Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 84 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Everything All Of The Time
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.27.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Saul goes goose-hunting for the weekend with a bunch of entrenched Old White Guy oligarchs, and ends up getting ambushed by Senator Lockhart -- the dickhead from the Carrie Hearings -- who explains that he's been gunning for CIA Director this entire time. Although it's a job Saul never wanted, you can bet it steams his broccoli that a wormy jerk like Lockhart's after it, and ever more so after a bloodbath of a dinner party that seems designed purely for Saul's humiliation. But after Lockhart delivers a gross speech in his own honor about how great he is, Saul raises a clever toast full of threats and heads home... Where he finds Mira, sick of being married to a raccoon-human, hooking up with a hottie from her Mumbai days.
Dana finally figures out that Leo is at worst a psycho who murdered his brother, and at best a troubled teen with an honesty problem, and decides to return home from their sexy boring joyride because loving a liar is what drove her crazy in the first place. Of course, since it's Dana, this is a futile gesture that ultimately means nothing.
At wit's end, Jessica Brody fully shows up at Carrie's house, which is the perfect way to start your first day off your meds again. They have a fairly decent conversation about how Carrie has inspired Jessica to follow her instincts, and that in this case her instincts are telling her Dana is in trouble, and then Carrie -- for about a million reasons, all of them respectable -- agrees to take time off from her busy schedule of being under surveillance by like five different spy agencies to help.
Thus, the Yoga Play, in which burner phones are used to call first the FBI Agent in charge of the Brodys and then Max -- beautiful Max! -- who has to go to a pretend yoga class so she can harass the FBI Agent about how when/if Nick makes contact or returns to the U.S., Dana will be the person he'll talk to, and also that Dana's absence should be taken seriously, and ... that's about it. Moments after Dana decides that Leo is pointless and heads for the hills, the cops show up and take her home.
I'm not sure why this needed a whole episode -- it's a fairly straightforward conversation with a lot of razzmatazz surrounding it -- but it's a fun set of concepts and works well within the episode's structure: Saul bitching at Carrie for endangering the op and showing herself above ground and bringing Quinn onboard as the third person of the team and her guardian angel all serve as perfect counterpoints to his deteriorating marriage and control of the agency, while also demonstrating his complete lack of interest in Nick Brody's family and/or Quinn's qualms about how Carrie might be "a person" who is capable of "getting broken" and other fantasy ideas like that.
And you get to have Quinn running around admiring the shit out of Carrie, and helping her out from a distance, and wearing a variety of outfits and intense looks on that little face of his. So I guess that's enough reason to have this episode -- that, and next week is the halfway point of the season and the act, so I guess a little bit of moving the pieces around was to be expected.
In the end, Carrie's instincts tell her that she hasn't been made and Majid Javadi is still going to make contact. And even if she weren't always right about everything, we know she's right about this, because we follow him throughout the episode as he crosses the Vermont border and set up in a safe house where their scary interview is about to take place. So when they come to abduct her, in the middle of the night, it's as scary for Carrie -- and for Quinn, and for everybody -- as it would be if you were actually getting abducted in the middle of the night, since that is what is happening, and we end the episode with Saul relieved to learn his number one asset is now in the hands of the enemy.
Next Week: A lie detector should prove no great obstacle for Carrie as she tries to work -- and maybe turn? -- Javadi; we learn more about Saul's odd history with the guy; Dana presumably does something, or else nothing, but I'm hoping for Leo to go crazy in some kinda way.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Dana ran off with literally a homicidal, escaped mental patient. She has not yet noticed that she is being dumb, but she will. Senator Andrew Lockhart, a big jerk, is trying to take down the CIA using the last two seasons of the show, while Fara and Saul are hot on the trail of Majid Javadi now that he's headed into the country to meet with Carrie, who has been turned.
VERMONT BORDER
Guard: "So you'll be in the US for three days, that's fun. Did you know you have the same name as an old soccer player?"
Javadi: "Yeah, but I'm in paper products. Not here for soccer. Or certainly terrorism."
Guard: "Are you going to be getting gay married while you're here?"
Javadi: "No, but I am going to get some authentic maple syrup."
Guard: "Those are the main things of Vermont."
BERENSON
Quinn: "Hey, I'm Quinn."
Mira: "That you are, my friend. That you are."
Quinn: "Saul, why are you dressed as a hunter? Is it Halloween this week?"
Saul: "Kind of. I am going duck hunting with the Chief of Staff and half that Senate committee that climbed up my ass two months ago and is only climbing back down out of my ass now to take me duck hunting."
Quinn: "So you totally have to realize you're getting Mean Girled, right?"
Saul: "Raccoons don't have a social structure that allows for cyberbullying."
Mira: "Because I am batting a thousand today, I'm sure that they're going to make his Directorship official. Which will freak him right out, but at least he'll stop whining."
Saul: "Mira, coffee? I need to get super intense and secretive about spy stuff."
Quinn: "Hit me."
Saul: "Okay, you have to follow Carrie, because Iran is following Carrie."
Quinn: "Man, that girl is always gettin' the business."
Saul: "In this case it's because they've turned her."
Quinn: "Not my Carrie! Fuck you."
Saul: "That was this whole season, making them think we'd burned her so they could make her a double agent. Sorry I forgot to tell you but a lot has been going on."
Quinn: "Well it's probably my fault too. Every time I see you discussing financial portfolios with Fara I think about killing myself outta boredom, and I run the other way."
Quinn: "Man, that is cold though! You called her a crazy ho! On TV! And then a month of inpatient care! She was so, so mean to me in there, you have no idea."