Do the credits have even more f-bombs this year? I haven't heard "fuck" this much in a show's opening sequence since Touched By An Angel. Anyway, Dana's doing awesome. Jessica rustles up some cash to get some therapy with Dana, then hears absolutely nothing Dana is saying; back home, crawling out of her skin, Dana sneaks off to have sweet sex with Leo in the institution's bathroom, driving Jessica to distraction.
morning, after some patented Jessica freakouts, Dana drags her into the bathroom to explain that she is not crazy, Leo is not crazy, Jessica is not crazy and that in fact the only crazy person is Nicholas Brody, who is a ruiner of lives. It's basically exactly what Jess needs to hear, so when Dana explains the total realness of her suicide attempt, contrasting it with the actual hope and health she is attaining now, Jess finally hears her. Out in the garage, Dana looks through pictures of her young parents for a while before finding and kneeling on Nick's prayer rug, a scene that is intensely beautiful.
Over at the CIA, a laptop discovered at Tin Man's castle requires the help of a green CIA analyst named Fara Sherazi, who is gorgeous young woman who wears a headscarf, all of which is consternating. Some Saul Berenson mean-shouting later, she's on board, and able to trace all the money funding 12/12 to a consortium of NYC banks, and thence almost to a source in the Iranian government. The bankers are shitheads, and of course nobody in our government wants you to be mean to bankers, EVER, so it's at loggerheads...
Until Quinn, who takes the Tin Man very seriously because of the little boy, takes it upon himself to threaten the life of one of the banking team, and they pull through. Saul comes to really appreciate Fara, as she quickly manages to reconcile the whole thing financially, and even finds her way close to figuring out where the money is ultimately going. It's nice to see Saul have fun; even nicer to see him start up a new conspiracy of silence within the CIA.
Which is acting super bullshitty, to the point where even Quinn says he's going to quit after Javadi, thanks to the Carrie storyline, which is a doozy. She shows up at Saul's house, yells at Mira and then goes straight to the reporter who broke the original story about the unnamed CIA agent that boned Nick Brody. She gets on record just enough to mention his innocence, but then Dar Adal's cops show up and commit her to a psych ward.
More manic than she's been in a long time, Carrie of course does herself no favors while she's in there. Quinn doggedly visits over and over to support her, but by the time her competency hearing comes down, Saul has gotten Carrie's dad and sister on his "side," and they try to get her to take her meds. This causes a massive blowout before the hearing can even begin, as every crazy-sounding, paranoid fantasy Carrie could ever have entertained all come true at the same time. The episode ends with a repentant Saul apologizing and trying to explain himself to Carrie, but she's so zoned out on forced Thorazine she can barely even force her mouth to say, "Fuck you, Saul." That's our girl.
So yeah, there's definitely several forces acting at odds at this point, and Saul's position is completely untenable since he's having to work every side of the equation at once. But he knows, and the show knows, that another big win could make the whole thing go away, so if it means imprisoning Carrie with her head for a few months, you can see how easy the call is to make. Just as easily as you can see Quinn drawing the line at exactly that same place.
And the Brodys! I think Dana/Brody Hating is a community recreational activity for people who are too dumb to actually understand the show and I always have, but as a counterpoint to the various ways her story echoes and disrupts the paths of Carrie, Quinn and Saul, I would say she is still a much better central character than her mother ever could be. Her repulsion toward, and yearning for, her father in particular, as Carrie fights her own idealized versions -- of Saul, her own father, her Agency and her country -- make her a fine replacement for the Nick part of the show's usual narrative triangle. What happens when he comes back, though, is anybody's guess. I'm starting to get a little antsy about that.
