After an adorably slow reveal from Saul regarding the nature of Brody's confessional video, Estes authorizes an operation involving Nick's kryptonite -- Carrie Mathison, whose employment at the CIA is edging back towards probable now that last season's entire finale is proving to be one giant mistake on his part -- but led by a new guy, the enigmatic and oddly proportioned yet supernaturally beautiful Analyst Peter Quinn.
He looks kind of like if Orlando Bloom were playing Mr. Mxyzptlk or the Great Gazoo, and he is wonderful. He's been Estes's favorite for a while on the homefront -- even Carrie forms an instant bond with him, because he is interesting and weird and neurologically atypical and very, very good at his job. Oh, and also on the team are Virgil and Max! I never thought we'd see those dudes again! Nice.
But before we get into the operation, which is almost the entire episode: Dana sasses the Vice President gorgeously and in his own West Drawing Room or whatever, which pushes Finn all the way into being adorably in love. He takes her on a midnight jaunt up the Washington Monument and lays one on her, leading to one of the coolest and most charmingly authentic scenes in what I may in the future claim -- in retrospect, once the dazzle has worn off -- as the best episode of this entire show.
Meanwhile, Lauder is getting' his drunk sexy all over Jessica's house until Mike once again saves the day. Mike and Lauder put the pieces of Tom Walker's death together in almost the right shape, but for the fact that Jessica mentioned the CIA last week, so now they're thinking Nick Brody and Tom Walker were somehow working together that day the VP nearly died. Between getting stuck with Lauder and Nick missing the fundraiser last week, Jessica seems just about set on getting a divorce -- and underlines it by sending Brody to a hotel for the night.
Phase I of Carrie spooking Nick into running to his handler, then, involves randomly running into him outside of Langley, and you immediately see what's coalescing here: It's the old Hunger Game, Real Or Not Real, where they are both running into an old lover and "running into an old lover." The team misses it, but Nick does run straight to Roya, who tells him to stay the course and use his bond with Carrie to shake some trees in turn.
And so it is that in Phase II, while staking out the hotel, Carrie gets a call from Nick himself -- "This is not a booty call," he lie/truth/lies -- so she meets him at the hotel bar. He's operating and not operating on Roya's orders; she's operating and not operating on Quinn's; they're both authentically happy for a pretext to see each other after their random run-in earlier... It's dizzying and wonderful and a little overwhelming.
After a lot of fencing and a lot of flirting, Nick finally strikes a little too deep with questions about her ECT treatments. She drops her smile just long enough for him to make her, and he bounces. But Saul and Quinn back at HQ don't entirely buy this like spiritual connection they have, so -- against all evidence we have ever seen on this program, ever -- they second-guess her feelings on this and tell her to come back in, despite her protestations that he'll somehow signal his people.
Can you guess what her ass does ? Yeah, you got it. Right on up to his hotel room, playing the nookie card until her resentment rises from her gut like a giant barf and suddenly, radically -- I mean, you couldn't guess this bit -- everything changes. Scrubbing the mission entirely, Carrie's off on a roll getting him to admit that he's an Al-Qaeda agent on tape, and admitting she was fully in love with him the entire time, and calling him a traitor to his country and his family, and telling him to fuck off for making her go crazy... All right before some CIA dudes come busting down the hotel room door, and put a big ol' black sack over his head.
So: What is left of the show you remember at this point? Because my God, do I love the one we're watching now.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Carrie was right.
ESTES RESIDENCE
Carrie's failures were not only Carrie's: They were Saul's, as her handler, and they were David's, as her boss. In front of David, Saul was embarrassed in one way; as colleagues they were embarrassed, together, in another. Saul is not a solemn man, exactly, but I don't know that we've ever seen this much ... glee, burbling underneath. And his reasons are clean.
Estes's kid answers the door in a Darth Vader mask, which could foreshadow almost anything at all on this show. Estes has a child, that's fascinating. Kenny's here for the week.
Lord Vader: "I am your father. Don't make me destroy you!"
Saul: "I like your kid."
David: "Something going on? Iran?"
Saul: "Hee, hee. Kind of!"
David: "Spit it out, Saul."
Saul: "This one time, VP Walden almost got blown up!"
David: "Recently?"
Saul: "Remember when Elizabeth Gaines was shot and they dragged him down with the cronies? Remember? Do you?"
David: "Yeah, I was there, so..."
Saul: "You know who else was there? A person with a suicide vest!"
David: "That's a scary story, Saul."
Saul: "He made a videotape confession! I have it somewhere on my person!"
David: "Uh, can I see it?"
Saul: "Close your eyes and count to ten and I will hide it somewhere in this room! We can play Hotter/Colder!"
David: "Or like, you could just show it to me."
Saul: "David, do you realize how much fun this is? I'm a spy. Telling a secret is like, the one thing I never get to do! Let me enjoy this."
The whole dog-and-pony makes a lot more sense once David sees who's on the tape. He puts the facts together, collects and collates them in the same order Carrie did. There's no wrong more wrong than being wrong about being right: It's too mind-blowing to incorporate something like this into a previously self-consistent worldview, so you have to backtrack carefully. You don't want to end up questioning everything, if you see what I'm saying; you'd end up in color-coded Carrie Mathison. Hell, if you really paid attention to the cracks in what you think you know... if the world lined up in front of you to tell you exactly how wrong you were, and are; if they locked you up for being wrong when your whole body knew you were right.
Estes: "So why didn't he go through with it? Maybe he was tired after making this exceedingly long suicide tape."
Saul: "I don't know. Maybe something random like a crazy woman showed up on his lawn and activated his daughter's intuition with a magical touch, so she was moved by forces beyond her ken to place an unrealistically clear cell phone call to her terrorist father and ask him not to blow you up, without really consciously understanding either of those things were going on."
Estes: "That seems unlikely to say the least, but this show is really fucking good. It's okay to let those kind of things slide sometimes."
