In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Majid Javadi is mean to Fara, which as we know is her one fatal weakness. Then later she almost thinks about doing something interesting and then she's like, "Nah."
Majid Javadi is very mean to Saul, saying hurtful things in his sexy voice until Saul's eyes bug out based solely on how mean Javadi is being! He cannot believe the total meanness of his former friend! But luckily, Saul has a plan, which is to play Majid back into Iran as an asset, which he thinks will help the US fix the Middle East for them, I think. I think he seeks to make spies irrelevant.
Which is just what Lockhart wants but guess what, that cocksucker still ain't happy. Dar Adal is pretty mad about being left out of the Big Plan, but it's nothing compared to how left out Andrew Lockhart feels. He gets very stompy, and angry tiny eyes, and acts like the horrible martinet of all time that he is, to the point where -- and this was amazing, very watercooler -- Saul locks him in a conference room so he will shut up. Can you imagine being so annoying that even when you are a Senator you still get faced by Saul?
In the end, though, the whole Big Plan goes through: Majid flies back to Tehran to becoming the King of it or something, Saul gets to jerk Lockhart around and go back to being buds with Dar Adal, and then he even wins back his cheatin' wife. It is Saul's biggest day I can think of, and he didn't even have to kill anybody.
What else has happened. Well, Quinn took a shower. That's very important to note. And then he got out of the shower, and for why? To strut around his apartment like a jungle cat, true, but also to be yelled at by Dar Adal. The why of this is complex, mostly it is because he hurt Dar Adal's feelings by hanging out with Saul all the time and doing secret Best Friend activities with Saul, because who wouldn't get jealous about Peter Quinn spending time with anyone else in the world.
But the other reason is that he was caught on camera at the murder house where Javadi first demonstrated his true amount of pep by murdering everybody. Carrie tries to make the cops stop trying to find him, but they are strident and obnoxious and a little bit like Andrew Lockhart toward her. Eventually Quinn offers to confess to the murders so that they will close the case, and he does that, which is good because it felt like he was confessing to killing that little boy that time. However, he is still very much over being in the CIA, especially if Dar Adal is going to come yell at him in the shower, which is Quinn's alone time.
Carrie meanwhile takes a break from her busy schedule of hating absolutely fucking everything about Fara, which is weirdly hilarious, to get some quick morning sickness -- I wonder if she is pregnant? She should probably take a pregnancy test to find out -- and then also to get confirmation from Majid that Brody didn't bomb Langley, which makes her feel good and validated, but also she still needs to prove it. It sounds like Martin Donovan knows the Mole? So now she needs Quinn to help her figure it out somehow. Then, she tells him, he is free to make whatever life choices she's interrupting with her needs.
So. Saul is wonderful, something actually funny happened on this show for the first time ever, Javadi is back in Iran working for us, and Quinn took a shower. All in all not a bad way to spend an hour.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Saul found both Agency and his home invaded by strange men with strange new ideas, and still somehow wasn't provoked into action by either, because his whole brain was taken up with Majid Javadi, the Big Plan, and how much he could put Carrie through before she breaks. But now that we're in the end-stages of Operation Footballer, halfway through the season, maybe he's free to think about other things. Carrie is pregnant but should probably take a test or ten to be sure, while Quinn is just about over this whole deal.
PORTER
The police, including a Captain Lonza of Carrie's acquaintance, have arrived at the very gross scene of Javadi's multiple homicide. The lead detective, Calvin Johnson, is not a friend of Carrie's, which is where the problem will come from.
Johnson: "Why do they even have plum wine? Aren't Muslims..."
Forensics: "Don't worry about it."
Johnson: "How many times do you think he got her with that bottle?"
Forensics: "Like a million times probably?"
Detective Cort: "A neighbor's security camera took this very important picture."
Johnson: "He looks like a Quinn. Who is this man? I must know more."
Cort: "And yet he does not exist. Simply too perfect, Detective."
SAFE HOUSE
Fara: "See how I figured out everything and now you are screwed?"
Javadi: "Are you trying to impress me, little girl?"
Fara: "No, I am trying to scare you because you are the worst."
Javadi: "Saul, what is this little girl even doing? You're such a wuss making little girls yell at me and go to mental institutions and do forensic accounting on me."
Fara: "Oh my GOD I hate you."