Week: We check in with Nick, who is in trouble deep and looking for religious solace; Carrie and Saul need to find their way back to each other when a new player enters the game
PREVIOUSLY
Hearings regarding the 12/12 bombing at Langley have caused a rift, thanks to Dar Adal's meddling and Carrie's increasing paranoia, in what's left of the team. The Senate Committee, seeming largely unimpressed by the multiperson takedown operation Saul and Quinn put together -- and privy to ever more confidential, damaging info thanks to the Mole and/or Leak -- decided to strike at the heart of the matter, probing Saul on record for details about Carrie's relationship to Brody, Brody's relationship to the CIA, and Carrie's own relationship with stability. The patterns she sees in this behavior, and that of others at the gutted Agency, led her to cause a scene at an informal, celebratory brunch that has undermined her credibility. Maybe forever.
SAUL'S HOUSE
Mira: "Oh good, it's Carrie Mathison. Looking bonkers, headed up my driveway."
Carrie: "Where the fuck is Saul?"
Mira: "He's not here, he's meeting a new analyst or something. He's at work. You should go to work. You should go to work, and do normal work things at work."
Carrie: "I don't feel like it! I feel like running all over the place and acting nuts!"
Mira: "That's definitely an option that is available to you, but I wonder if we might..."
Carrie: "Whatever. By the way, Saul sold me down the river on TV, and I am going on a rampage. Starting now, ending never. So tell him I stopped by, and also thanks."
CIA
Saul and Quinn talk about the unhelpful laptop Quinn retrieved from the Tin Man, a gorgeous young lady named Fara shows up. Everybody is a little wriggly around her because she's wearing a headscarf, or maybe because she looks like she's about nineteen years old. (No, it is because they are secretly racist and feel bad about it, so then that makes them resent her more, which they feel bad about, and so on.)
Quinn: "Well, I hope that there is good information somewhere on this laptop, because I killed a little kid getting it."
Fara: "Hi, I'm Fara. Please stop staring at my gorgeous face and my headscarf."
Them: "No."
Fara: "We gonna have a problem, bitches?"
Quinn: "No, but like, do you even lift? How long have you been here at the CIA?"
Fara: "Literally a week."
Quinn: "Oh my God, only a week?"
Fara: "Yeah, I'm a forensic accountant and computer hacker? It's not like I'm gonna need combat experience."
LATER
Saul: "Our transactions expert is a kid. In a headscarf."
Dar Adal: "Stop being racist! Do you know how many of our banking division got blown up on 12/12? You needed a specialist with language skills, you got one. Oh, and also I am thinking about taking out Carrie Mathison."
Saul: "You just said you weren't doing that!"
Dar Adal: "That was yesterday, before she ruined brunch. Do you know that she is meeting with that same newspaper reporter to tell her side of the story?"
Saul: "But what if she tells her that we hired a guy who wore a suicide vest into a room with the Vice President?"
Dar Adal: "Right? That's what I was thinking. Luckily I have a horrible plan."
NEWSPAPER
Reporter: "Okay, before we start I have one question. Did you know that you are freaking me out?"
Carrie: "This is who I am now. I burn like the sun. I shine with secrets. I can see through your body to objects on the other side of it, and also I can see inside your head."
Reporter: "Do you think you could stop it for like one second?"
Carrie: "I do not. Did you know that you can cure bipolar disorder by listening to Enya?"
Reporter: "I don't think that's true. So anyway, what was it like fucking the Langley Bomber?"
Carrie: "Not as interesting as how the CIA is covering up the truth about everything. About the Big Lie!"
Reporter: "Can you be more specific?"
Carrie: "Nicholas Brody is not responsible for the explosion at Langley."
Reporter: "That's funny, because Saul Berenson didn't mention that to Congress."
Carrie: "That's because he is evil now. Oh, did you by any chance sell me out?"
Reporter: "Right, I forgot to tell you that. I told my editor about you coming in, and I guess he probably called the CIA like immediately."
Cops: "Carrie Mathison? You are under arrest for having too much energy!"
THERAPY
Doctor: "So is it weird being out in the real world again?"
Dana: "I wouldn't know. My mom's a real sack of crap."
