In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
As expected after last week's dustup outside the police station, Dana shows up at Mike Faber's condo and ends up spending the night because she is losing her mind. The day, he takes her to visit the daughter of that lady they ran over -- and, of course, the deliriously enraged girl has already been paid off by the Walden campaign, so she doesn't want Dana to say anything at this point. They move quick. Dana and Faber bond over his questionable role within the family, but the very most welcome reconciliation is that between Dana and Jessica, who flips into Mama Bear so fast and sweetly that it immediately becomes her best episode ever.
Where's Brody during all this? Oh, it's a real treat. First he goes full-on catatonic in his house, and Carrie has to literally carry him out the door to his big Roya meetup. At which point he freaks out on Roya -- who by the way has never been better; the sheer amount of time she doesn't have for his nonsense is breathtaking and terrifying -- screams some super paranoid shit in public, and goes off the grid. It is at this point Carrie puts her shocking plan into effect. If you guessed that it involved running away with Brody and fucking in a motel, you'd be right. (You would also not really be guessing.) But it does the trick.
What you might not have guessed is that she also manages to put the whole thing on display for Quinn and Saul and Virgil and Max, the former of whom is not yet so desensitized to Carrie's antics that the WTFness of listening to his best spy fuck a terrorist like a crazy person doesn't make him cry a little bit. I think I saw literal tears. (I mean, and here we thought Dexter's Debra Morgan would be the Trainwreck of the Night. No sir. Always count on Mathison to pull through in a clinch.)
day, Jessica still doesn't know where her husband is -- not really anything new -- and is probably feeling a little jealous of Mike's overnight guest, while the boys at the Shop are silently judging Carrie and Brody's reconnecting with Roya. She takes him on an epically long, scary drive, while Carrie and Team Quinn follow and get more and more paranoid, and then after a really intense sequence involving dark cars on darker roads, Carrie once again* runs out into danger... Just in time to see El Mysterioso and Roya shove Brody into a big black helicopter, on his way to being de-deprogrammed by somebody scary.
*(Informal count this week of people referring to various "ops" being "blown" was easily at an all-time high. There were so many ops getting blown every second, you guys! It's almost unbelievable that there are still ops in this world that have not yet been blown.)
While the whole "runaway lovers" part is weirdly lovely (if just exceedingly weird, in the actual sex/surveillance part), and came shockingly early (around :15 to :30, before everybody comes back home from the jaunt) in the episode, it's maybe a little overwhelmed by Dana's very emotional story and the high-stakes spy games of the episode's final act. Certainly the climax of the romantic thread, a long time coming, found itself joined by just as indelible images in the political, family, and intelligence threads, which if you think about it is kind of a twist in itself: I certainly never thought I'd be more interested to see what Dana Brody was up to -- or what Mike Faber's house looks like, or rooting for Jessica's parenting skills -- than impatient for Carrie and Nick to just do it already.
A bit in particular about Carrie's fantasy that Abu Nazir's eventual capture would prove such an epic win that they -- not only America, but Carrie and Brody themselves -- would be able to overlook his sins and all the tragic shit they've pulled on each other, was exactly the kind of delusional/viable that makes their mesmerizing relationship something other than intensely gross. Likewise, watching Quinn slowly come to understand the ways and reasons Saul deals with Carrie the way he does -- and adapting to it, over the episode, as he reevaluates how she works -- might be lost in all the plottiness, if not for the acting involved.
All in all, this episode was more about painting a portrait of a man in imminent danger of losing his shit than about Carrie doing (admittedly insane amounts of) her usual nonsense. It was nice to see other colors in the usually composed Nick, for one thing -- some stuff we've not seen in a long time, some stuff never before -- because it brought out a new kind of investment in his personal future which I don't think was entirely accessible before this double-agent story got underway. But, since he's such a good actor, that also made the episode unusually stressful, even for this show. Which is awesome. But if we never have to watch -- and especially hear -- Carrie Mathison getting fucked like that again, that would be okay too, because that was exactly the creepshow it intended to be. ("We get that you're fired up, but act like you've been there, you know?")