Saul: "Fara, go change your tampon and pretend he's not totally working you on purpose."
Fara: "Apparently it's Asshole Day at Chateau Safe house."
Carrie: "Honey, if I broke down every time anybody used sexism as a weapon against me I'd be noncompliant with double the meds I'm not taking now. It's just a shitty trick. Be a spy."
Fara: "But I'm also a lady!"
Carrie: "First rule of Spy Club is, no you're not. We're talking about a guy who just got finished doing a recreational honor killing, do you really think you're gonna be the one to reconstruct him? Look, I weigh a buck ten and I'm the best spy of all time. Use what you got. When you're fighting a blind guy, use your eyes. When you're up against a person who doesn't think women are people, roll with it."
Fara: "But my self-respect!"
Carrie: "Use what you've got, complete the mission, and then bask in the glorious knowledge that you're still a woman and he's still screwed. Do you really give a shit what he thinks about you? He's awful, dude. Don't let him set the goalposts or he really does win."
Javadi: "That was hilarious how she ran out of here yelling."
Saul: "Yeah, Iranian exiles have this whole 'thing' about your murderous regime."
Javadi: "I don't think she's cut out for this."
Saul: "You said the same of me, back in 1976 before there were even cell phones."
Javadi: "Yeah, you're a bad-ass. So what now, you're gonna torture me for information? Nukes? Some kind of deal?"
Saul: "What kind of deal are you picturing? PS, I am dicking you around."
Javadi: "Well, I'm definitely going to need a castle..."
Saul: "LOL. Okay, that was funny but I sense that you're serious so I'll cut to the chase."
The chase is that he's playing Javadi back into the game: Return to sender, with the embezzling hanging over his head. The episode title is obviously a reference to the Eliot poem, which relates to how Saul and Javadi are both old dudes who aren't ready to give up their power -- and how Lockhart thinks he has a better, fresher idea -- but the phrase "wilderness of mirrors," taken from the poem, is also entrenched in usage as a reference in itself, to the confusing system of agents, double-agents and so on that the spy game is really about: Stories about stories about stories, in strange loops that don't always land where you'd think:
Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign":
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.
In the spy game we're all in the wilderness of mirrors, reality itself is infinitely mutable and recursive and capable of retroactive continuity; it's frameable from the inside, infinitely. Saul loved Javadi and then it turned out Javadi never existed; Carrie loved Brody from inside a story of hating Brody inside a story of loving him, and went crazy inside a story of sanity inside a story of madness. And this season, or at least the first half, has been a (sometimes cheap-feeling) recapitulation of that idea: It makes you feel like a person in the game, in the wilderness of mirrors, by constantly rewriting every episode that's comes before.
Saul: "You killed 219 Americans, most of them friends of mine, all of them guardians of the world. I don't care that you stole money, I don't think it makes you a worse person because you are already the winner of that game. So now you go to Tehran. I'm your case officer. You are now recruited."
Javadi: "Uh, you burned me already?"
Saul: "Not really, if you think about it. Nobody knows you're here. We've given you intel already that makes your trip here worthwhile. Now you go home."
What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations?
Javadi: "Too scary! I am not some Carrie Mathison that can handle that type of shit."
Saul: "Then I will just ship you there anyway, as a traitor. Do you want to be tortured by the Revolutionary Guard forever and ever, or do you want to be their second-in-command? Those are opposite things."
Javadi: "I don't want to do it!"
Saul: "That's okay but you are going to."
QUINN
What a refreshing shower Quinn is taking! What a refreshing naked stroll Quinn is taking around his house! What a refreshing scene to be watching of a soaking wet Quinn stalking the jungle of his home like a great cat.
Dar Adal: "You look very tired!"
Quinn: "Also pretty naked over here. What is your business in this scene, which was already going pretty great?"
Dar Adal: "I am jealous because you are not my best friend/pet assassin anymore."
Quinn: "Saul is a much better bro than you are. Plus Carrie is just the most interesting."
Dar Adal: "I came here to show you this very important picture of how you got made, at that slaughter of the ladies. Who are related to Majid Javadi which is probably not a coincidence. I just want to know what is going on! And not feel left out! Being friends only with Andrew Lockhart is terrible!"
Quinn: "Maybe I was there, but I don't feel like telling you why. It is a best friend secret."