Jessica: "Sitting right here. Doctor, Dana thinks she's famous. In a bad way."
Dana: "The word is infamous, and it is correct. My father is a mass murderer. That's the most interesting thing about me and now it will always be the most interesting thing about me."
Dana: "No, that was to die. Although can I just say that I think it's fucked up I got to come home to an all-new all-redecorated guest bathroom."
Jessica: "Uh, you really need to let that one go. I didn't remodel, I fucking rubbed my hands raw scrubbing your blood out of the grout. I replaced everything, by myself, with a book I bought about doing it. I was fucking awesome, it really gave me something to do. Who needs Mike? Bitch, I'll be my own Mike."
Outside, Dana and Leo whisper teenage secrets at each other all the way down a hallway, using their Teen Love ESP. Like Dana's like, "I miss you!" and Leo's all, "I miss you too!" and she's like, "My mom is a sack of crap!" and he's like, "I know because you used to always talk about that in Group," and she says with her eyes, "It's easier to talk about my mom because she just sucks in the normal way" and he just nods because yeah, because "my dad's just got like a Kia dealership and gout, he never murdered an entire branch of government or anything, but we still understand each other like no two humans have ever understood each other" and she's all, "Not even Finn, my boyfriend I never liked that much, who my dad also blew up."
HOSPITAL
Harlan: "Hello, Carrie, I'm your doctor."
Carrie: "I know that, jerk!"
Harlan: "You need to cool your jets. You're having an honest to God commitment hearing tomorrow."
Carrie: "Yeah, that's not gonna go well. I have a feeling."
Carrie explains that whether or not she is crazy is no longer the plot of the novel of her life: This is about neutralizing her as a threat, which she became when they scapegoated her the first time around. It's like how once you're in the system you're always in the system: Now that she is crazy, it doesn't matter if it's true. The world is filled with crazy people who think they are the targets of a CIA conspiracy; they've put together the patterns wrong, they are attaching importance to the wrong things. Carrie doesn't do that often (but when she does, it's impressive) but there's no way to explain it, no way out of the box shaped like a box inside another box, so she just grunts and is pissed off, mostly.
Carrie: "This isn't necessary! Just tell them I'm standing down! They located my greatest nightmare, not that it should come as a surprise to anybody, and I am chilling out."
Carrie: "Those rational things you're saying piss me off! Are you even a doctor or are you just one of their robot puppets?"
Harlan: "See it's shit like that."
I don't really think it's that surprising when professional football players murder their wives: You teach somebody to do something and limit them to only being that one thing, of course the best ones are the ones that are the best at it, which isn't the tautology it looks like. By the same token, Carrie's a great spy because she is observant and puts the patterns together: Which means she is going to see enemies everywhere, regardless of if they exist. She's going to question identities, motives, allegiances, histories -- everything -- because every answered question or mystery solved, even the tiny ones, are really just another way of controlling a very fucking chaotic universe. One of Neil Gaiman's best Marvelman stories was about a lady convinced that everybody was a spy around her, and it was this unending cycle of identities and double-crosses, and eventually we learn that when Marvelman fixed the world, the spies were some of the only people that couldn't adjust to paradise, so he put them in a city-sized arena where they could spy on each other, endlessly. It was the only way they could be happy without screwing things up for everybody else. I know that's supposed to be a very Outer Limits twist but it just made my stomach hurt. I felt very bad for the spies, having to be that kind of person. What's dishonest isn't necessary.
SAUL & FARA
Fara: "So nothing on the laptop or in the briefcase originates from Iran."
Saul: "Then let me know when you find something that does, and fuck you for wasting my time right now."
Fara: "What the hell, dude? You asked me to examine everything, I examined everything."
Saul: "I mean, so follow the money. See this wall with the colored yarn? We need to get from this one bank allllll the way over here, to Majid Javadi, who paid for the bomb that killed everybody I know."