Week: The season's third and final act begins, which means a countdown to the Big Event and presumably a death count. Jessica and Dana flip out about the political stuff, Mike Faber continues to be quietly interested in how crazy Brody's turning out to be, and oh yeah, Nick is missing and probably being turned back into a terrorist. Here's hoping Quinn can step up and be the good friend Carrie and Saul need to get through this. I know he can do it!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Dana very nearly got to tell the cops about that old lady she killed, which is like her number one activity of late, but Carrie showed up to tell Brody to cut it out and let the wheels of justice be greased by privilege like usual, because that's how you fight terrorism when you're Carrie Mathison: Doing the opposite of whatever a human being would normally do. Pissed, Dana took off into the streets of DC, presumably to go live with her real dad Mike Faber, who is just like her biological dad in every way except he is: nice, not crazy, and not a member of Al-Qaeda.
FABER
Mike: "Dana, what are you doing here at my classy bachelor pad condo?"
Dana: "Things have gone from 'rapidly going to hell' all the way to 'I just realized my parents cannot be trusted.'"
Mike: "Well, whatever gets your mom here. Where she belongs."
BRODY
Jessica: "Our daughter! Wanders the streets!"
Nick: "You don't even like her. God."
Jessica: "No, but I sure do like yelling!"
Nick: "Look, I can't tell you why Dana couldn't go to the cops. But I'd like to remind you of my CIA Get Out Of Everything Free card."
Jessica: "This is not in that jurisdiction!"
Nick: "I think you missed the part where I get out of Everything."
(Creepy Carrie surveillance van is, of course, right outside.)
Carrie: "I don't have time for this domestic shit. That I caused."
Team Quinn: "Yeah, there's a shocker. He should probably just leave his wife, huh?"
Carrie: "He only has half an hour before his meeting with Roya Hammad. It's going to take at least that long to figure out a way where this ends with us making out."
Nick: "You're so mean about how I just wander off all the time! Even though it's because of the CIA!"
Jessica: "You tell that CIA to fuck off. I am tired of not having you around to yell at whenever I feel like it, which is all the time."
Mike: "Hey, your daughter is here making all these faces..."
Jessica: "Well, I'm going to go get her. And I'm taking Chris. And we are going to pretend we live there."
Mike: "Who is Chris again?"
Carrie: "There goes his wife with a strange little boy. I'd better go in there and make out with him."
Virgil: "Do you want backup?"
Carrie: "No. I have already got my bra half-off under this shirt. We will make that meeting, no matter how much making out it takes."
Carrie: "Hey Brody, how's it going? Oh, you're in the fetal position in a dark corner. That's promising."
Nick: "I have lost my entire mind just in this last scene."
Carrie: "Trust me, I know what that's like. You want to get out of here? Maybe go visit your terrorist handler? Get some ice cream?"
Nick: "I just want to be curled up here and be crazy forever. Who knew that it would be my daughter's annoying earnestness that would push me over the edge?"
Carrie: "Anybody who has seen this show could see that coming. But now is not the time."
Nick's Crazy: "Actually I think now is the time."
Carrie's Crazy: "Get up and I'll show you how to be nuts all the time. And then we can make out."
FABER
Jessica: "Hey, sorry about all this. But not really."
Mike: "Yeah, it's a shame. Except it isn't at all."
Jessica: "What was Dana going on about this time?"
Mike: "She actually didn't say anything about what's going on."
Jessica: "Really? That's weird, it's like all she ever talks about, ever. Let me fill you in."
Mike: "Whoa. Well, you're never the same after your first old lady killing. No wonder she was so tuckered out."
Jessica: "Can she just sleep here forever and not be my problem anymore?"
Mike: "No, I'll have her call you when she wakes up. I can't be having a full-time teenager right now, between earning myself death threats from the CIA about your husband and also my nonexistent sex life where I just wait for you to scream Nick to death so we can hook back up."
ROYA MEET
Virgil: "Uh, Nick Brody looks like ass-crazy soufflé."
Carrie: "At least he's vertical now."
Virgil: "Get you some?"
Carrie: "No. But I will."
Roya: "Holy shit girl. You look like fried nonsense."
Nick: "Miss lady, that is exactly how I feel. How much time we got?"