Estes: "So why didn't he go through with it? Maybe he was tired after making this exceedingly long suicide tape."
Saul: "I don't know. Maybe something random like a crazy woman showed up on his lawn and activated his daughter's intuition with a magical touch, so she was moved by forces beyond her ken to place an unrealistically clear cell phone call to her terrorist father and ask him not to blow you up, without really consciously understanding either of those things were going on."
Estes: "That seems unlikely to say the least, but this show is really fucking good. It's okay to let those kind of things slide sometimes."
Saul: "So we could arrest Nick right now and that would be the end of it (and of this show, you're thinking, but you're wrong), or ... we could use him as bait."
Estes: "How come? Explain it to me like I'm five, rather than the Director of the CIA."
Saul: "Iran wants revenge on the US because of the Israel bombings, they've said so publicly. And Nazir was the agent of that plan, that's why he was in Beirut..."
Estes: "So you want to see how Brody fits into it. All right, smart. But how do I tell Walden? He's kind of an asshole."
Saul: "Haha, don't! Fuck 'im, let's just let him twist. They're practically swingers at this point anyways."
Estes: "Okay, I'll give you a secret off-book team made up of everybody from last season, like Virgil and the beautiful Max, and even Crazy Carrie. But I have to add somebody, my favorite guy in the whole world. His name is Peter Quinn, and he is the boss of you."
Saul: "Is he a tool?"
Estes: "Kind of. But adorable. And mentally off in some key ways."
Saul: "So we've got Carrie and Quinn, Virgil and Max who are cartoon characters, and the two of us who always end up letting Carrie do whatever Carrie wants -- versus the Vice President of the United States, who is a radicalized jihadist with connections that go all the way to the top in several governments, who we've already stalked once for an entire season and who knows all of our tricks and Carrie's in love with him. What could go wrong?"
Estes: "That's pretty crazy how she was right about everything, huh?"
Saul: "Not gonna lie, it feels good in a variety of ways."
Estes: "What do you think being unemployed will be like?"
Saul: "According to Carrie it involves vegetable lasagna."
BRODY
Jessica: "I'm lying in this bed with hooded eyes because my anger has sapped my life force."
Nick: "Can I offer you some of my patented bumbling Homer Simpson shtick?"
Jessica: "Give me an espresso, and leave."
Nick: "Or we could have the same conversation we have three times every episode, about how you don't trust me and you want to trust me so I'd better do something trustworthy like tell you one thing that is not a lie..."
Jessica: "Do it!"
Nick: "...But either I am unable to do that, or I lie about lying about lying. Either way, we're dissatisfied with ourselves and each other."
Jessica: "On the upside, you haven't forced me to watch you masturbate in weeks so that's good. All things considered, though, you are fired. Pack a bag."
Xander: "So your dad's in the woodshed, huh?"
Dana: "Holy shit. I knew you were old, but are you a grandpa? Who says that?"
Xander: "Sorry, I was distracted by the pain in my dentures."
Dana: "Anyway, yeah. There were like 200 people who were there specifically to see him speak, and he fucked up, so he gets the shed."
Xander: "Sometimes I can't tell what is your mother being righteous and what is just her being thrilled to have a justification for her passive-aggressive drama."
Dana: "I mean, she's been through a lot. But yeah, I know."
Dropped off at school, Dana grabs her backpack out of the backseat, revealing Nick's packed bag: "Well, that's a good sign." They discuss how Jessica has total justification for her nonsense this time, and Dana notes that his car smells like Bassel the Tailor's last cigarette. Her noncommittal, typically annoyed blowoff of this fact could mean anything. Maybe she's wondering if the CIA lady was, or is, a smoker.
Finn Walden, out of nowhere: "Quick, who wrote the Declaration of Independence?"
Dana: "Thomas Jefferson?"
Finn: "Correct. And for extra credit, how many kids did he have with Sally Hemings?"
Dana: "Ugh."
Finn: "What did I say? Does your dad have a secret family with a slave? My bad."
Dana: "No. Well, kind of. My dad is a liar, and my mom's a rube."
Finn: "Mine too! Except I don't think my mom is exactly blameless in any of this."
Dana: "Depending on the episode, neither do I."
They laugh the hysterical laugh of dysfunctional white kids who don't actually have real problems, and head on into their private academy with the rest of the children of America's elite so they can learn how better to conserve their families' hegemony.
TEAM QUINN HQ
Virgil: "It's me, Virgil! I live under a toadstool."
Max: "I am beautiful yet incompetent. We are cousins or maybe brothers, who can say."
Virgil: "Cheers for being right about everything, Carrie! But jeers for nobody believed you and you ended up bughouse crazy."
Peter Quinn: "Who are these little guys? Why does that one ride a pig and wear a little vest?"
Saul: "They spent all last season watching Brody with me, and even managed not to become sexually obsessed with him. So they're 2-0. Meanwhile, who are you?"
Quinn: "I am Peter Quinn, the absolute best new thing on this show or any show. Suck it, Roya Hammad!"
Quinn: "I'm trying to decide if I have a problem with Carrie's magical elves. I do enjoy an elf, who doesn't, but I don't love surprises."
Carrie: "I'm not crazy about 'em either."
Quinn: "Crazy, huh? Interesting word choice."
Carrie: "I will fucking fuck you up, son."
Quinn: "Just kidding, I'm a huge fan. That was just my way of demonstrating dominance. You know, like when you pee on a guy's shoe at the urinal."
Carrie responds to him -- maybe I'm projecting, but -- it seems like she responds to him in exactly the same way we, or I guess I, responded. I don't like the guy, but I sure do like him. The Harvey Dent feeling of half of you wants to run away from this douche, and the other one is like, "I am so glad you're finally here."