Saul: "And look. I don't have it in me today to be delicate about this so I am just going to be as horrible as possible and we'll see then if you will imprint on me like a duckling, okay? Your headscarf makes everybody feel racist. Sorry, but that's what is going on. And it wouldn't be true normally, normally we'd be our better selves, except everybody we know got blown up recently. It doesn't make sense and it's not classy for me to bring up, but I need you to understand that you're working with a lot of demerits from go, which means you need to produce better and faster results than you otherwise would."
Saul: "The fact that it made you cry is encouraging. Also, I am upset about my actual protégée being in a mental hospital and hating my guts, so that's part of it too."
Fara: "All right, I hear you. You're being an asshole but I hear you, and I have a logical leap I was about to tell you about, if I may."
Saul: "Lay it on me."
Fara: "We need to talk to people from this particular bank about a certain sequence of wire transfers I think are suspicious. They are in New York City."
Saul: "Great. The only thing I hate more than Muslims is Finance guys. Just kidding about the Muslims."
BRODY
Jessica: "Dana, are you having a moment to yourself? I can't stand that. Let me yell at you about sweaters and food and other things I have heard mothers talk about."
Dana: "Jessica. Get off. My jock."
Chris: "Seriously, you're being horrible. Stop hounding her."
Jessica: "But you could starve! If you don't wear a sweater!"
Dana heads back into the house from their lovely deck, to stare at herself in the mirror of the bathroom where it happened, and think about where and who she was that day, as opposed to today.
HOSPITAL
Quinn: "Carrie, I just heard that you are here! Man, you fucked up."
Carrie: "I don't trust you! Because I don't trust anyone! I have no idea how cool you are!"
Quinn: "I mean, but you went to a newspaper to tell them about spy stuff. That's not a conspiracy making that look crazy, that's crazy making it look crazy."
Carrie: "I mean, now that I'm in here he can use me to save the Agency, you know, and so that works out for everybody. Everybody except Carrie, who by the way lost the love of her life two months ago, and is singularly unprepared to have that be common knowledge. Is unprepared for the way a whole world finding it disgusting will make me feel about it, and him, and me."
Quinn: "Carrie, I'm here solely because I am awesome? And it is my advice, as the coolest person you know and a personal friend, that you back your shit down and just act cool for like ten minutes out of your life. Can you seriously not do that?"
Carrie: "STOP THREATENING ME!"
Quinn: "The words that are coming out of my mouth are the actual words I am saying. Not what you want me to say, or what you hear me saying. Stop projecting and listen to the actual words."
Quinn: "So I guess I'll leave out the part where I threatened to kill David Estes on your boyfriend's behalf, then. I guess that can wait. Quinn out."
Carrie: "Man, and it's after 11 so I can't even have one of my jazz freakouts."
DANA
As Jess goes running around the house screaming Dana's name and reminding us that the tall stranger in the house is named Chris and that he is her son and that nothing is ever going on with him, Dana meets Leo at the hospital and, after a muchness of obstructions and upside-down spider-kisses and kicking out of AC fans and whatnot, they get their fuck on. You'd figure mental hospital sex would have to be the saddest possible sex, but the desperate enjoyment they seem to find in it tells another story. Maybe they really are very much in love!
Or maybe one of them is Chris O'Donnell and the other one's Drew Barrymore and things are going to get Mad Love crazy/beautiful in a second. That would be so Dana if she ended up in that kind of situation. Even the hottest or tenderest (or bothest) mental hospital sex, you still know at least one thing about the person you're doing it with: They are in a mental hospital. They are receiving inpatient care. The key will be how Dana thinks about it. If she's like, "Yeah, here's his diagnosis and we remember to challenge each other but still respect boundaries," then we're good. (And they are lesbians, apparently.) But if Dana says there's nothing going on with Leo's mental health, brace for impact.
MATHISONS
Dad: "I found Carrie's paystubs, that prove she got reinstated and a raise after that time she got blown up and went super crazy. Remember that, with the markers and all that?"
