Carrie loses Abu Nazir in the tunnels, convinces Quinn that the Muslim Galvez is helping him escape, gets him taken down and all messed up physically, heads to Langley so she can fuck up Roya's interrogation real quick -- and if you wondering what it would ever be like to see Roya Hammad lose her cool, it's about three times scarier than you even thought -- and then drags everybody back to the tunnels...
At which point, reversing her shitty luck lately, she actually manages to capture Abu Nazir. There's not a lot of time to discuss their vexed relationship, much less the fact that Brody just murdered the Vice President of the US for her, but he does manage to beat the shit out of her some more. No matter: After he commits death-by-SWAT, Carrie -- who's been awake for like two days -- can't manage to do much more than say goodbye to him and head home to have every emotion at once.
Estes calls in a lie detector team (the always excellent James Urbaniak and always intriguing Chance Kelly) to intimidate Saul into quitting the CIA, which is fine since now he's the only person who knows about the plan to assassinate Brody. All of this takes a lot of time, it's very suspenseful, but the end result is that Saul is out, while somehow they have still not yet remembered that Carrie should not even be working there.
A cooped-up Dana blows her top, in a scene for Dana-haters to end all Dana-hating scenes, and not a moment too soon: Once Nick hears about Nazir's death -- which causes him to do his Craziest Thing You Ever Have Seen -- they all head home, and Nick and Jessica don't even make it into the house before they've agreed to get a divorce. It's a fairly beautiful scene, made even more touching by the fact that you're pretty sure Quinn's going to pop up at any time and take out Nick. But, grossing Quinn out, he doesn't stick around: Heads on over to Carrie's, so they can keep each other awake just a little longer.
Worth it for the gamechanging twists, and Carrie's complicated feelings -- about the morality and status of her relationship, the assassination of the VP, and whether or not dating a terrorist makes you a terrible person, compared to just dating married guys -- but all-in-all, the overwhelming end impression is mostly just a lot of running around in the dark. Tightly suspenseful and plotwise very satisfying, with a conclusion to the Brody stuff that you'd never thought you see. Of course, he's still a terrorist who just lost his best friend and his marriage and family, and she's still a crazy who needs a nap, and this is all definitely going to end in tears and bloodshed, but I guess all happy endings are more a matter of where it is you stop talking, so...
Week: Based on the fraught preview, it would seem that everything happens. Everything you can think of, it happens in week's episode. A body gets buried, people drink by a fireplace, Quinn runs around being amazing all over the place, somebody prays in a forest, Saul and Carrie disagree about her dating choices, gunfire rings out, the whole nine.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Abu Nazir nabbed Carrie after the Big Op, and Nick Brody ended up killing the Vice President kind of to save her from him? But mostly because he is a terrorist who has been wanting to kill the Vice President for this entire show. Major Joy put Mike Faber and Jessica into a jar like bees, and like bees in a jar they immediately did it with each other. Dana Brody has heard your complaints and will be doubling down, just purely out of spite. Oh, and Carrie pulled the ol' switcheroo on her escape, heading back into the Nazir tunnels armed with only her convictions and part of her wits.
TUNNELS
Does she find him? She does not. Like a ghost, or a theatre showing The Hobbit like it's just a normal movie, without all the bullcrap, he is nowhere to be found. Somehow, she even finds her way out another door, right into Quinn's intense dragnet of like a million armed authority figures.
OUTSIDE
SWAT: "Damn, Carrie look rough."
Carrie: "It's okay, you guys. It's okay, I've just lost my shit a little bit."
Quinn: "Where you at, behaviorally?"
Carrie: "This is not, for once, about my mental health. I seem to have lost the Minotaur."
Quinn: "Or else he is imaginary?"
Carrie: "No, he is very definitely real. He very definitely tied me up and beat the shit out of my body."
Quinn: "Well, whatever. I've officially been on this show long enough to not bother questioning your antics."
They head in, and yet still there is no Minotaur.
Carrie: "This is so fucked up. I mean, he was just here. Even allowing for aural hallucinations when I went back in, he still can't have gone that far."
Quinn: "Question. How did you get out of there, if you were so tied up and everything?"
Carrie: "Well, certainly not because a Congressman murdered the Vice President. Which by the way, how is the Vice President? Having a heart attack or anything?"
Quinn: "Oh yeah, he's super dead."
Carrie: "I guess somewhere inside myself I always knew that would happen. From right around the time my boyfriend and his boyfriend made the plan to kill him, I mean."