Dar Adal: "Okay well, you are a murder suspect now. And frankly I am happy about that. You have really burned my feelings."
Quinn: "Good, I hope you go cry."
SAFE HOUSE
Quinn: "I just took such a shower, and then Dar Adal whined and whined."
Fara: "Did you know we're sending Javadi back to Iran? I kind of thought it would be like when you stabbed Brody that time, just for kicks. Maybe I will still do that."
Carrie: "Oh my God he cried and whined and screamed so hard he split a stitch. Hilarious."
Quinn: "I am glad you are having a good day but check out this important photo!"
Carrie: "Oh, man."
Saul: "What do you guys want? I was just about to make him cry again."
Quinn: "I kind of appear to have committed an honor killing yesterday."
Saul: "Just you? Not Carrie or Javadi?"
Quinn: "Not that it matters to our internal secret club. Dar Adal found it himself so now he knows something's up. I would guess he is onto us about Javadi."
Saul: "Oh boy. He is going to feel so left out."
Carrie: "I will talk to a police captain of my acquaintance. At least we can get Quinn off the APB wire."
Saul: "Go look him in the eye and act very CIA. If he gets nosy, too bad."
Carrie: "I doubt highly that he will think it's weird if I act snotty and obstructionist, since that is my main thing a lot of the time."
Of all the places for a multiple ritual murder, this is the most inconvenient because it means obviously Majid Javadi is here. But I guess they are hoping nobody will connect the dots. I just wish I knew why the ex-wife was even in Maryland, which seems very important to know how that happened. Maybe she was just stubborn and wanted to not be in California? That sounds like how grandmas roll for sure.
There is a neat moment where Quinn feels guilty for not catching the neighbor's security system, and by way of comforting him -- in his usual, minimal, brusque way -- Saul's like, "On the other hand I missed the entire thing where he was driving to murder those people until about one second before everybody was murdered, so."
Javadi: "Oh shuddering Bear, oh human raccoon, what is going on? Did you make mistakes or get in trouble?"
Saul: "Don't worry about it. Worry about your ass."
Javadi: "Hey, how is it going with that homicide I did? How do American agencies deal with covering that stuff up? In Iran we don't worry about it too much."
Saul: "I just wonder why the hell you did that? It was so gross!"
Javadi: "Honor killing. I don't recognize divorce, so. In a perfect world I would have stoned her to death, but I knew Quinn and the girl one were coming."
Saul: "Wow, that's even grosser than I could have imagined."
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.
Saul: "Look at this picture of us on her 21st birthday. You and me and Mira and Fariba, talking about how great we were gonna be for Democracy."
Javadi: "How's that working out for ya?"
PORTER
Lonza: "Carrie, I'm so glad you're here to make my life hard some more."
Carrie: "I am here to answer precisely zero questions."
Lonza: "That's irritating but you're really gonna love meeting Cal Johnson."
Johnson: "Who is this beautiful, perfect person in this photograph?"
Carrie: "Even better in person, but otherwise classified."
Cops: "One of yours, though?"
Carrie: "If he existed, which he does not, that would be classified."
Cops: "Why was he here?"
Carrie: "Classified."
Cops: "[One thousand questions, each more annoyed than the last.]"
Carrie: "Classified! But thanks for only barely condescending to me, as a woman!"
The Universe: "Oh, my bad. Here, have some morning sickness."
Carrie: "How embarrassing! Why did you do that in my middle of my bad-assness?"
The Universe: "Sorry, classified."
SAFE HOUSE
Saul: "Be pragmatic. You're not Abu Nazir, you're not a fanatic..."
Javadi: "I beg your pardon! Don't presume to tell me I am not batshit crazy, sir."
Saul: "Well, we're both old men in a dry season. If we don't control anything, we lash out. I feel like some of your terrorist acts are like that. Small silly strikes that bely your confidence. You're better than this. I mean, go big or go home."
Javadi: "I blew up the CIA, bitch."
Saul: "Yeah okay. I wanted to chat about that too."
Saul explains -- and it's a rare peek behind the curtain -- that on 12/12, his first response wasn't Tin Man revenge, or Lockhart publicity, or the CIA's critical failure. It was that terrorism is a gross and ugly question without an answer. I hit you, you hit me back. Playground bullshit. And since you can't stop terrorism -- since terrorism invents itself, whenever and wherever people feel silenced -- you have to stop sacrificing queens and pawns, and take over the whole board.