Roya: "You know that I have no time for any of your bullshit..."
Nick: "-- Because I am about to freak out on you so much."
Roya: "I would like to reiterate that I have neither the time nor the patience..."
He freaks out on her so much. She has never looked more beautiful or put together as when she's sitting there just completely blowing his stupid ass off.
Roya: "I know you must be feeling dicked up in your mind..."
Nick: "You have no idea what I am dicked up in!"
Roya: "Get this, though. Blood in blood out. This is not a gym membership you can just figure out you were being overoptimistic. This is something that is going to happen."
Nick: "Are you threatening me?"
Roya: "I AM A FUCKING TERRORIST. ALSO SO ARE YOU. COME ON."
Nick runs off and you think maybe Roya is going to flip a 180 and go ninja on him in this park. Wouldn't that be amazing? If she was like, "Uh, remember how I'm a trained terrorist? Taste the terror." But instead she just chases after him, begging him to pull it together. But he will not pull it together. He will not, in this instance, be pulling his shit together.
Quinn!: "Uh, so he just wandered off? Maybe somebody should do something. Hell, I'd be cool with Carrie's Makeout Plan right now."
Carrie: "...I'm on it."
Everybody talks a million times about how the op is blown. Everybody, that is, except for Carrie. Carrie knows she's just a makeout away from bringing this one in. As is her wont, she instructs Virgil to disable the tracking on Nick's phone and lie to Quinn about it, so that she can physically chase him through the quaint streets and make out with him until he is a double agent again. Because right now, he's a zero-agent. That's two less than he started out this morning.
Carrie: "Brody, here's the situation. There are guys following me, following you. So I'm going to need you to get in this minivan and let me drive you somewhere and nobody will know where we are. Then we will do it, and it will be a total creepshow."
Brody: "How does that help the fact that I just fucked things up with both Roya and Quinn by shitting my pants and running around like a tool?"
Carrie: "You're just going to have to trust me."
Brody: "Well, okay. For lack of anything else to do, and the CIA coming to put me in Gitmo so I go crazy like Aileen, I will follow your one plan you always, always have."
CIA
Estes: "So you know how in every episode Carrie does something off the chain and I make this face at you? Well, I'm going to make twice that face this time. She put a broken asset with our best lead, that blew up, he ran off, and now they've both disappeared. And you and I both know what happens . They have creepy sex."
Saul: "I dunno, I just trust that girl. I'm sure this is going to work out fine."
Estes, verbatim: "I don't want to be the one standing in front of the Senate explaining who Carrie was fucking when the bomb went off! You burned your cover in Beirut to float this operation, which -- as of 20 minutes ago -- is officially shit. I'm the only friend you've got left in the building. So if you have any idea where Carrie is, you damn well better say. I'm not playing games here."
Estes is always right, most especially when he makes that face, but this time he is more right than you would ever believe.
MOTEL
Brody: "Okay, so now what. We just wait for the CIA and Al-Qaeda to come here and kill us?"
Carrie: "Yep. I'm going to go get some snacks!"
Brody: "I mean, this is your plan?"
Carrie: "That is most of, but not entirely, my plan. Just do like I'm doing and pretend we're on a romantic getaway to this rustic motel."
Brody: "But my daughter is missing and my wife's etern..."
Carrie: "Bup bup bup. Romantic getaway."
Brody: "It's a good thing my entire persona shattered earlier today into a million self-hating pieces or else I would discern the million problems with this plan. As it is, what I would love from the snack machine is some Combos. Maybe like a Sprite."
FABER
Dana: "That was a well-deserved nap. Listen, can I just live here from now on?"
Mike: "You can call your mom and ask to spend the night."
Dana: "That would involve talking to my mom, and I make it a point never to talk to my mom."
Dana calls home, and she and Jessica have a really excellent, sweet conversation. It's funny to pretend Jessica hates her daughter, but even more enjoyable to see how untrue that is. Part of what makes Dana insufferable is that she's carrying burdens for her family that she doesn't even clearly know what they are. You know? Even before she caught him praying, she had these vibes. And it's just a truism of family dynamics that the person who carries the pain is the person who is most annoying. Generally, those two things combine into one horrible personality with a tendency toward ovarian cysts, which we are lucky that Dana's also got a strong mind and a very strong character, or else she would actually suck as much as we always joke about her sucking.