Quinn: "My bona fides as are follows. I'm an analyst, not an officer. I'm David Estes's favorite person, which you wouldn't know because most of your work the past decade has been in the Mideast and/or loony bin. I was on the Venezuela desk, working the cartels, for four years; he brought me to Langley six years ago."
Quinn's Plan: 24/7 Brody coverage until he does something. They've already tapped the security cameras in the Rayburn building, which is where the House has their offices, and are now going after his cell and landline. They are a secret team, which he makes sure to mention means we will never, ever see them: More elf than elf, they are.
Carrie: "So Saul and I thought up this awesome plan..."
Quinn: "Put a pin in that, because I'm not Pinterested and because I have no manners and because there is something going on with my brain chemistry. Here is what we're doing. Brody has a meeting today at the CIA, so we're going to throw you at him."
Carrie: "I can see that working, actually."
Quinn: "You're his Achilles' Heel, Carrie -- no homo -- so you just tell him you're back at the CIA, which will make him think you're back to thinking he's a terrorist. So then he will run to his handlers, and then we will go nuts on everybody."
Carrie: "That is so weird, we had the exact same plan."
Quinn: "[Something nondescriptly sassy and cute, but still unfiltered and mentally atypical.]"
Carrie, still thrown: "This guy over here, I tell ya."
Everybody in my entire life sent me an email at this exact moment saying that if Carrie slept with the tiny-face man, they would blow up the Vice President of something. God, I hope she does. First of all, he's awesome. Second of all, crazy hot. And third of all, he seems like a good model of her best option, in terms of balancing work and life and crazy while still keepin' it tight.
AT THE CAR WASH
Nick Brody: "Could you get this smell out of my car? It's a curious mix of Pouch Tobacco and Terrorist that somehow adds up to Whore."
Automotive Detailing Technician: "Lots of blood spatter..."
Nick: "What? Oh shit, do I have to kill you now too?"
Carwasher: "Sorry, it's my crazy accent and/or your aural hallucinations. What I said was bug splatter. Seems like you drove all over New England's highways and byways instead of going to a fundraiser you were supposed to speak at."
Nick: "Hey, can we talk about this for one million hours while Team Quinn listens and gets more and more bored and never figures out that we are talking about a suicide bomber guy that I worked with to murder people, treasonously tried to rescue last week, and ended up killing and burying in a shallow grave?"
Team Quinn: "God, I am so ironically bored right now."
Carwash Homie: "What flavor of smell do you want?"
Nick: "I dunno, Jazz? Chinese Takeout and Mood Stabilizers? Uh, what do you have that is the opposite of Little Boy On Fire?"
NEW CAR SMELL IT IS
Carrie stands around the Langley lobby, trying to present nonchalance while literally thousands of feelings go zipping across her face: Left to right, right to left, sometimes even up and down. The second she approached him at that AA meeting is when this show started feeling dangerous: If you can cross that line, you can cross any line. Every rational rule we have, we have for very good reasons, and when you do something like that, everything just becomes a line you can cross: The show scares and rewards us the same way Carrie scares and rewards the people in charge of evaluating her.
This is my favorite thing about the entire show, obviously: The Real Or Not Real thing about Nick and Carrie, the way no rational person could say Both And Neither, the way all of us are saying that all the time. Carrie's life as this Hall of Mirrors where each improvisation is a lie made up of truths, or the truth masquerading as a lie masquerading as the truth. Nick's life at times the opposite: A series of glaring admissions, complete disclosure, open and public and loud -- but spoken in a language only Carrie could understand.
Which sounds very romantic and very dramatic, but I'm not really about those things personally. I'm interested in other people's love lives because sociology is autobiography's big sister; because telling stories about other people, be they fictional or real, is the most honest way of talking about ourselves ever devised. It's not the drama, exactly, or the sort of soapy inconvenience to their affair -- which never seems unrealistic because the entire show is painted specifically around it; it is the spine -- but more the metaphor, which is that we are all spies and we are all lying and we are all desperate to tell the truth.
Nick gets hung up in the driveway, getting bitched at by his taxi driver for only having a card: "This is why no one wants the Langley jobs, because these paranoid spy types... They see you pass paper, they follow you the rest of the day."
An interesting take, an ironic response -- "Sure you're not the one who's paranoid?" -- and then, like he summoned her by name, she's there.
AT LANGLEY
If Carrie Mathison were to encounter Nicholas Brody on the steps at Langley, how would she behave?
She would laugh, shoulders drawn up, shy and thrilled to see him and embarrassed. Knowing the way her face moves, how it twitches when she feels too much. Blushing, recalling dimly the last time they interacted. She would hoot-hoot-hoot, hoom-hoom; hands jammed into pockets until the seams strained. Yesterday's rain still collected in the cobbles. She would stare into his eyes and anywhere but his eyes. She would be so full of shame that her body could not contain any other emotion, and she would be so full of joy that her body could not contain any other emotion.
Carrie: "I'm supposed to stay away from you."
Nick: "Oh, Carrie. No, it's fine..."
Carrie: "I did make that promise."
Nick: "So, how are you?"
Open as a window, with the sun streaming in. She would smile without any other thoughts behind it except to smile, hello, I am normal. The things about me that disgusted you are gone, burned out in a clinical fire. I tore my life apart and rebuilt it and now I'm just a girl, she'd be saying. Just a girl who bears you no ill will, who is everything you ever wanted: I am finally the girl we both wanted to love.
Carrie: "I am great. Actually, I owe that to you. You said I should get help, and I did. Long road back. You kind of ... saved me."
The kind of man who becomes a Marine, she'd be thinking. The kind of man who becomes a terrorist, the kind of man who would love a broken girl: They all want to hear that one. She'd put it in her pocket, intending it for later -- "You saved me" -- and then pull it out in the first ninety seconds, like eating dessert first. She'd apply it mindfully, to overpower and distract the asset. She'd say it desperately, to entrap the man she loves. She'd say it honestly, because it is true.