The Big Plan, then -- the anvil he was willing to beat Carrie against, until she was flat and bright as tin -- is nothing less ambitious, or kind, than a game of thrones, a paper dollhouse, with Javadi at its center. Is that insane? No less insane than blowing up the heads of the American intelligence community in one great conflagration, nominally because of the acts of an uneasy ally and not even America itself.
...Whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms.
You hit me, I don't hit back: I save us all, instead.
Javadi: "First of all, you sound nuts. Secondly, how does turning me do that?"
Saul: "For years, we toiled in back rooms, you and I. We toiled while shallower men held the stage, waiting for our time to come, gradually understanding it never would. Now it has, unexpectedly. For you."
"Majid, thanks to you, I stand at the center of things. You put me in power. You go back to Tehran, I'll do the same for you."
Sometimes you need a superhero so bad you have to melt somebody down to build one. Ask Quinn, ask Carrie.
Ask Abu Nazir, on the day Issa died.
PORTER
Lonzo: "I guess a brutal abattoir is the best place to barf in the middle of the day. I guess that went all right."
Carrie: "So they will respect the badge and forget this ever happened?"
Lonzo: "Yeah, again. If I pull a Carrie on these guys, the thing that happens is this photo and all those dead ladies -- which are clearly global in scope, whatever the classified behind the scenes facts are -- shows up on Drudge or Wikileaks. We all go down, when this happens."
Carrie: "Ugh. I miss the Cold War. What is it going to take?"
Lonzo: "This incredible man in this very important picture."
Carrie: "You are going to make me barf in a completely different way."
SAFE HOUSE
Carrie: "Hey, seen Quinn? Something impossible and weird happened, I was told No."
Fara: "Was this always the Plan? To send him home?"
Carrie: "Well, it was the hope. Buck up, sunshine -- your spreadsheets did all of this."
Fara: "But shouldn't we stab him a little bit? I mean, I get that 218 white people died but have you ever heard of Iran? That place is a shithole because of this guy and his buds."
Carrie: "It's not that you're wrong? It's just not The Plan. You're green, I get it. But sooner or later that subjective part of you that thinks this is about you, and your feelings, will be burnt out and then you won't have to worry about these things anymore. You will be hollow, like us. I would just work on getting there."
Saul: "Okay, Javadi's broken."
Carrie: "Whew! On the other hand, my shit went haywire. They want Quinn."
Quinn: "I don't exist!"
Carrie: "Therein, the conundrum."
Saul: "Don't you own a police chief?"
Carrie, verbatim: "He boned me!"
Quinn: "How about this idea, how about I just go confess to the murders? They can't arrest me or question me about anything because I'm a spook, so they'll just act real mean to me and then I can come home. I mean here, to this creepy house."
Saul: "Just make sure they are mean to you long enough to get him out of the country."
Carrie: "I will go with poor Quinn because how can you be mean to that face?"
Saul: "No, you will be the babysitter of Javadi. Quinn will go make the police sad, and I will go get the horns from the insufferable Andrew Lockhart and possibly the butt hurt Dar Adal."
It's kind of nice because it's like Quinn and Saul both having their miniscule versions of the mental hospital scenario: Go someplace that sucks, like really super sucks, and then stay there until Javadi's on the move.
Javadi: "Okay fine. But what if I just disappear?"
Saul: "Carrie is a very good babysitter of monsters."
Javadi: "No, I mean back home?"
Saul: "You were here when this started, back in '76. You can be there when it ends."
Fara thinks very hard about stabbing Majid Javadi with some scissors, but then remembers that Carrie yelled at her about doing just that, and decides she doesn't want any of that noise because of how Carrie's face gets. She becomes a little bit more of a spy and a little bit less of a person, but is relieved to find she is still Iranian-American and a woman, just like Carrie said she would.
Saul: "Oh, one more thing. Tell me what really happened at Langley?"
Javadi: "Did you not tell the Senate that it was Nick Brody? Also the whole world? Do you not have a five-continent manhunt going and a $10M bounty?"
Saul: "I know but just tell me, Jeez."