Dana: "Did he actually tell you why he flaked out at the police station? I really hate telling you this, but it was that lady from the CIA. Carrie. She showed up and..."
Jessica: "Oh, damn it. Well, I guess I knew he was lying about that. I guess really I did know. So much so that I can't even be angry, just grossed-out and sad."
Dana: "Allow me to reiterate that I did not want to tell you that part, and furthermore that I can tell you in all honesty that I didn't enjoy it even a little bit."
Jessica: "I know that you didn't, but it's nice to hear you think that out aloud."
They are super sweet and only just a little sniffly. I too am only just a little sniffly. Who could have known the episode's highlight would be a tender mother-daughter moment between the two most hated characters and the lowlight would be the angry spooky sex reunion of the two main characters? Just when you think this shit's gonna zig, man.
MOTEL
Carrie: "Those were some good snacks. Now whatever will we do."
Nick: "I could sleep for like a million years. I was kind of excited to be wandering out into DC with my mind fully freaked. I burnt my bridges with Abu Nazir, with the CIA, with my dang daughter... I am ever so alone now. It feels kind of amazing."
Carrie: "How about this. Whatever damage you think you've done, the only way to make it mean something is to stay in the game."
Nick: "Well, here's the ironic thing. I know my cell will have somebody to replace me. Which means there's a new plan already underway anyhow."
Nick: "At least I'll get to stop lying all the dang time. That'll be nice. Come visit me in prison when I am going crazy?"
Carrie: "Um, I will be in the cell to you. What I was saying before about this meaning something is also true for me. You have to help me stop 9/11 part two, or else I really am just a crazy person and a traitor, also. Which, I have to admit, isn't the future I imagined for us."
Nick: "Us, first of all..."
Carrie: "I didn't expect you to accept that little breadcrumb so happily. I kind of thought you would tell. Which means now I need to get my sexy on."
"...[I]f we saw this through together, if we finally stopped Nazir once and for all, then you'd be a real hero. And that fact would somehow make everything you did before not matter. That it would all just be about getting ... to there."
Brody: "Including what I did to you?"
Carrie: "Yeah, actually. Including that. Just wouldn't matter anymore. To either of us."
It's one of those things where on the surface it's so illogical that they have to make double sure it makes emotional sense. And on the romantic level, it does. It makes so, so much sense. You think whatever part of the story you're in is the most important part of the story, but the only way to overcome that is to be able to imagine the end, the better end of the story. And what she just said, every single one of us has thought. "If we get to the end of this series of bad days I swear to God I won't hold it against you." And if you mean that, and I mean that, then there's a way we both get out alive. Not just alive but healthy.
She isn't crazy. The heroism uber alles part, that's kind of deluded. But the part where they stay holding onto each other, through the storm, and it keeps them both alive? That's the only kind of love I trust. Of all the million kinds of definitions for love this show has given us, it's the only positive one that I also happen to agree with: Love is a harsh, stark thing, a thing that can destroy people and places, but if we don't all get out alive, we did something wrong.
"This deal of ours, I think it's a way out for both of us. You said you're all alone, and... you're not."
THE SHOP
Funny thing about the fucking that commences, though, is that this motel is a CIA safehouse with bugs everywhere and Virgil and Max just a few hundred yards off down the road, listening in. Relaying it back to the Shop. Where everybody is listening. And fighting. About the fucking.
Quinn: "Hey listen, I know you're pretty permissive about..."
Saul: "Shut up and stop talking. I am also grossed out."
Quinn: "Maybe we should stop them, though? Because this is just her being crazy?"
Saul: "If anybody can fuck the crazy out of Nick Brody, it's Carrie."
Quinn: "Even Carrie Mathison, that's asking a lot..."
Saul: "Every week in the credits of this show you can hear me saying What the fuck are you doing, because of that time she tried to fuck me into authorizing her surveillance. Every week in the credits of this show, you are reminded of the fact that she considers this an okay method to get what she wants. And then in this case, it's a method to get two of what she wants. Everything she wants right now, she is currently getting it, in a scary sex creepshow."