Maggie: "I think you need to think about the fact that proving the CIA is a liar is the opposite of what this hearing is about. Because you know who's not going to be able to remember that? The lady we're talking about. She is going to go in there knowing that it's about proving she's not crazy, and then it's going to backflip on her so fast and she'll start thinking the CIA conspiracy stuff is her ticket out, which true or not is going to make her look crazy, but she won't care about that because she's right and being right is the only synonym she knows for happy, so she'll think she's looking un-crazy when she is, in fact, looking absolutely the most crazy. You know that's how this shit is going down."
Saul: "Hey it's me your old pal Saul."
Dad: "I should punch your face for this, why are you here?"
Saul: "Well, because you gotta get that girl to take her meds. And you gotta shut her up. Do you understand what the CIA is? It's spies. The S is for secrets. She is being the opposite of a spy, at a real bad time. I am doing everything I can to protect her on my end, but she just keeps finding new ways to make my coworkers want her dead. "
Dad: "I guess that makes sense. She does fuck everything up, for everybody, all of the time."
APRÈS SEX
Dana: "I could stay in this laundry room soiling every sheet in this entire facility forever."
Leo: "I am going to get in big trouble when they figure out I'm missing."
Dana: "The important thing is that neither of us is crazy."
Leo: "Are you sure about that? I probably have serious mental issues. I probably will kidnap you at some point, come to think of it. That's something that would totally happen on this show."
Dana: "I just want to have conversations like Carrie and Brody used to have, where they just blithely edited out core aspects of reality."
Leo: "Okay. When I lose my shit and put you in a car trunk, remember this moment."
Security busts in and catches them in the act of being darling! Better call Jessica Brody to shit all over this situation, stat.
HEARING
Carrie: "I can't believe Quinn is here to support me and be a character witness if necessary! What the fuck is that guy's problem!?"
Harlan: "I know it's painful to see him being such a good friend despite your continual hostility, but focus."
Dad & Maggie: "It's us. And we brought you a sack full of pills! Take all of them so your brain can go back to regular."
Carrie: "Pardon me? All I heard was one more option and example of autonomy being stripped away from me. Did you not get the memo that I am in a mental hospital?"
Them: "Yeah but like, think how fun it would be to get out of here. Meds would help."
Carrie: "I don't need drugs! I need to do YOGA and I need to drink some JUICE and I need to MEDITATE and do a bunch of things that could positively affect my brain chemistry."
Them: "That sounds great except clearly it is not working, and also did you know? One thing that can really efficiently affect brain chemistry is chemicals? Pills are chock full of them. They are designed for that purpose, in fact."
Them: "Well, okay. What about the reporter thing?"
Carrie: "Why do you even know about that? Oh, because guess what. Saul. Do you not see how I am right about everything, before it even happens?"
Them: "I mean, he seems to think that you are going to get yourself murdered."
Quinn: "They're not joking about that, kiddo. Seriously, think about it."
Carrie: "NOT A WORD, PETER QUINN. NOT ONE SINGLE HELPFUL, DELIGHTFUL, BEAUTIFUL WORD OUTTA YOU."
As the Magistrate enters, Carrie very efficiently tells everyone on her team -- Dad, Maggie, Quinn -- that they are to expressly fuck off, forever, and she is no longer on their team, team of one, and then most amazing of all: Before he even tells them to sit down for the hearing to begin, Carrie just flips out and tries to exit the room. Like just hauls ass. Break, feint, straight up the middle. And they grab her, and she screams that the whole thing is a sham, but I mean, if this were a meal, you just got as far as the part where the waiter offers to bring you some waters while you look at the menu. You know? If I jumped up and booked it out of the room while that was happening, could I really call the meal a sham? And also, who does that? In the history of TV I can't think of a single time where the bailiff was like, "All rise" and the person just opted out. "Nope, I don't feel like a hearing today, sorry." Just bailed.