Quinn: "You just sit tight and take care of -- whatever this is you got going on -- and I'll go in there and bring you a terrorist. Cool?"
SAFEHOUSE
Jessica: "Sucks to be Cynthia Walden. I mean, she was a bitch, but how sad to almost be the First Lady. It's not like she can start over marrying some new politician to accumulate social capital, you know? Not at her age."
Brody: "I've been meaning to speak to you about that..."
Jessica: "I'm over it. The whole thing. Fucking Mike Faber has clarified a lot for me."
Brody: "It's pretty crazy, right? Like I come home and ruin your life, and suddenly I'm a Congressman, and then I'm going to be VP... It's sort of a relief, isn't it."
Jessica: "Totally! You just get me. I love you, in certain ways."
Brody: "We are absolutely getting a divorce, correct?"
Jessica: "Absolutely we are doing that."
Brody: "I've been meaning to speak to you about that..."
Jessica: "I'm over it. The whole thing. Fucking Mike Faber has clarified a lot for me."
Brody: "It's pretty crazy, right? Like I come home and ruin your life, and suddenly I'm a Congressman, and then I'm going to be VP... It's sort of a relief, isn't it."
Jessica: "Totally! You just get me. I love you, in certain ways."
Brody: "We are absolutely getting a divorce, correct?"
Jessica: "Absolutely we are doing that."
(Ring-ring.)
Brody: "Do you mind if I... Are you gonna be cool like this one time?"
Jessica: "Yeah but just for like five seconds. That's it."
LUUUUV
Brody: "Carrie. So it worked, you're okay."
Carrie: "Nick I am far from okay. But yes, I did get away from Abu Nazir, the only person you love more than me. They are going to catch him, and they are going to kill him."
Brody: "Let's talk about something else. Like, did you tell Quinn that I got you out of there by killing the Vice President? A thing I was going to do anyway, because I am a terrorist?"
Carrie: "I left that part out. The CIA mostly thinks I'm a magical wizard, so they didn't actually probe for too many details."
Brody: "'All' I 'care about' right now is that you're safe. And that you don't tattle on me."
Carrie: "All I care about is getting Abu Nazir and killing him dead. Which I can't do while I'm shivering out here in a trauma blanket, so basically my choices are chatting with you on an open line about how we killed the Vice President, or like Angry Birds."
LANGLEY
Saul: "James Urbaniak, you adorable motherfucker. What's this all about?"
Urbaniak: "It's a lie detector test. Totally random. Nothing to do with the fact that you accused David Estes of purposefully blowing up a school full of kids and then hiring assassins to cover it up."
Saul: "I think that, for me, this episode is probably going to suck."
Chance Kelly: "...But at least you get to look at me while it's happening. I am kind of amazing to look at."
Urbaniak: "I have to go be on like every TV show, Saul. You'll be fine with this guy."
Chance Kelly: Cracks his knuckles. Time for the telling of truths.
TUNNELS (EXT)
Quinn: "How's it going?"
Carrie: "Just watching them try to say something interesting about Walden on TV. Like how he was CIA Director during the thing with Estes, and also played football for Notre Dame, because of course he did."
Quinn: "Could be worse, could be Stephen Collins doing the news."
Carrie: "Right? Scandal is such a good show, but then he's like so weirdly soporific."
Quinn: "Anyway, no Nazir still. And we've got Roya and another guy back at Langley that we could be interrogating..."
Carrie: "Quinn, look around you. Literally a wall of armed authority figures. How could he get past that?"
Quinn: "He's kind of pretty good at this, you know."
Carrie: "Not as good as me. No, there's a leak. You know we have a mole -- Did you know that? We haven't talked about it like all season, although it's one of the reasons Estes set up Team Quinn the way he did -- and I think maybe that's who got him out?"
Quinn: "So you're asserting that A, Abu Nazir is in the tunnels, and is simply invisible, and B, one of our people is spiriting him away as we speak."
Carrie: "That's not as crazy as it sounds. It's definitely one or the other."
Quinn: "Yeah, but not both. Fine, I'll go in for yet another sweep."
LANGLEY
Q: "Is your name Saul Berenson?"
A: "Yes."
Q: "Are you sometimes called The Bear?"
A: "Fuckin' hope not."
Q: "Are you presently in Alabama?"
A: "The band?"
Eventually it comes out that one of Chance Kelly's focal points in this is whether or not Saul "provided" the weapon -- old-timey glasses -- that Aileen Morgan used to kill herself. Which I guess is a sort of handy hook to hang it on, considering the big mole thing hinges on somebody doing the exact same thing with that razor blade, last year.