Quinn: "Oh. Oh wow. Oh, this bitch crazy. You guys're always saying how crazy she is and I was all, 'I'm pretty crazy too but like in a funny weird way,' but you meant she is fucking crazy. I thought it would make me laugh, but actually I feel like I'm about to start crying. Normally this icky feeling is about murdering people for national security. This deal where two sad and broken people are fucking for national security, I don't have an immune system for that yet. I just feel so bad for literally everybody on earth right now. Isn't that weird? I would have thought it would make me laugh, but really I just want a hug. Saul, can I have a hug right now?"
Saul: "No."
Quinn: "But I am Peter Quinn!"
Saul: "...Okay maybe."
AM
Brody: "Dear Roya, I am no longer crazy. My bad. Love, Nick Brody. PS, I have tons of needy codependent reasons for my freakout, if you suddenly were to have time for my bullshit."
Roya: "Dear Brody. I still don't have any time for your bullshit but thanks for the effort. Meet me later to get your ass abducted. Love, Roya."
Brody: "Also PS. Thank you for letting me be a terrorist with you. It is very important."
Carrie: "Good work lying or not lying about wanting to be a terrorist. But time you are feeling low or crazy, you know somebody you can call is me."
Brody: "Because you're my CIA handler and that's what I'm supposed to do?"
Carrie: "For that and many other reasons, some having to do with sex."
Brody: "How about a hug."
Carrie: "Okay. We've got about five minutes left of pretending we're on a romantic vacation. Prepare to get the shit snuggled out of you."
Quinn: "These crazy assholes are going to age my beautiful scrunchy face."
Saul: "Now that would be a national tragedy."
FABER
Mike: "Hey, Dana. Sleep well? Any dreams about that old lady you murdered?"
Dana: "You know what's fucked up is, I actually felt enormously better after talking to my mother of all people."
Mike: "Here's a secret of bitchy moms. They think you are secretly awesome and that's why they act like that."
Dana: "On that note, it must have been pretty weird when my dad showed up and ruined your whole life."
Mike: "You do what you have to do."
Dana: "You leaving our little family like you never existed is kind of like how I want to go to the cops and I can't."
Mike: "I have honorable qualities and that's it."
Dana: "Can you take me somewhere to fuck everything up for everybody?"
Mike: "I'll get my keys."
Seriously. Does the guy have like one negative quality? He's beautiful, he's smart, he's of the same quality soldier as his ex-best friend, and he ignores 95% of the sex vibes the love of his life is constantly throwing his way. I can't recall a single thing he's ever done that wasn't just about Superman perfect. If he did like one shitty thing, ever, please remind me. Because that's the only way we can be sure he's not going to be brutally but by-necessity killed by Nick Brody, which hangs over his head for me at all times.
SHOP
Carrie comes home to the Shop, with everybody all staring at her and like, making that one hand gesture with the finger and the circle. Leaning up against lampposts and whistling real low, like a wolf in a pimp hat. Giggling and doing gross little dances.
Saul: "Peanut. You look fresh and crazy."
Carrie: "I don't wanna talk about it."
Saul: "Uh, you think I want to talk about it? Let's just wait and see what Roya does."
Carrie: "Anything else I should know?"
Saul: "Ahem. You know how that was a CIA safehouse you were fucking in?"
Team Quinn: "Heh heh heh."
Carrie: "Oh, gross. Got it."
Carrie: "So I guess your question is, was that sad real fucking or secret spy fucking? And the answer is, I am Carrie Mathison. Your guess is as good as mine."
Saul: "I guess if I were ever, ever going to do my job, my question would be to ask that. But since I'm clearly pretty cool with letting you do whatever fucked-up thing you feel like doing, I will simply offer you my love, and my respect."
Quinn: "Oh hey, Carrie. He's about to meet with Roya in a scary parking garage..."
Carrie: "You're not going to give me shit about my creepshow sex circus?"
Quinn: "No. First of all because you still have no idea who I am or what I think about that, and second of all because if I even try to think about it'll start crying again. So, bygones."
Carrie: "You have the secret spycraft skill of being the coolest."