Carrie Mathison would laugh at herself, embarrassed for having said too much.
She laughs at herself, embarrassed for having said too much.
Carrie: "Anyway, I'm sure you're busy. Congressman!"
Nick: "And what about you? Are you back here?"
In a way, Carrie would say. Provisionally I'm back with the CIA for one last party. One thing I wasn't so wrong about. She give him a sidelong guarded smile with that one, because she gets the thing about him that not even Jessica understands (although Dana might): He is very rarely lying. Even when he's not telling the truth. So if Carrie ran into him on the steps of Langley, she would also be dealing with the man she accused wrongfully. She would look into his eyes, concerned and ashamed, but proud of him for moving past it, into glory. And then that too, she'd take away.
Carrie: "In a way. I, actually, can't tell you."
Nick: "Hmm."
Carrie: "I have good boundaries now! It's part of being well!"
"I'm well now," Carrie might say to the man she loved. "It's part of being well."
Their eyes would devour each other and they would try to say goodbye for a good long while. They'd agree to a truce, to a "see you later" they know won't ever come. She'd walk away, a menagerie. A collated collection. Real and not real.
"Peace?"
"Peace."
"I liked her," he'd think. They really connected, but she was broken and wrong and you can't heal a thing like that, not when your marriage is an American story that is only beginning. Ultimately it was heartbreaking, that she'd think such a thing about him.
"She's playing me," he'd think. She stole a little piece of his heart when he wasn't looking, and bored her way into his life. Maybe it's good that she went crazy; maybe when they broke her and put her back together, there was a seam over her heart where her suspicion used to be. Maybe she still wants to fuck him, and that could be useful.
The steps at Langley would fill up with Carries and Nicks, spilling out over the rain-soaked cobbles and into the driveway. Each whistling their own tune. Every Carrie watching another Carrie, fingers crossed for the performance. Every Nick watching another Nick, surrounded by eyes and interrogators, bend into his lie. There wouldn't be room for anybody else.
HOME
Lauder bashes at the door until Jessica opens it, and he shoves past her inside. Drunk, he's been stewing on the Tom Walker narrative and wants some answers. The drunken fool who sees better than everybody else isn't a cliché, exactly: He's useful because he's the clue in plain sight, he's the floppy disk that falls between the desk and the wall until the season finale. And because it's this show, he's tearing himself apart because what he knows -- like Jessica, like Dana, like Carrie -- doesn't line up with what everybody else purports to know. The difference, though, is that he's not a woman. A wounded warrior is even less reliable than a woman, because he used to be a man.
"He was a good Marine. A decent, reliable, righteous Marine. Someone twisted him up, put him on a bad path. Congressman or not, I'm not gonna let it slide. I'm gonna get to the bottom of this murky pool of shit."
Jessica rolls her eyes, and can't get through to Brody. Gee, wonder who she'll call, like, immediately.
QUINN HQ
Saul & Quinn: "You did so great! That was really inspiring to watch and listen to, the way you acted so completely like you were in love with him and so embarrassed about the shambles of your life. It almost came off like you barely care about him being a terrorist!"
Carrie: "Well, I'm good at my job. Mandy Patinkin, holla!"
They have eyes, but no ears. Roya approaches him at Rayburn, and they watch a silent conversation.
Roya: "We took care of the Tailor, so your mess is all cleaned up..."
Brody: "No, it's Carrie Mathison. She's back at the CIA. I'm assuming it has to be about me..."
Roya: "Whoa, girl. Maybe also it's Abu Nazir, the guy we're both crazy soldiers for? He's kind of her whole deal. And I mean, just an episode or so ago they tried to kill him, so..."
Brody: "All true. But that chick is stubborn as hell, and brilliant. And I am utterly fascinating, so..."
Roya: "Dude, she was fully discredited. Stop worrying about it."
Brody: "Sure looked like an infinite number of her on the steps at Langley, talking about some mysterious redheaded terrorist she was tracking for them. You should probably tell me to hook back up with her."
Roya: "You're right. You know what, I think you should hook back up with her."
Brody: "Are you sure?"
Roya: "Don't argue with me."
Brody: "By the way, everything about the Tailor situation was fucked. I am not happy these days about being a terrorist."
Roya: "Well, since this whole show is about that, you better pull it together."
QUINN HQ
Quinn: "Oh, so you were fucking him. Sorry, just catching up."
Carrie: "Fuck you, I was fucking him. Yes, but still. Who you fucking?"
Quinn: "An ER nurse, but she's more into me than I am into her."
Carrie: "That was rhetorical."
Quinn: "I don't care how tall and stately he is, if that guy did to me what he did to you? Got me fired? Made me think I was crazy? Sent me off to get electroconvulsive therapy? I would fucking rip his skin off."
Carrie: "Yeah, well. That's the plan. Or more precisely, it is a plan."
Grant Morrison said the neatest thing about Superman one time, he said something like the fact that Clark Kent is the only time where the secret identity is the one that's the lie. That Superman puts Clark Kent on like a suit, rather than the other way around. Superheroes wear masks to protect themselves from the world; Superman wears Clark to protect the world from himself.
Do Nicholas and Carrie love each other because they've been fooled by the other? Do they love each other because they think they've fooled the other? Do they love each other because that's the story they're telling themselves? Or is it possible that they put on "Nick" and "Carrie," pretend to be pretending, because it's the only way either of them can see the other clearly?
BRODY OFC
Betsy: "Does your wife understand that leaving a single message with me is equally as effective as calling dozens of times? What is it, do you think, that she believes irritating your secretary will do to help make electronics work more efficiently, or time move more quickly? Because between you and me, I'm starting to think it might start doing the opposite pretty soon if she doesn't pull it together."
BRODY HM
Mike Faber: "I'm here to save you from everything! I love you! But I am also a good guy!"