Saul, finally losing his shit: "Do you know that you are just a tool for a higher scheme, which is to shut me up or scare me off the fact that there's a conspiracy to assassinate a US Congressman the second Abu Nazir is captured?"
Lie Detector Machine: "True."
Chance Kelly: "I am not even going to get into that. Yikes. That's how boys end up dead, worrying over shit like that."
TUNNELS (EXT)
Carrie: "Tac teams have eight guys, but I only see seven of you here. Where is the mole. Which one of you is the mole? I won't be mad, just tell me the truth."
Quinn: "-- Carrie! OMG these dudes are mercs. Ex-military, as in too scary to be in the military. You can't just ask if they're disloyal, they'll flip."
Carrie: "Okay, Gretchen Weiners. You tell me. Because it's one of our guys, then."
Quinn: "The only people here are you, me, and Danny Galvez."
Carrie: "The Muslim. Dammit."
(Which, this still might be my favorite exchange from the whole season, when they were like That's racial profiling! and Saul was like, "No, it's profiling.")
Anyway, Carrie's none too pleased with what her intuitive powers -- knocked off their axis, as they will be all episode, by this conundrum of both things being true to her perceptions at once -- so they chat it out.
Quinn: "That makes very little sense. I mean, on the one hand he took a bullet in the tailor shop. But on the other hand, he came crawling out of the hospital at just the right time..."
Carrie: "Can you see a way in which it makes sense, though? Overall?"
Quinn: "With what we have to go on, I guess so. A little bit."
Turns out Galvez took off about two minutes ago. Not looking good for Galvez. Team Quinn abruptly changes course and decides to take off after Galvez. After a long/short chase, they have him out of the car and on the ground, which is when Quinn notices he is bleeding all over the road.
Galvez: "My stitches opened up from me working so hard for you! I told them where I was going!"
Carrie: "Well, I'm an asshole today."
Although it doesn't explain why he took so long to pull over during the chase, but miscommunication seems to be the order of the day and he's not the mole, so whatever.
SAFEHOUSE
Brody: "Hey, where's your mom?"
Dana: "Going by last night, I'd say probably crying in the bathroom. Or fucking Mike Faber, our real dad."
There's a lot of complicated business wherein Dana -- having just broken up with her sociopathic boyfriend, having had an eventful few days -- steps up her horrible behavior to heretofore unseen -- and frankly, poorly staged and narratively unprovoked -- levels. She beats up on Chris, she screams at Nick until Jessica comes back with milk from Major Joy, which she then throws on the floor. It is a damned mess. The one that carries the pain becomes nuclear, if you hold still too long.
The thing I kept thinking this whole episode is a thing that I tell myself sometimes when I'm freaking out, which is that anxiety is just time-travel. Rule #2 for a happy life: Your body has gone to a place in the future where you're going to have to fight, and sometimes you have to be really strong and dedicated to bringing yourself back to the present. To remind your body that you're safe, and the future isn't here yet.
Except for Carrie, that's not true -- her danger is clear and present, and her possibility for redemption has never been this close -- and for sure Dana's not wrong about any of this. It's just that she can't do anything about the problems, because she can't know anything about the problems. So it just sits in her guts like a monster, and she's permanently time-traveled, because nothing is changing and nothing's moving. Permanent readiness, carrying her whole family on her back. If you don't have sympathy for that, you've either never been a teenage girl in a bad family situation, or you've never met a human being before.
It's annoying as hell to watch, and given the chillness of the people on this show about people who are chill for a living, it seems unrealistic, but the fact is that Dana's freakout is exactly the right response: Not only too realistic to watch without cringing, but also ethically correct. Even if the targets she's choosing -- with the exception of Brody himself -- are really unfair.
Dana: "So why the fuck are we even here?"
Brody: "I told you!"
Dana: "Secret Reasons are not actual reasons! Nothing you told us makes sense! I am losing my shit everywhere!"
Jessica: "Damn, girl. I can't say I'm not impressed."
Brody: "Honey, this is just you freaking out. Let's chill."
Dana: "WHY DON'T YOU GO LIVE WITH THAT CRAZY WOMAN AND LET THE REST OF US GET BACK TO OUR FANTASTIC LIFE WITH MIKE FABER?"
Brody: "Yikes."
Jessica: "She asked you a question, bro."
