual place, where they can learn from other families who have been through... who are still going through it. Because in the end, we're all fighting this war together."
They applaud, forever, as she blushes. She makes him look better, in his absence, than he could have done if he were there. The Waldens knew it the second she took the stage. She doesn't realize it until she's stepped down again.
Mike takes her home, of course.
Mike: "You hardly said a word the whole way. Want to talk about it?"
Jessica, testing: "You coming in for a nightcap?"
He doesn't really trust her, yet. Not that much. Nor himself. Mike's a good guy.
Mike: "You were amazing tonight... Maybe it was just car trouble. You might want to cut him some slack."
Jessica: "Cut him some slack? Hey, guess what. He spent a whole weekend with Carrie Mathison, not that long ago. And she is insane. So yeah, I'm not really interested in cutting any slack. At least, not as much as I am interested in using whatever leverage I've got to get back some of the stuff he keeps taking from me."
Mike: "What I'm hearing is that I've got a shot at fucking you."
Jessica: "Then we're already communicating more clearly than I have done with my husband since he came back from the dead."
HOME
They make it nearly to the door before Brody drives up. He menaces Mike hardcore, in that Nick Brody way -- freshly scrubbed in a truckstop shower, still wet -- and manages to imply a few times that Jessica is a whore before Mike finally just gives up trying to be a solid dude and takes off.
Jessica: "So you pretty much tanked the only thing I asked you to do, and now you are all wet. And I am feeling pretty grody about what I just almost did, which cranks everything up several notches."
Brody: "Well, from my end I just wasted the entire day cleaning up after my worst day as a terrorist, snapped a neck, dug a hole in the rain, and came home to my best friend and wife, once again sharing a normal life I can barely even see anymore. So I'm just going to blame you for not keeping a jack in the car. I'm gonna say it like six times, as though it completely absolves me. Because in a real situation, it would."
Jessica: "And the whole story about why you were driving all over the East Coast today, the one that didn't hang together...? Actually, you know what? Save it."
Brody: "Ah. So we're doing the whole I don't want to hear your lying explanations so somehow explain yourself without talking thing. The most bullshitty passive-aggressive way of controlling a conversation since We need to talk."
Jessica: "I'll throw in a divorce threat too, motherfucker. I have no shame tonight."
CARRIE'S APT
What a hammer would do in a world without nails is probably try, for a while, to be something else. Pounding tent pegs, cracking nuts. Wrapped in sock or two, for softer mallet jobs. But eventually he'd be up against the wall, and he'd consider his imperative. The lack of options. Carrie didn't walk into Langley like a stupid person, she walked into Langley like a person with no option but hope. And they took that away, too. So she packed her bags, moved out of the safety of her father's home. Back to the place she fell in love, and lost her mind. Where all the memories went.
When you think about the ingredients of your life, the broad-spectrum basics of the day to day, what do you have? Location. Rooms, objects. You have your intellectual pursuits, your jazz music. You have the things you like to eat and drink, and the people who love you. Maybe God, or something that means the same thing to you. But all those things are relatively portable, aren't they? Those things mean as much on one coast as on the other.
The night we met this Carrie Mathison, she shrugged on a few layers and a fake wedding ring, and went out to meet the world. The Carrie that did that, maybe you would say she was a mess but she lived here, at least. She knew what side her bread was buttered on. She had an equilibrium that, to an outside observer, wouldn't look too much like equilibrium. But she knew she was safe. It was a balance that she'd negotiated for herself, half in work and half in play, nobody getting close enough to see the cracks.
So she puts on that girl like a costume, like she's only an inch-deep. And that doesn't feel right either. She looks at herself in the mirror, for a long time, until she sees what's missing: Her purpose. She's a hammer in a world without nails. And without working hard, there's no need to play hard. Like this. Half an equilibrium is a contradiction in terms. There is not a place for her in this world; just a Carrie-shaped hole they've plastered over. So she'll go.
That girl in the mirror gives her the nod, as she counts out her pills and washes them down. She curls up on that girl's bed, wearing her dress; still wearing her earrings, even. She breathes. David Estes, Virgil and Max. Maggie and Dad. Fatima Ali and Lynne Reed. September 11, 2001. Saul Berenson. Nicholas Brody. Abu Nazir. Some she saved, some she wasn't allowed to save. She sees the world burning, and she says goodbye.
She rests. She needs it. Perhaps hours. Extremities getting cold and then numb. But here's the thing about that: You are not defined by the things you are, any more than you're defined by the things you are not. If you spent ten years writing down everything that you are, every label you can think of, the amount that's not on the list would still dwarf it. You were not designed to fit into containers. It's a basic move in every religion and philosophy: In accepting the nothing that you have been given, you receive everything.
It isn't hope that shakes her from a sound sleep; from death. And it's not providence or grace, as much as I would like to say that it is. What gets her to the bathroom is gratitude for the knowledge that nothing means anything at all. What she vomits up is hope, and paralysis, and the comfort of a place where she can rot. Every Carrie she's hated and every Carrie she loves. It isn't panic, it's emptiness. It's preparation for what happens , in the silence. It's a funeral for a girl who never really lived.
There are parts of you that live in the past. There are parts of you that live in the future; some of them beautiful and some of them terrifying. There are parts of you that live in other people, or among the dead, or in a different world's 9/11 where nothing special happened that day. There are parts of you that want to live up to your parents' expectations, or your handlers. There are parts of you that dwell their days in silent rooms, dreaming of Nick Brody and the infinite lives you could have had. There are parts of you that live in an unreachable future where science has relieved you of your disability and you can contain them all. Where these disparate parts of you all come together, in one beautiful girl who is absolutely on fire without purpose.
Rock bottom is the only safe place to stand; build there and nobody can ever knock it down again. It isn't hope that shakes her from a sound sleep, or grace or providence or anything particularly special. It's just Carrie. It always was.
AND IT'S SAUL
He knows her well enough to bash on the door until she wakes, swimming up from the depths into the light, and looks around herself. He knocks, and he knocks. He holds her, for a moment; he commiserates.
Saul: "I can only imagine how shitty Langley must have felt today."
Carrie: "You know, before Beirut I really thought I'd finally found a way to cope with being out of the Company."
Saul grins, proud; tells her to hold that thought. She shakes a little when he hands her the SD card; she can't imagine what could be on it that would have him so quietly pleased. That would have him here, interrupting her funeral.
"My name is Nicholas Brody, and I'm a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. People will say I was broken, I was brainwashed. People will say that I was turned into a terrorist. Taught to hate my country. My action this day is against such domestic enemies. The Vice President and members of his national security team, who I know to be liars and war criminals. I was right. Responsible for atrocities they were never held accountable for. You were right. This is about justice for 82 children whose deaths were never acknowledged and whose murder is a stain on the soul of this nation. And I want to tell you about one of these children..."
To believe it, to trust it. Even right there in front of you, Nick in his dress whites like an American story that's just beginning. She looks at Saul, smile playing on the edges of her mouth. She twitches, too much electricity running through her as she tries to collate, to collect. To remember what hope was like, before she died; before it was embarrassing to want to save the world. When she remembers, there isn't even time to smile before the tears are on her. Pouring like a flood, like a fire, as the world puts itself back together around her.
"I was right."
WEEK
Estes puts together a new team in the hopes of getting Nick to bait his handler into the open, while Carrie just does whatever the hell she feels like doing as usual.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife and Homeland for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, his novel The Urges, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this month on Tor.com.