Jessica: "Ugh, just get Lauder off my kitchen table. I already have one maniac Marine in my house who I don't care for."
Mike: "So y'all didn't kiss and make up last night?"
Jessica: "There's this new thing I'm into where I tell anyone who will listen that I'm contemplating divorce."
Mike: "I'm so sure. You're the future SLOTUS, married to an American hero. You live inside the DC city limits and your kids go to school with the global elite. Get out of here you're contemplating divorce."
Jessica: "It's just a thing I'm trying! God."
Mike: "One of the things I love about you is your transparent opportunism, and never more so than when you cloak it in long-suffering martyrdom."
Jessica: "See? You just get me."
Brody calls and she bitches at him for seventy-five years while Carrie and Quinn listen in, which is how they figure out that Nick's living in a hotel right now.
Quinn's face: "Maybe there's a way we can use this situation to our nation's advantage!"
Carrie's face: "Maybe he's finally going to leave that bitch!"
If you think about it, Carrie is about as involved in Nick and Jess's marriage as anybody on the show, except perhaps Mike Faber. She was part of every conversation they had post-rescue, and I mean that literally: I mean even before either of them knew who she was, she knew how their marriage worked better than either of them does.
Lauder: "...And while I'm drunkenly putting everybody on shout, you clearly still want to fuck Jessica! And I think you have a shot!"
Mike: "What are you talking about, you drunk hot mess?"
Lauder: "Everybody is a terrorist! I am drunkenly going to take Nick Brody down! This passing out on his kitchen table is merely the first phase!"
WALDEN HM
Dana: "How you gonna own slaves and also write All men are created equal?"
Finn: "We don't ask questions like that anymore."
Dana: "Have you ever been to Monticello?"
Walden, appearing: "Boo! I am just here to act shitty to my kid."
Dana: "Uh, we have a history test tomorrow, so..."
Walden: "Who was Jefferson's Vice President?"
Finn: "Um..."
Walden: "Awww. Nobody cares about the Veep. Aaron Burr?"
Finn: "Right, the duel guy."
Walden: "Haha, you're so fucking stupid. Enjoy us buying your way into Yale. Don't you know better than to study with a stupid loser like my son? Gentleman's C's, all the way down the line. He's like a Bush baby."
Dana: "Yeah, well. He got an A on our quiz yesterday. Maybe Gentleman's C's don't get you there anymore. Not like in your day."
Walden: "Kitty's got claws! Walden out."
He leaves, telling secret soldiers to murder her over his wrist communicator, which is really just his wrist.
Dana: "So the VPOTUS is kind of a cunt, huh?"
Finn: "Do you want to go somewhere right now?"
Dana: "Like Monticello?"
Finn: "Uh, what is your deal? No, not Monticello. If you want to watch somebody churn butter in homespun cloth, we can just visit the peasants we keep right here on the property. No, I'm talking about something much cooler. And more tumescent."
QUINN HQ
Virgil: "Today Brody talked to four people on Capitol Hill, twelve at the Virginia Businessmen's Reception, and a guy at a newsstand on K Street..."
Carrie: "That's cool how you're doing your job, but can we gossip for a minute about Peter Quinn?"
Virgil: "He's great! You don't know anything about him because you're bad at office politics and also because you spent the last six years either in the Middle East or digging in a vegetable garden with the zaps."
Carrie: "Can you spy on him for me?"
Virgil: "Yo dawg, I heard you like working so much I put a job in your job so you can work while you work."
Estes: "Carrie, can I just say something?"
Carrie: "Is it sorry? Sorry for firing you and calling you insane and treating you like we never had an affair and taking everybody's word over yours and causing you to very nearly commit actual suicide in the past week?"
Estes: "I mean, it's all water under the bridge, right?"
Carrie: "Yeah, buddy. It's fine."
Estes: "And you're doing a great job. I mean it. Especially given all the impediments and roadblocks you've been thrown. Such as myself. A roadblock that itself can hurl infinite roadblocks."
Saul: "Looks like Congressmen make contact with around 43 people a day, typically."
Quinn: "That is too many!"
Saul: "We have to prioritize. First, the darker-skinned people..."
Max: "That's straight-up racial profiling!"
Saul: "No, it's straight-up actual profiling. Do you not know what we do here, at the CIA?"
Max: "...Haha, no. I know. I just thought I'd beat the dumber of our liberal white viewers to the punch, so you could explain aloud why their complaints about this show are usually demonstrations of the very essence of privilege."
Dumb White Person: "This show is basically 24. Which I also watched, and loved, and enjoy bitching about self-righteously to this day. For some people, awful people like myself, it's all part of the experience. I mean, everybody knows -- among the people who don't know the difference between prescriptive and descriptive entertainment, or fiction and reality -- that Homeland is just propaganda for American exceptionalism and also for fascism!"
Less Dumb White Person: "Yeah, just like how Philadelphia is a commercial for getting AIDS."
Darker-Skinned Persons With Whom The Congressman Has Conversed
Rashid Fadl: Works at Constitutional Car Wash. From Yemen, on an expired visa.
Paris Kimbe: Cab driver, Sudanese. Belongs to the same YMCA as Car Wash Rashid.
Hamza Shabazi: Grad student, blogs about Islamic women, asked Brody to read her thesis. Clearly the worst, but not a suspect.
(Roya Hammad: Is on the board, but not on this list. Being famous lightens your skin, everybody knows that. It's from being looked at by so many people.)
Carrie: "Oh, and Brody's staying at the Ashford tonight."
Quinn: "His woman, his lady, his partner. She sent him away. We're going to spy on him there."
Saul: "Okay, well, you two have fun."
Carrie: "What? You're leaving me alone with this perfectly charming, attractive, friendly and professional dude?"
Saul: "I have to go look at an apartment! I sold my house when my wife left me and you lost your shit and I moved to Beirut."