LANGLEY
Quinn: "So whatever, don't worry about it. The world is still a much safer place than it was yesterday, even if we didn't get the main guy."
Carrie: "No, because until we get him, I still caused 9/11."
Estes: "So that was a fucking mess, huh? You got kidnapped, held hostage, wasted the whole day..."
Carrie: "Oh my God, I have to go wash my face with hand soap now. I've been awake for a million years and I am swiftly losing it."
Quinn: "Fine, leave her alone. We'll question Roya and get things moving again."
Estes: "No, not we. Just you. Carrie's having one of her late-season jazz freakouts and we can't waste time on her magic power nonsense right now."
Quinn: "I kind of love how you are always right about everything, despite only ever being an antagonistic obstruction and also the most compromised person on this show."
INTERROGATION RM B
Carrie stares at herself in the mirror and commands herself to come back to the present; comes back out into the hallway just in time to see them transfer Roya. Roya's looking pretty ratchet, but still is the most lovely woman in the world. She's all chained up. Not loving today. Time-traveled all to hell.
Carrie: "Hey, sistagirl. Big fan. Listen, you see all the abrasions on my lovely face, and the marks on my wrists from where I was chained to a big pipe? That's your buddy Nazir."
Roya: "Good. You're a jerk."
Carrie, verbatim: "He was surprisingly frank. He told me it would take centuries to defeat the unbelievers, and he didn't care how many casualties there would be. On either side. How many people died... It's of no concern. I think that's him, not you. You were a student, and then a reporter, but you were never a soldier. You've never been there, at ground zero, when the bomb goes off, knowing all that death is on you. The naval base attack would have been the first time. 300 men and women coming home, their families waiting for them. Their children. All just... blown to pieces. But it didn't happen. And now you have a second chance. Take it. Because I think there's some part of you that's relieved that bomb never went off..."
Quinn spots Carrie in there, yakkin' at Roya, and just sort of rolls his eyes like, "Oh, Carrie! That darn Carrie." But what are you gonna do, interrupt? Or keep looking?
Carrie: "Roya, what he does -- which is kill innocent people -- it's justified by a future which, uh, for the life of me I can't believe you actually want."
Roya: "You have no idea what I want."
Carrie: "I get that it's personal, and you have Gaza Strip feelings about all this, and your grandpa died, but Nazir can't actually change any of that. His only answer is perpetual war."
Roya is a beast in the form of a woman, that sneaks into the room when Carrie's not looking. Just when Carrie thinks she's doing what she always does: Save the day.
"Have you ever had someone who somehow ... takes over your life, pulls you in... gets you to do things that ... aren't really you? That you know are wrong, but you can't help yourself? Do you have anyone like that?"
Carrie started crying in the middle of the first sentence, the first question. Yeah, she does. Yeah, she knows what that's like. They're having a funeral, soon.
Roya: "Boom! Gotcha, because you're a stupid whore and that's not what is going on here at all. You get on my nerves!"
She pulls off the skin mask of her face to reveal a wild animal, screaming half in English, and mmmmmaybe she's just a little less lovely at the end of it, or what would be the end if she were to ever stop freaking out. Hilariously, Carrie just gets the fuck on out of there.
Quinn: "Wow. So that went well."
Carrie: "Yeah, she really got inside my head. That bitch is in it to win it, man."
Quinn: "You really should go home. Not because you're not the messiah, not because you fucked up anything in particular today, but just because you are the walking dead right now. It's actually because of how important you are that I want you to go home. You need a nap."
Carrie: "Maybe you are right. Maybe that's why I am off my game, maybe it's that I haven't slept in like three days."
Quinn: "I promise that nothing will happen without you, okay? I know you well enough to promise that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to torture Roya Hammad in ways nobody needs to know about."
How funny would it be if the first thing he did was stab her through the hand?
Estes: "Thanks for lie-detecting Saul, Chance Kelly."
Chance Kelly: "I am just so mysterious and mesmerizing! Anyway, I got him to cop to last season's illegal surveillance of Sergeant Brody, the Aileen Morgan thing, and a more general sort of ongoing insubordination..."
Estes: "Cool and that's it, right?"
Chance Kelly: "Well, he did mention that you blew up a school full of kids and now have an adorable assassin in place to murder a US Congressman, but..."
Estes: "But what."
Chance Kelly: "But whatever, I just assumed he was acting crazy, so I left it out. Even though the machine said he was telling the truth. Frankly? Lie detectors, I don't trust 'em. The one thing that they are for."