Quinn: "We are best friends and don't even know it."
GARAGE
Roya: "What's the creepiest, scariest way I could approach you for our meeting? I know, I'll step out of the shadows in front of your car like a goddamn dracula and make you squeal to yourself, then jump in your car and make you go somewhere mysterious."
Brody: "That was very effective, if 'terrifying' was the effect you wished to create. Listen, me feeling like Bassel the Tailor right now, is that by design?"
Roya: "For the several hours, you fucking moron. Like there wouldn't be consequences for screwing over the work of years and thousands of terrorists. Now shut up and drive. And if you piss yourself, I get a bonus."
Brody: "Just so everybody knows that might be listening... I mean, just so you, Roya, know, my total sex meltdown with Carrie Mathison meant nothing. As far as I'm concerned, she's just one useful body part ornamented by several different kinds of crazy."
Carrie: "If I had any self-esteem, surely that part would bother me. But since I'm delusional and pretending I feel the same way, I'm just going to laugh it off."
Quinn: "...Just something in my eye. Don't worry about it. Stop looking at me you guys."
The Mighty Quinn kicks into formidable action, sending out 'follow vehicles' and 'line of sight' orders and 'can't afford to lose 'em' truths. It is both darling and quite virile. One day soon, I might love him more than Estes does. A powerful statement, but one I think is more and more likely. Especially after this episode.
Quinn: "Carrie, just to demonstrate that I've joined the inmates running this asylum -- no offense -- I will now order you into the car with Virgil and Max. Just whatever you do, don't... Do exactly what you're obviously going to do, okay? Like get out of the car and go running directly into enemy fire wearing a scarf and waving a phone around. Shit like that."
Carrie: "Okay, I obviously will."
DANA
Shows up at the victim's house looking hangdog, not at all prepared for the vicious faceoff she's about to walk into.
Daughter: "Oh hey, girl I should have figured out three episodes ago killed my mom. What can I fucking do for you?"
Dana: "Like, shrive me?"
Daughter: "First of all, stop looking at my little sister like she's my teen baby. That's racist. And second of all, stop asking me to absolve you of this bullshit."
Dana: "But literally I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. The guilt is killing me from the inside."
Daughter: "Yeah, and that clot killed my mom from the inside. Get the fuck out."
Dana: "But where else will I go? What else will I do?"
Daughter: "I don't give even a little bit of a fuck, but I think you should know that the Waldens already paid me off, so if you go to the cops I will beat the shit out of you."
Dana's world flips inside-out as she realizes that the world is a vampire and she is a vampire and everything is a cage of privilege and it's not just a shitty dad that is keeping her from justice but in fact the entirety of the vampire world and there is no escape and there is no justice and we are all just dead men waiting to lie down. All of this, she accomplishes through making weird faces and messing with her hands, as usual. It is very effective. Then the daughter comes screaming directly at her face with claws out, and Dana flees. By the time she gets to Mike's car door, she's never looked more like her fetal-position, dead-eyed terrified father. And when she says drive, ol' Mike just lays tracks.
THE CHASE
Now see, we have ourselves a little conundrum. Because this is one of the most suspenseful sequences in a while -- not a bunker/suicide vest moment, but at least up there with the bomb that made Carrie go crazy -- but if I told you about it in detail, it would just be like: The car, is it going to stop? Maybe. But no, it keeps going.
So yeah. Nick's pretty sure his ass is grass, and Carrie's all about not following him at Quinn's mandatory distance, and Virgil and Max as usual are just caught between 35% doing what they're supposed to do and 65% doing whatever Carrie hisses at them. Over the course of the last few scenes, the sun has been reaching the horizon, so you also have the complicating factor of the darkness encroaching. At some point once they hit the country roads, Roya takes apart Nick's phone, so they have to rely on Quinn Science and Carrie's eagle eyes in the night. How can something that takes so long feel like the scariest thing that ever happened?
Eventually the car stops, and Roya barks at Brody to get out. That this is his chance to prove everything he was apologizing for this morning. Carrie's van has to sail past, to get visual, as Quinn's back home flipping out once again. When they pass -- just as El Mysterioso has reached them, out of the wilderness -- Roya shoves Nick back in the car so then it just looks like two randoms hanging out on a country road, while a random van goes by.