Carrie: "Well. I guess I'll survive somehow. Even stuck as I am with this kind, funny, encouraging, intelligent man I've formed an instant bond with."
Quinn: "So what do you want for dinner? Indian food?"
Carrie: "Actually, I did -- until you said that. Now I'm going to stubbornly insist we have Greek food, from a restaurant of my choosing."
Quinn: "That's totally cool with me. I'm sure this transition has been hard and I'm willing to indulge you for a little while. I know that your misbehavior often masks a sincere affection -- take the way you treat Virgil, for example. I won't put up with it forever, but I recognize that you're tricky with authority and I just want you at your best, so just tell me what you need."
Carrie: "Thanks, bro. Or should I say, EMOTIONAL TORTURER."
WASHINGTON MONUMENT
Finn takes Dana up to the top of the Monument, which is in renovations. They talk about his new Richie Rich car, and the Secret Service guys, and they look down at the city, and it's lovely. One of the best scenes, I think, on this entire series. And I can't nail down what makes it so awesome, which is generally when I know I'm right and it's just plain good.
Dana: "I like you! Sorry, I just blurted that for no reason except to move the plot. I do that a lot, actually."
Finn: "It's cool. I was going to kiss you."
(They kiss, and it is awesome.)
Dana: "Wait, I mean no. I mean, I have a boyfriend."
Finn: "I want to be your boyfriend."
Dana: "I want that too. But I don't want to be a dick to Xander. That's his name, Xander. He's nice. Kind of old, but still aimless. Like a janitor that went to your high school when he was your age, and smokes pot."
Finn: "But I'm nicer than him? That doesn't sound right."
Dana: "No. You're smarter, which translates to meaner. Give me like twenty-four hours. I promise you, I'll do it so fast it won't even happen onscreen."
LAUDER & FABER
Lauder: "Whew! I was so drunk before my nap! But not drunk enough that I don't remember what I said. The part where I accused you of wanting to restart your relationship with Jessica that ended when her zombie husband came back from the dead, at least. The part where everybody we know is a terrorist, I stand by that."
Faber: "Thing is? You're not wrong. Brody's been super weird ever since he came from the dead. And other things, lots of things. But maybe it's just CIA stuff..."
Lauder: Wait, Brody has [verbatim] a 'connect' with the 'spooks'?"
Faber: "I wouldn't put it that way -- no human being alive would ever put it that way -- but yeah. But still, what's the Tom Walker part of this?"
TEAM QUINN HQ
Quinn: "So was it work or love?"
Carrie: "You ain't my girlfriend. I don't have those, except in that one Latisse commercial."
Quinn: "I just want to know if you fell for him. Seems likely my life will depend on it at some point."
Carrie: "I'm going to change the subject now in a subtle way. This is me subtly changing the subject, okay? Where did you go to school, Peter? This has been me, changing the subject. I bet you didn't even notice."
Quinn: "Philadelphia. Mainline. Hill School. Harvard. White people. Gotta stay on top if you're gonna stay on top."
Carrie: "This changing of the subject is going really well. I bet you can't even remember what you were asking me. So... Do you ever go back to Philly?"
Quinn: "There's no good Indian food. Only Greek places."
Carrie: "Hey, why does Estes like you so much?"
Quinn: "I'm pretty likable..."
Carrie: "Yeah, you really are! I mean, um, that's a matter of opinion."
Quinn: "I think what he likes best about me, though, is how reliable I am. I come off every bit as mentally ill as you do, yet somehow I manage to keep my shit together. I hardly ever fall in love with Congressman Nick Brody, for example. How about you?"
Just in time, Virgil calls to tell them the news that there is no news. Nick's in the hotel bar, feelin' lonesome and not doing terrorist shit of any kind. They flip on the cameras there, which first I thought was silly but then, I bet a DC hotel bar is like, chock full of interesting people saying fascinating things with real-world implications. Making deals and whatever. I bet if your whole job was just to spy on one or two hotel bars in DC, you would make more money than I can comfortably imagine right now.
Brody: "Can I have one more drink? I'm about to do something foolhardy. It involves this cell phone I'm staring at while I brood, if you want a hint."
Quinn: "I bet he's going to call his terrorism contact. That's what I'd do, if my wife threw me out and I was getting drunk at a hotel and just ran into my girlfriend and my terrorist handler told me to get back in touch with her -- I'd probably just call up another terrorist and be like..."
Anybody Who Has Ever Seen A TV Show Or A Movie, OTOH: "Carrie Mathison, please pick up your phone in three, two, one..."
One fun activity to try is imagining if Carrie had a specific ringtone for Brody, like, how awesome -- and tonally ruinous -- would it be if we watched him call the "mystery number" and then Carrie's phone starts playing... What? The jaunty steamboat rhythms of Elvis Presley's Vegas-Era hit "Devil In Disguise," which is kind of on the nose but the sound of the song itself would just be classic. But then I thought, really any song would be funny, because their relationship (and our relationship to their relationship) is so intense and like nothing else that has ever happened. "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," like, how fucked up and funny would that be? "Call Me Maybe."
NOT A BOOTY CALL
Nick: "Hi. Do you know who this is?"
Carrie: "Technically, yes."
Nick: "I know we said Peace earlier, but I was wondering if you wanted to seal it with a drink. I'm at the Ashford..."
Carrie: "Twenty minutes."
Quinn: "Whoa! So now like there's a whole operation happening! How exciting."
Carrie: "Exactly what I was thinking. So like, what am I doing? I mean, I know what I'm doing -- and it is nuts -- but like, what is the overall plan? I mean, what is the CIA version of the plan?"
Quinn: "Spook him more, since we didn't understand that Roya was his contact?"
Carrie: "That's exactly what I was thinking. Maybe I should straight-up mention Nazir. Or is that too much? I get a little hyped sometimes."
Quinn: "No, it's exactly what I was thinking."
