Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 73 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The First Mistake
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.03.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Saul's beef with Javadi is that back in 1979 they were actually kind of bros, spy-bros during the revolution, but Javadi ended up executing four people Saul was trying to get out of the country, in a very fucked-up serial killer way, because Javadi is kind of a fucked-up serial killer. So you can see why Saul is so excited about this whole deal. Then Saul got Javadi's wife out of the country, to be like Eff You: It's his daughter-in-law and grandson that MJ was staring at when he first got to the US and had his sandwich problem.
So last we saw Carrie, she was being kidnapped and taken to an interview with Javadi, which looked like it was going to be very scary. When we check back in with the team -- Quinn, Fara, Max -- it certainly seems that way, since they lose track of her almost immediately. But then it's a double-fakeout, because she only submits to like two questions before popping him with the entire embezzlement scheme Fara and Saul have been tracking. So all the dudes around the safehouse that are his bodyguards now would totally shoot him dead if they found out, and Carrie wins. I'm still on board, but it's getting kind of exhausting when they keep pulling this same trick over and over.
Javadi won't go with her to Saul right away, because it would be breaking protocol, so they arrange to meet up in a few hours once she's provided random data on Operation Tin Man. Carrie goes home -- to be stupidly pregnant and have a stupid bathroom drawer filled to the brim with about a million positive pregnancy tests -- and then back to the safehouse where Javadi's hopefully getting turned. The pregnancy brings back all that "I don't like Carrie when she's a woman" stuff, but also seems pretty cheap because what else can they do to her: Pregnancy is like the Godwin's Law of female protagonists, in that it's a huge, natural, important occurrence that somehow always feels more like a plot twist than a life event; there's always that convenient-miscarriage specter hovering overhead, like an asterisk. But it does put a different spin on a lot of past scenes, like when she dumped out all her pills and made that "oh well" face in the mirror.
I looked it up on WebMD and they say you should probably stay on at least lithium when you're pregnant, because the risk of birth defects is outweighed by the effects of pregnancy on your disorder. But the show is such an unreliable narrator that at this point it's like, "Assuming those are real pregnancy tests, assuming Carrie is actually pregnant, assuming that she actually went off her medication, assuming they're not going to suddenly reveal that it's Quinn's baby and they've been secretly married since 2008, assuming that she's actually Carrie and not just a spy impersonating Carrie impersonating a pregnant person."
Since it's been almost twelve hours since she last did some weird bullshitty thing, Dana's decided to take Jessica's maiden name -- which is Lazaro, because symbolism -- and then move out of the house altogether, which some girl we've never met before. Jessica acts like this is a problem for about four seconds, and then tearfully lets her go, because obviously it's not a problem. I can't wait until next week when it turns out her mysterious friend "Angela" is actually a cougar disguised in a trenchcoat.
Andrew Lockhart approaches Dar Adal with the intention of being bitchy about Saul behind his back, and Adal totally plays into it, but then when he calls Saul to tell him about it he totally acts like they weren't being bitchy behind Saul's back, like they are best friends. They are not best friends. The only reason we were hanging with Dar Adal in the first place is because he was friends with Peter Quinn, but now Peter Quinn is in our group so I don't know where Dar Adal gets off acting like he's still popular. He barely ever was! Anybody can see how fake he is, it's like, be a better friend or else stop calling me all the time.
Oh, and there's a deeply unsatisfying conversation with Mira where she keeps demanding that he yell at her about cheating on him while also yelling at him that it is totally okay that she's cheating on him, and they both look like assholes but mostly Mira.
On the way to Saul's safehouse, Javadi just needs to make one quick stop at his daughter-in-law's house, where he kills everybody. The younger woman gets a quick gunshot to the head, but his ex-wife that Saul helped escape, she earns herself a psycho face-stabbing with a jagged shattered bottle. Even Quinn is like, "This is simply too much for me today." They round him up, leave the grandson there to cry surrounded in blood because they're the CIA, they were never there, and then they take him to where they're gonna torture him. He's like, "Can a brother get a clean shirt?" because he's covered in several people's blood, and then Saul punches him in the face.
Next Week: Saul yells and yells and interrogates and then enhances the interrogation, I'd wager. Quinn is conflicted about their methods and whatever, and I'd guess he and Max comfort Fara who has been here for all of five minutes and suddenly is part of torturing the head of the Iranian CIA. Dana probably robs a bank. Carrie takes 137 more pregnancy tests.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Saul brought Quinn in on the Big Plan, now having lured Majid Javadi into America to make Carrie a double agent. With Saul's home life -- such as it is -- falling down around him, and his Directorship of the CIA in question, he was still a much cooler customer than Quinn when the time came for Carrie to get kidnapped. While waiting, Carrie helped get Dana home from her ill-advised road trip; now she's on one of her own.
EYES ON
While Carrie does some deep breathing exercises -- again with the yoga -- Quinn and Fara report on her disappearance. Max rolls up late, and Quinn doesn't understand his joke about taking a cab to a CIA safe house because Quinn doesn't understand jokes because Quinn is a person who is also a gun. Max and his new supercrush Fara send Saul some drone footage that underlines Quinn's big takeaway from this brief, which is that Carrie is just gone, probably with a bag on her head somewhere.
Quinn: "...Anyway they drag her into a truckstop outside Germantown and then we lose her. They never even came back for the car."
Fara: "Can we check it for possible identifiers?"
Saul: "Not even if there was a child in there with the windows rolled up. Think like CIA. We don't have any other surveillance stuff? We just lost her?"
Quinn: "I know, right? You look adorable staring into this webcam like this. You look like a Wise Old Owl."
Saul: "I don't trust technology!"
He wrinkles his cute old man nose and grits his teeth at the technology. He could go for some peanut butter straight out of the jar right about now, I think. Just stick those big bear fingers in there and go to town.
JAVADI
Carrie wiggles under the eyes of her two guards as Javadi chatters, on his way back into the room. He is pretty jovial because he is getting a new double agent today; what we don't know is that he is also crazy as fuck, so that might also be contributing to his overall chillness.
Javadi: "So that whole stripping you naked, poking around in your orifices, long drive in a black hood thing. That was pretty rough, probably."
Carrie: "Yeah, but I get it. Since you're a terrorist and everything."
Javadi: "Okay, because I want us to be friends. I want us to trust each other."
Carrie: "LOL."
Javadi: "So to speed that along, let's give you a lie detector test about some shit."