Estes: "Good boy."
WASHINGTON
Carrie turns on the radio and doesn't even get like three seconds into her jazz freakout before she recalls something from the screaming of Roya, and abruptly heads back to the Tunnels, dialing Quinn.
Quinn: "You home yet? You're not, are you? You're off on some kind of thing, aren't you? God damn it, Carrie."
Carrie: "Remember how Roya was yelling so hard?"
They get into a sexy little conversation about which one of them knows Arabic better, and it's awesome. In the end, they decide that Roya's use of the word for "run" -- "Nazir won't run from you" -- was neither metaphorical nor in the subjunctive, meaning that the Minotaur never left. It's one of those things where they're like, "And then there is a clue," but they didn't really care to have a good clue and never had a chance to fill in the blank with a better clue, so this is the clue: Semantics. But that's enough for Team Quinn.
Quinn: "Um, we searched the tunnels."
Carrie: "I know."
Quinn: "Like a billion times. With multiple teams."
Carrie: "This fits the profile, though. He's always disappearing from under our noses. I'm going back there."
Quinn: "Son of a..."
Carrie assumes control of the tactical teams, like she's Quinn over here, and takes them all back down into the tunnels. How does she accomplish this? By being super intense, obviously. You couldn't look into the eyes of a well-rested Carrie Mathison and possibly be brave enough to turn her down, much less a Carrie Mathison on this much fire.
LANGLEY
Estes: "You wanna see your polygraph results? They're in a very classy folder."
Saul: "Not really. First of all because I am an honest guy, and second of all because we both know what this is about. Getting me out of the way for your hit on Brody."
Estes: "Funny, though, because all of the shit in here I'm nailing you with is true."
Saul: "What if they put you on lie detector and ask if you ever created a conspiracy to murder a US Congressman?"
Estes: "Why do you care? We both know what Brody is, and Congressman is the last thing on a long list of bad stuff."
Saul: "That's a good question. But the reality is that we have a deal with him."
Estes: "I am not an honorable person, that's the difference between you and me. And neither is Nick Brody. We don't make deals with terrorists. If he's confused about that, trust me he won't be butthurt about it for very long."
So is Saul going to have to quit the CIA? You tell me. The hiring and firing rules are a lot bendier than I realized, before this show. Maybe if Saul fucked a terrorist and started coloring on the walls with every marker in his house, they'd cut him a break.
TUNNELS (INT)
One of the tac team guys shows an interest in Carrie's well-being, which means he will soon be dead.
Guy: "What's going on with your face?"
Carrie: "This guy we're hunting did it."
Guy: "Wait, you were the hostage? Girl, you need to go home. Take a nap."
Carrie: "Help me find the Minotaur and I'll gladly do so."
They find a secret room, finally, and the guy instantly dies of having his throat cut open, and then Carrie just goes running through the tunnels screaming about the Minotaur, and you're pretty sure Abu Nazir -- out of pique, if nothing else -- is going to finally get at least one bullet in her ass. But no. She loops back around and finds them, just in time: The guns surrounding Abu Nazir, on his knees, as he reaches into his breast pocket (doesn't matter what's in there, or if there's anything in there) and finally goes down in a hail of bullets.
Estes: "Well, you're not a total fuckup. Good work."
Carrie: "A lot of random dudes had to die for me to pull this off."
Estes: "Yeah, but your psychic powers helped. Do you want to be at the press conference?"
Carrie: "Not really. I'd much rather just sit quietly near his body for like an hour."
Estes: "That ... makes a lot of sense, actually."
THE BODY
It's not just the future. Sometimes it's the past we travel to; find ourselves stuck in. She's not about glory, she's not about pride. Her service is much more humble than that. She never wanted to be the girl who saved the world: She's tasked with being the girl who didn't end it. Whose power holds her to that standard? This body is how she accomplishes that.
Part of her, the loudest possible and loneliest piece of her, lives eleven years ago. Horror and smoke and blood, all the time. "You must be happy," they'll all say. "You must feel so satisfied." But she is neither of those things. She is a girl who left the brightest part of herself back in the past, screaming for help. Begging to come home. There is a grim pleasure in it, but not satisfaction, because this isn't about a job well done.
It's not even about war. It's a rescue mission. This is how that girl comes home.
TUNNELS (EXT)
Estes: "Looking at you, I finally understand why they call this The Magic Hour. What are you doing right now?"
Quinn: "I guess going to kill Nick Brody, huh?"