Carrie: "That's exactly what I was thinking too, also. Hey, what if I go rogue or do something crazy or fuck this up somehow?"
Quinn: "You won't. I think you're great. This is what you were born to do."
Carrie: "God, you're a really good friend. For somebody I met fourteen minutes ago and hate, I mean."
ASHFORD
They're like, "What is it with us and bars? Man, like we're always meeting in bars and then running away to secret locations for day-long fuckfests and then accusing each other of being Al-Qaeda and then talking each other into committing ourselves to mental hospitals or killing ourselves. It is so crazy how we're always doing that."
Brody: "This is not a booty call. It looks like a booty call and walks like a booty call and quacks like a booty call -- and in fact it is a booty call -- but it's not a booty call."
Carrie: "Oh, I couldn't be less interested in all the sex we're going to have soon. Now, tell me more about your crumbling marriage."
Brody: "There's only one woman who understands me."
Carrie: "Who is it? Just kidding, it's me. But listen, you have a political career to think of, my old friend and nothing more. Aren't you two the new JFK and Jackie?"
Brody: "It all ends with a bullet in my brain, huh?"
Carrie: "Whoa, what? Dark!"
Saul: "How's it going?"
Quinn: "You know how Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman just made sense? This is like the personality equivalent of that."
Nick: "So really, how have you been?"
Carrie: "So really, I have been really awesome. Getting pretty close..."
Nick: "To what?"
Carrie: "My, uh. Goal."
Nick: "Why did you just turn into that one annoying girl on Facebook?"
Carrie: "I can't name names, but I'm circling a certain terrorist..."
Nick: "As long as it's not me! Wockawockawocka!"
Everybody: "(Rimshot.)"
Carrie: "No -- and sorry, again, about that -- no, I'm back on the right guy. The big guy. The head-of-the-snake guy?"
There's a moment here, and it's so lovely, where she looks out at him through all the layers, all of them, like he's an animal or an alien and she can't fathom how a person could turn, how you get brainwashed, how you go away and somebody who is a broken version of yourself that is the opposite of yourself moves in: "Who stole eight years of your life?"
What she gets back is: Nothing at all. He turns the knife as it's coming at him, starts to twist the whole conversation in a way that seems kind, but is so fucking sick that it's like the existential dread all over again, as he does it. She puts on her smile, the "we are doing okay" smile. It isn't big enough; it couldn't ever be big enough.
Nick: "Listen, Carrie. You've apologized, a hundred times..."
Carrie: "You want #101?"
Nick: "No, I want to apologize. Tricking you, calling Estes to come kidnap your crazy ass... I only did it because I was worried."
Carrie: "Well, to be fair, it was worrisome. My behavior."
And fuck you. It was because I was right. I was right, I was right, I was right.
Nick: "I'm sorry for all you went through..."
Carrie: "Oh, don't be!"
Nick: "...I mean, ECT? Jesus."
He can barely hide his smile, as he says it. As her body imperceptibly flails; as she pulls herself in.
Carrie: "Where the fuck did you hear about that?"
Nick: "I asked about you, of course. Heard things. Did you have to do it a lot?"
She breathes, jumps into Recovery Girl. The one that has no shame because there's nothing to be ashamed of. Chin juts, quick nods of the head. Making the person you're talking to no longer stigmatize you, by sheer force of will. Relating the facts as appropriate, praying there's no pain or fear or hurt in your throat as you tell the story.
Carrie: "Mondays and Thursdays, for six weeks."
Nick, nearly grinning: "Was it terrible?"
Who could have known he'd still be so angry with her, after all this time? How much she hurt him, for not believing in the story he wants to be true? She followed up the most loving encounter of his life with the ashamed admission that she thought he was a terrorist. It must have broken his heart, even though she was right. It meant the parts neither of them were lying about were also lies. Even if they were true.
Carrie's face: "No. No, you asshole."
Brody's face: "Interesting response..."
Take II: "Uh, that is, no. And thanks for asking."
She swallows; she came this close to vomiting, or punching him. He built his life so perfectly, so carefully, that nobody should have seen in. And she did, and she wormed her black little heart in there and tore it apart. He had total power, complete mastery over his life, his home, his mission, and she walked in and ripped it apart without even caring. She saw so clearly that it burned. And in the end, he was able to turn it around, cage her up in doubt, and say, "I am the one in control here." And it nearly killed her.
Carrie: "Truthfully, you don't even feel a thing, so..."
Brody: "Well, that which makes you stronger..."
Carrie: "...Is not a saying. Listen, I fucked this up. I got way too mad and showed you something you weren't expecting, and it reminded you that I am inscrutable and that you have no way to trust me, so I'm going to bounce before something bad happens."
Brody: "Fine. Put these drinks on my bill, Room 416. Good seeing you."
"Peace?"
"Peace."
He heads upstairs and she sits at the bar until the song ends, too pissed at herself to even call in. The room is so much emptier, without all those Nicks. Without all the Carries she had to be.
DEBRIEF
Quinn: "You did so great!"
Carrie: "Nah, I fucked it up."
Quinn: "What, you expected a full confession?"
Carrie: "You don't get it. Put Saul on."
Saul: "Seriously you did fine, Peanut."
Carrie: "No, he made me. When he asked about ECT there was a flash in my eyes and he flashed back. He went away. He saw me go away and he went away, and then we both came back. It is broken."
HQ: "He's going up to his room, it's fine..."
Carrie: "Yeah, to put a wineglass in his window or something, and then they go to ground."
Quinn: "Because you 'saw it in his eyes'?"
Carrie: "Have you not seen this fucking show? That is the entire show in one sentence!"
Quinn: "So this would be the Crazy Carrie Moment they warned me about. Get your ass back to the..."
...Just an empty barstool, spinning. Papers floating down in the air. Mathison out.