Max takes a bunch of pictures of El Mysterioso in the red tail light, causing Carrie and Quinn to go wild in two separate locations.
Carrie: "Oh my God, Quinn!"
Quinn: "I know! You know what this means?"
Carrie: "I guess it means I should jump out of the car and run around like a chicken with its head cut off."
Quinn: "I was just going to say, this is intense because that guy nearly killed me and killed all those guys in Gettysburg. And that you should under no circumstances get ou..."
Carrie: "-- Okay, here I go!"
Carrie's point, which she is totally lying about because he's right and she's only thinking of Brody, is that with Roya and El Mysterioso in the picture, that's a "critical mass" of people involved in Nick's terrorist cell. Take out those two (or three, she lies obviously) and you could finish off the whole big plan of this season. Nobody is even listening to her at this point about that point of protocol, though, because they know the second Virgil goes under 50 miles per hour she's just gonna jump out anyway, because she is a lunatic.
Quinn, a million times: "Carrie, please don't fuck this up, please don't fuck this up."
Carrie, even more times: "Okay, fine! I'm just gonna fuck this up real quick."
Back at the Shop, Saul starts to put the pieces together -- as Roya and the Unknown Terrorist begin shoving and dragging Nick away from the road -- that they're taking him to the only large clearing in miles, so what could that mean? Either the terrorists are planning on making out with him, or they're going to steal him in a great big nightmare black paranoia helicopter.
THE CLEARING
Carrie: "You guys, they are not making out with him in this clearing. I don't know what the fuck else they could be plan... Oh, a giant scary helicopter. And they're shovin' him in there. And I guess I should run out into this clearing waving my arms around, begging to get shot."
Quinn: "Carrie, do the opposite of that!"
But it's too late either way. There he goes.
BRODY
Mike: "Uh, here's your daughter. It took all day to get her home, between the long sleep and then the visit to that scary house. But we're here."
Chris: "Mike! Talk to me about sports!"
Mike: "Okay. Your mom and sister are making super intense faces at each other, so that's probably a good call."
Jessica: "Oh, honey. You look like hell. Tell me everything."
Dana: "I went to see the daughter, which I guess technically was a bad idea."
Jessica: "I actually support you 100% in this. Partly because I have no idea what's going on and I'm a plot tool, but also because suddenly I'm a great mom and person."
Dana: "Well, it went poorly. I am ravaged, mother."
Jessica: "I'm really sorry all this is happening. Like, so sorry I have basically forgotten that you killed somebody and lied about it for most of the season."
Dana: "Oh, and get this. They totally paid her off. That's who we are now. So the whole thing was useless."
Jessica: "I wish I was still a social-climbing socialite so I could overlook this, but between your dad's emotional abandonment and your stellar values and commitment to character, I find that I am right there with you."
Dana: "Only one lady of color had to die, in order for your gorgeous white ass to be redeemed."
Jessica: "Let us embrace."
SCARY WAREHOUSE
Nick: "I'm guessing you haven't tossed me into this scary warehouse as a birthday treat..."
Abu Nazir: "Hey, Nicholas."
Nick: "Oh my God, it kind of is like a birthday treat. I have missed you so fucking much!"
Abu Nazir: "I know, me too."
(They be all in love for a second. No homo. Well, kind of homo, but not really. There may be a million words for 'snow' but we don't have nearly enough different words for ways for guys to be about other guys. Leads to 90% of the world's bullshit, to be honest. Just that lack of a useful vocabulary.)
Nick: "Wait, but you're going to torture me now, huh? That's a mixed bag."
Abu Nazir: "Let's focus on how nice it is to see each other, broheim."
WEEK
Birthday spankings and waterboardings. Jessica continues to be awesome, or goes back to being an asshole. People continue to bitch about Dana no matter how rad she is. Carrie gets just as jealous about her boyfriend's boyfriend as she does about her boyfriend's wife, but it is for patriotism. Quinn and Mike Faber find new ways to be great. Nick Brody is everybody's bitch, forever, eternally.
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.