FINANCIERS
Saul: "You guys have been in receipt of cease and desists before, I mean, you have a history of doing questionable transactions with Iran..."
Bank: "We have non-reasons for that, obviously, that I am too arrogant to even say them."
Saul: "Okay but like, if a person went off their meds and started detecting patterns, this wouldn't even be a hard pattern to detect. You launder money for terrorists, and take a cut."
Bank: "Don't be silly."
Fara: "Don't be silly? Fuck you don't be silly. Check out this email that you sent about systematically altering transaction headers, and told a broker to delete any customer names that were Iranian, just in case, and..."
Bank: "I have no idea what you are talking about at all."
Bank: "Where did you get all this?"
Fara: "From being awesome, bitch. Now give me the real documents, not this second-ledger bullshit."
Bank: "I'm just a sad little baby bank! I'm too big to fail! But too little to understand all these big words!"
Fara: "Look. Your client is funding attacks, by terrorists, on this country. Your bank has been trafficking in human misery since the Opium Wars. That's not an aberration, it's not a mistake, it's your business plan. You move money for embargoed governments, phony charities, you don't care and you don't want to know. But this time, I'm telling you where it went. Into an SUV full of C4 that blew up right outside this building three months ago. You passed the blast site on your way in. We know the funds moved through your bank. We need to know where they originated."
Bank: "Oh, you need that information? You're basically begging?"
Fara: "Insofar as you are going to prison forever and ever either way, please do keep fucking around."
Quinn: "I don't know if it will make me feel better about killing that little boy, but I sure could hand that guy's ass to him and feel pretty good about it."
BRODYS
Jessica: "That was very selfish! Because everything is all about me, including you!"
Dana: "Whatever, dude. Everything is fine."
Jessica: "To be fair, can we say that? I have never in my life heard of someone running away to the nuthouse."
Dana: "Relax. I was all good, the whole time."
Jessica: "You were fucking a crazy boy, you mean."
Dana: "How dare you profile him like that? Just because he's on a lockdown ward of a junior mental hospital you think he's got mental health issues? You're basically a racist. I can't wait to write about this on Tumblr."
Jessica: "I mean, is it not like a tenet of all this junk that you don't start up with somebody from your group? Or something like that?"
Dana: "Mom, you don't know anything about anything. You're just a dumb girl."
Jessica: "That may be true, but at least I noticed I was married to a crazy person. I chose to overlook it, but I knew."
Dana: "Yeah, that worked out really well. I should really model my behavior after yours."
They're home by this point, and Dana drags her mom into the bathroom. Finally.
Dana: "I wasn't looking for attention. Look around this room and listen to the actual words. It wasn't a cry for help, what I did. I didn't want anyone's attention. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted it all to be over, and I wanted to die because I could not stand it anymore. But now I can. And Leo's a big part of that. Work with what works."
Jessica: "He's like your Enya yoga? That sounds really dangerous."
Dana: "Mother, listen. What was killing me was being told I was crazy, because it meant I didn't have choices. Living with the Sergeant and you, after he got home, was like living in a very small jail cell, but it was worse because I didn't know it was there. I could feel it but I couldn't name it, okay, and that meant very little personal autonomy. Mostly just being a live wire with every single nutty thing he did, and every fear you were barely conscious of, running through me all the time. You lied and lied and lied and it got worse and worse and uglier and stupider and terribler. And now I don't feel any of those things anymore."
"Leo is not crazy, and I am not crazy. And in case you're wondering, neither are you."
Jessica: "I wasn't wondering, but I guess I actually was."
Dana: "Dad was crazy."
Jessica: "I mean, he was a lot of things..."
Dana: "Including a psycho, who did nothing but lie, from the minute he set foot in this house, and ruined our lives."
Jessica: "That makes me want to cry, but not from being sad. More like wanting to say thank you and not knowing the right words to say it, or why."