UPSTAIRS
You can see Nick have the same fight with himself, without saying a word. In the action of his hands, as he drinks a Fiji water and sits on the bed, the labored breath and his eyebrows, as he wonders whether or not to put that wineglass up. She went away, and he went away, and by the time they came back, she knew. He spots her through the peephole, and nearly speaks aloud to them. To all the Nicks.
They clear so many steps of what has to be cleared, without speaking at all: He asks why she's there, in his doorway, smiling, and she admits she's being silly. She asks if he can come in, and he agrees. Though it's against both of their interests, he agrees. In silence.
Carrie: "Are you sure this wasn't a booty call? You really emphasized your room number down there. Unless of course you were simply saying it to pay for our drinks, like it happens in every hotel bar in the history of our world. Or both."
Nick: "Maybe both. Maybe to get you alone? Is what you're thinking. Maybe I am too."
But his smile is too wide, and his eyes are too bright. She didn't go up there because she's crazy, she went up there because you don't need optimism when you're right. When you have your conviction you don't need options anymore. But paranoia is a way of life for Nick, and Carrie knows for sure that they're under surveillance. More Nicks, and more Carries, then ever. It nearly, it very nearly stopped mattering how full the bar was, for a moment. He knew just how to hurt her. Nicholas reached in past Carrie's army and into her armor and gave it a twist. For a second she could see life without all those Carries and Nicks in the way, without all that hateful love and tender hate and twisted hope and tainted doubt, and it felt like the world ending. It felt like watching it burn.
She loved it.
The end of disappointment. He grins, shining every bit as electrically as she does in her worst moments, and her smile clatters to the floor. For a moment, for this moment, for the time necessary, she can hate him. She always has.
Carrie: "It reeks, you know."
Brody, warily: "What, my confusion?"
Carrie: "Your bullshit."
Saul and Quinn run around like ants, screaming her name, as the Ashford team scrambles. Will he kill her? Is she forcing an arrest? Would she risk her quasi-job for that? What part of this is passion -- scorned lover, spurned patriot -- and what part is genius?
Carrie: "We've only got a few minutes alone now that I've blown the op. Show me yours."
Brody: "You still have those twisted ideas about me, your... I thought we could be friends, Carrie. We always got along so well. And you don't seem to have any, except in that one Latisse commercial..."
"Friends? Oh, yeah. Yeah, do I want to be friends with a demented ex-soldier who hates America? Who decided strapping on a bomb was the answer to what ailed him? Despite his daughter, his son? People who loved him in real life and not the mindfuck world of Abu Nazir? Who in the end, didn't have the stones to go through with it? But had no problem sending me to the nuthouse? Yeah. No, thanks. I don't think I need a friend like that."
"I'd rip his skin off," Quinn said. And that was the plan. So why does it feel like her own? Her own skin, coming off, ripping open like Eustace the Dragon: Every word she speaks, another Carrie vanishes from the room, until she's almost alone with him. A Queen's Gambit. The Nicks begin to twinkle out, too. First the sad ones, then the scared ones. His eyes go cold. One of the Nicks, his eyes go cold. He steps forward.
"Okay. Not friends."
Saul growls like a Doberman, on the other side of a screen.
"So what are you gonna do now, Are you gonna kill me? Blame it on rough sex, maybe? I mean, how long can you get away with something like that?"
There's so much relief in it. Watching their bodies unfold from under the weight of it. It's the first conversation they've ever had, these two. These two lonely people, alone in this room. His face, that cold still face, comes alive. Sex, and rage, and murder, and hatred. It does tricks you never knew it could do. It curls like a fist.
He is so much smarter than you ever knew, that's the part that scared me the most; his eyes glitter like diamonds and you can see him there, clearly, for the first time. This is the man Carrie woke up tonight, this monster. This is the man Carrie loved, sight unseen.
"I've had a pretty good run so far. I seem to be good at this." They both shake their head, in tandem. It's nearly an apology: "This, if nothing else." She doesn't back away, or move, but she recoils. He can't take his eyes off her face, off her disgust. She knew it all, he thinks. That whole time, she knew it all; she could take it. And now she's so angry. One of the Nicks can't believe it. One of the Nicks, his heart is breaking. One of the Nicks leans back in an animal's roar. One of the Nicks steps back, one of the Nicks steps forward. Begging her to hear this, if nothing else:
"I liked you, Carrie!"
Her words are out before anybody can stop them.
"I loved you."
They both jerk. Wolves at the door. It breaks, the sound of Carrie saying that word, like a spell. It washes over his face like sunshine. He steps forward, just before they break the door down and put the black hood over his face, just before she gives him the rest of her speech, in front of all the witnesses and cameras, about his sedition and his treachery -- about how she was right, how right she was -- before she leans down, and whispers to him what a disgrace he is, just before all of those things happen, in quick succession, and she's left to cry and smile, all alone in her black suit, just before all of those things, he steps forward.
One of the Nicks wants to wrap his hands around her neck. Finally. One of the Nicks wants to take her in his arms. Finally. And for a short moment, they're both smiling. Sometimes one wore the other like a suit, and sometimes it went the other way. They're in love. At the last second, it was just the two of them. That's all there ever was. That's all love ever is.
WEEK
Christ knows, at this point. Right? week, Carrie leaves the CIA to work fulltime for Abu Nazir at her new husband's side. week Nick Brody chases Carrie through the streets of DC with a shotgun and a leafblower in a special episode inspired by The Hunger Games. week, Abu Nazir is so embarrassed when he finds out people thought he was a terrorist this whole time. week, David Estes and the forty-seven thousand people in the line of succession are gunned down at a local frozen yogurt shop, putting the CIA and all its resources in the hands of its new Director, Beautiful Max. week, Jessica Brody and Cynthia Walden reveal their true identities: Time-traveling lesbian lovers working deep undercover for the Symbionese Liberation Army.
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.