Javadi: "It wasn't him, buddy. It was Nazir's crew, but... Not him."
Saul: "Cool. On the downside, Carrie is going to go bughouse."
Javadi: "The question is whether anybody will notice."
Saul: "No, the question is whether I actually give a shit."
Saul gives Majid a change of clothes that are not covered in women's blood and brains, because even on a private jet that will get you noticed. Then he steps away to call Mira, because today is the day Saul comes back to life.
Throughout Eliot's poetry the references specifically to aridity, to dryness -- of which there are a lot -- consistently refer to a certain lack of psychic vigor that expresses itself in physical weakness, impotence, lack of vigor, but also to environmental stasis. When the Fisher King is ill, the land and its crops dry up, and only when the Percival, the youth of the fairytale, shows up and cures/kills him can the land return to vitality. Eliot related these old mythic cycles to modern-day spirituality -- c.v. George Orwell's multivalent, self-contradicting "severed wasp" -- that you can see the life force draining out of us through the holes we left when we killed God. For me it was always about him linking sexuality and divinity, by only ever expressing them in negative space: Not sex and God, but lack of sex and lack of God. You deny the Gryffindor parts of yourself that are given to divinity, to hope, to dreams -- to interaction with the higher parts of yourself -- and then wonder why your heart or your dick don't work anymore.
When the CIA went on lockdown after 12/12, and he became its King, they entered into a symbiotic paralysis: A lack of hope and color, a loss of belief in the mission, that said maybe it was time to burn the whole thing down. Lockhart saw his neighboring kingdom struck ill with famine, with dryness, and moved in. But now that Javadi is on the move again, both Saul and the CIA are coming back to life: Saul becomes his own Percival when he realizes that the old kingdom can be destroyed, and rebuilt -- and that half the job's already done now.
Mira: "Certainly not smoking a post-coital cigarette with Alain still in my bed. You?"
Saul: "...Uh, driving?"
Mira: "Home?"
Saul: "Back to work. Certainly not standing in a safe house yard watching a monster drive away. But I was just thinking about us, back in Tehran."
Mira: "Oh boy."
Saul: "No pressure, I just... I was so scared for you then. So focused on getting you to safety. And for reasons that are classified, that woke up a thing in me that said, Fuck your friend from Mumbai. I didn't leave you behind then, and I hate that I have now."
Mira: "Your claim on me isn't any less just because you went into hibernation."
Saul: "That's what I was calling to say. Even if I've lost you. I will be home as soon as I am done finishing up some very secret stuff."
EN ROUTE
As Peter Quinn presents himself at the crime scene, Carrie does her last-minute stuff.
Carrie: "Eat this piece of paper. Contact info, cover story, and here's that intel on Tin Man."
Javadi: "What if I can't remember all this stuff?"
Carrie: "Bitch you've been a spy since literally before Quinn or I were born. Come on."
Javadi: "This Tin Man stuff, is it true?"
Carrie: "Well, it's verifiable."
Javadi: "Who's the source? My first thing is going to be murdering that person, you have to know that."
Carrie: "It was computers! Hacking was the traitor."
Javadi: "I will kill hacking then."
Carrie: "Cool. Okay, have fun being the Carrie for a while. Let me tell you, it is no fun."
CIA
Dar Adal: "I am so mad at you! You hurt my feelings!"
Saul: "I know, but I'm not sorry because I knew you'd love it."
Dar Adal: "But you told Carrie and Quinn! They are just babies! And... Holy shit, did you tell that headscarf girl?"
Saul: "Process quickly, please. We gotta deal with Lockhart, I need you nimble."
Dar Adal: "He's a dipshit but he's not a total dipshit. Right now you've got the ex-wife of the IRGC Chief slaughtered in Bethesda and Carrie Mathison running around off her meds? Two things that even he would notice?"
Saul: "This is the good part of the story we're about to do. It's fine."
Lockhart starts screaming the second he sees Saul, but Saul has the vitality of the Fisher King running through his veins, coursing through, in a way that could cow even the dipshittiest of the dipshits. Not to mention the longer he lets Lockhart yell at him, the further Javadi gets from Lockhart being able to fuck it all up. Which is the most important part, because Lockhart is so good at fucking things up that it blows everybody's minds, all the time.