Estes: "Yeah, that's what I was thinking. They're transferring the Brodys, security team's coming back home."
Quinn: "Everybody's going to be clamoring for a soundbite from him..."
Estes: "First of all, he is not going to be capable of saying anything that makes sense for a good long while, once he hears about this. And second of all, it's perfect because it'll look like retaliation."
Quinn: "You have a real 'gazing into the abyss' thing about you."
SAFEHOUSE
Jessica: "Hey Brody?"
Brody: "Oh shit, what now?"
Major Joy: "Everything's fine. In fact, Abu Nazir is dead."
Sometimes it's not about time at all, but about space. We put pieces of ourselves in other people for safe-keeping, or they steal them away from us against our will. Sometimes both. They think this will put him back together, but it just pulls him apart. The beast that served so many masters, abruptly without a single one. He breaks down, in utter grief, for exactly three seconds; pastes on the scariest smile, once he's done.
Jessica: "Whoa. If we weren't already getting a divorce, that would do it. Holy shit!"
Dana: "That is exactly what I am fucking talking about."
Everybody except Major Joy sort of figures out that Nick Brody is a terrorist. Then they head home.
BRODY HM
Jessica: "Listen, are you coming inside? Or do you still need to process some shit? Because I am your girl for that. Listen, you sit tight and I'll just climb on into this car with you until it gets real weird."
(It immediately gets real weird.)
Jessica: "I don't want to fight anymore. I don't just mean with you, I mean, period. Like, in the social climbing realm. Or for ideals. No more fighting. Just sleeping."
Brody: "I know, right?"
Jessica: "It's crazy because we did a really good job, all things considered. I mean, it was a bloodbath, but we tried really hard. I don't think we need to feel bad about it."
Brody: "I know what you mean."
Jessica: "I tried, Brody. I let you do all that humiliating sex shit to me, I resisted Mike as well as I could. I just thought if I were ... bigger somehow, I could have done it. I could have given you what you needed to be okay again. Put you back together."
Brody: "You were a trooper, man. Don't worry about it. It was beyond us both. I tried to put myself back together, too. Didn't work out. I was fucked up when I left for Iraq."
Jessica: "We all were, honey."
It's a safe place, a holy place, this SUV in their home's driveway. Maybe the only one on earth, today. Jessica is being wonderful, on fire with truth. A gift from Dana, who blew the whole lie wide open. Nick hasn't loved her this much in years. He launches into an explanation of that day, the day -- as he says -- "Tom Walker died," and Gaines was shot, and Carrie went bugshit on their lawn, and how every word was true, and Jessica just shuts him up. Lovingly. To keep her own mind in one piece, so she doesn't end up like them.
Jessica: "Carrie knows, right? She knows everything about you? She ... accepts it."
She does. You would think, no matter how much you hate Jessica, you would think it would hurt, to hear her say that name, to him, in this holy place. But it doesn't hurt. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever done, saying that name. Invoking her here, into the heart. Into the safe place.
Jessica: "You must love her a lot."
Happy for him, finding someone large enough, or broken enough, to hold onto all the pieces she kept dropping. Too hot to touch.
And what will we tell the kids?
"Nothin' they don't already know."
CARRIE'S HOUSE
Where by the way she is still not in bed. COME ON, Carrie. Just come on.
The doorbell rings, and the assumption, the hope, is that it's the Bear. Come to save them, one more time, swooping in right before the suicide or the assassination like he always does, come to say the Mighty Quinn is coming. Come to say it's time for another Weekend, maybe a permanent one.
But it's not the Bear. Because we are not safe.
Carrie: "Hi. He's dead. Can't hurt anybody anymore."
Brody: "I know. Wait, which one?"
Carrie: "Both."
Brody: "You know I killed the VP for you, right? It was him or you?"
Carrie: "Stop covering your ass and get in here. I'll accept that lie for now, because I am very tired and I don't want to think about the fact that I am part of a conspiracy to assassinate the Vice President and still haven't told anybody."
So he goes. And Quinn watches. He's disappointed, but not surprised, to see her kiss him. It just means it's going to be harder. His body travels to the future, a future where he learns that Carrie's been helping Brody all along. A future where he has to kill them both. His body travels to a future where Carrie's still just manipulating Brody, trying to make sure he doesn't disappear. His body travels to a future where all of this is done, and he goes back into the life, into the city, with his gun and a book to read. Signal lost to the noise, like he likes it.
And then he breathes, and calls all those boys home. Back from the cold, cold future.
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.