Dana: "So just let me be cool, okay? Hysteria is never going to be the correct response. That's about you, not about the thing. And when the 'thing' happens to be 'me,' it makes me want to slap your beautiful mommy face. Okay?"
SAUL
Quinn: "So about that laptop..."
Saul: "I haven't heard back from the bankers we shamed. About thirty Congressmen are up my ass, though, so that's fun. They sure do hate it when banks get butthurt."
Quinn: "I am also here to judge you harshly about making Carrie be crazy again. I went to the hearing because I am a stand-up fellow and a good person to know, and she..."
Saul: "I heard she lost her shit entirely."
Saul: "You'd prefer her dead?"
Quinn: "I'd prefer to not ask these questions anymore. The screaming sounded like what I want to do about that little boy. It's all too close together and none of it is heroic. None of it. So after we get Majid Javadi, I'm out. I quit."
Saul: "You are even more of a raccoon than I am. You wouldn't last five minutes in the cold, you'd be back in the game before the sun came up. Come on."
Quinn: "And yet."
It hurts him, you can tell. This idea of people reentering the world, at will, when he can't even bring himself to touch Mira. But then he gets an idea, and it's the same idea he always gets -- he already did it twice this episode, if you were watching for it -- but it always works. The fatherly crinkle around his eyes when he says something true, and you are relieved that he said it because now it's on the table, not so scary now in the harsh light of day, and that's why you can trust him, so therefore you should always trust him.
Saul: "The Tin Man's son. Was an accident."
Quinn: "That is not entirely what this is about, but I guess explaining that you are an asshole to your face was a bad plan from the start. Nobody ever hears that."
SOME FANCY RESTAURANT
Quinn: "Oh, hello. Are you enjoying your fancy meal? I am Peter Quinn from the CIA."
Banker: "I don't recognize you. Is this is a sex thing?"
Quinn: "No, but I can understand why you would immediately jump to that conclusion."
Banker: "I mean, I'm a happily married man, but there is something about you, Mr. Quinn..."
Quinn: "Thank you but this is about something else."
Banker: "Go on, Tiger."
Quinn: "If you don't give us the documents we are asking for, I will straight murder you."
Banker: "That went a different way from what I thought."
DAY
Saul: "So yeah, it's so weird, that banker guy sent all of the things we wanted."
Fara: "Probably his conscience got to him after I got in his head with all those righteous things I was saying. I guess it's cool to believe in the essential goodness of mankind."
Saul: "Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't a sexy ninja appearing out of the shadows or anything like that. Definitely man's better nature shining through, like always happens all the time."
Saul: "Well, figure it out soon so we can kill Majid Javadi and the Senate Committee will go away and I can go back to Carrie loving me like I am her father, because this shit is the pits."
HOSPITAL
Saul: "Hey, I would have swung by earlier except I was afraid you would beat me up. But now you are drooling on Thorazine and can barely pick your head up."
(The Chin, on the other hand, has never been more up to the challenge.)
Saul: "So listen, it's hard to explain but there are a lot of moving parts and because you are crazy and won't take your pills, you needed to be off the board. You would understand that, if you were taking your pills, but then we have arrived at a paradox..."
She's moving so slow and has so little clarity right now that, whatever is at the bottom is all she's got going on. You know what I mean? So it becomes, not necessarily the most essential or timeless part of her, but definitely what's driving the bus at this time. And The Chin says there's some mourning in there, and a whole lot of shame. And those eyes of hers say there are levels to the loss she's feeling that no one else on earth is quite equipped to understand. And then the mouth -- that dry, stuttering, half-dead mouth -- opens up, and explains what's driving the bus most of all.
"Fuck. You. Saul."
And she just looks at him, maybe forever.
WEEK
By far the most harrowing episode we're likely to see for a while, as we check in on Brody and his new digs, and meet the most enigmatic and mesmerizing guest character I can remember ever seeing on this show. Possibly any show.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, Ravenswood, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.