EN ROUTE
Javadi: "So whose idea was it? To wring you out like a dishtowel?"
Carrie: "Shut up and be a double agent and shut up."
Javadi: "That's what I thought. He's been doing this shit since the '70s, you realize?"
Carrie: "Yeah and I am cool with that. Plus if it's so predictable how did you fall for it?"
Javadi: "Because you are so special and I love how you are independent and a strong-willed female spy, obviously!"
Carrie: "Yeah, okay."
Javadi: "I mean, I slaughter people in unimaginably horrific ways, but what he did was just cruel."
Carrie: "You realize you're bullshitting a bullshitter? You can't tell me anything I haven't already thought about. This is the same conversation we were supposed to have when I was actually, literally going crazy, and even then it wouldn't have worked."
Javadi: "Not just that. Do you know what he asked me?"
Carrie: "Why are you so gross? Why did you kill that nice old lady you loved?"
Javadi: "No, he gets those things. As do you. He asked me who moved the bomb. Which tells us that you guys aren't sure it was Brody."
Carrie: "I don't care at all about this. But just out of due diligence, um, what was your answer?"
Javadi: "One of Abu Nazir's guys, not Brody."
Carrie: "Who even cares? Not this guy, that's for sure! But then like, who was it?"
Javadi: "I actually don't know."
Carrie: "Congrats on making me full crazy again."
Javadi: "And on such a short drive!"
PORTER
Johnson: "Are you Peter Quinn?"
Quinn: "Yeah. I mean, that's my name people call me. It's complicated but you get the..."
Johnson: "One of the victims was the ex-wife of an IRGC guy and the other one his daughter-in-law."
Quinn: "If you say so."
Johnson: "And that's significant?"
Quinn: "If you say so. Can we wrap this up?"
Johnson: "That's what we're doing. This is not some pro forma CIA hush deal. I am trying to actually do my job."
Quinn: "Oh, no. That isn't happening. I'm really sorry about that."
Johnson: "So you think I'm just swinging my dick around?"
Quinn: "No, you seem like a nice man. I don't want either of us to be in this position."
Johnson: "I'm just trying to understand this shit that you people do. This shit that we're party to, because we pay taxes. This shit, these gross pictures. And you're telling me you shot this chick, and stabbed this lady with a bottle..."
Quinn: "Walther P-22. Plum wine."
Johnson: "And you did this for 'national security.' You fucking people. Have you ever done anything but make things worse?"
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
It's the old soldier question -- I do bad things so you don't have to know there are bad things -- but because Quinn is freaked out about being a spy and an assassin and a killer of little boys -- it refreshes itself into something a lot darker.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
CIA
Saul: "...But it's super-special spy stuff, so you can't tell anybody. Okay?"
Lockhart: "Pssh, who cares? Hint, I do."
Saul: "Okay, you can be in the club but it's very, very classified."
Lockhart: "Oh my God. I mean, whatever."
Saul: "Remember when the CIA was blown up that time?"
He fights Saul every step of the way, making some sound arguments -- that this is a recapitulation of the disaster that was Saul's HUMINT takedown of Brody, which presumably led to the bombing in the first place -- and calls Saul a dumb old Fisher King for still thinking you can double-cross your assets and magically turn enemies into assets and whatever, but Saul knows now that there's power in the old ways.
And what I don't think Lockhart understands, even though it was right there in the tape -- or has to deny, because of the necessary doublethink involved in the privatization of defense -- is that Brody was created entirely from the drone casualties Lockhart still thinks of as business overhead.
Lockhart wants to erase human cost at the cost of human lives: A patently nonsense phrase that only makes sense if you've ever met a libertarian, or fiscal conservative, or anybody else who confuses the tidy neatness of intellectual puzzlers with realpolitik.
Lockhart: "Let's be real, this is all about me."
Saul: "Yes, you're a very important man."
Lockhart: "Specifically, your mess I'm inheriting in ten days."
Saul: "A mess. By which you mean, placing a major asset inside a government that's been a black box for thirty fucking years? You asked me what I've been doing. I told you. Didn't expect you to understand it, but we're good now. Are we done?"
Lockhart: "You have now manipulated me into keeping you here all fucking night."
Saul: "Good one! That was a good trick you played on me, Senator."
TARMAC
Javadi: "Aren't you gonna ask me?"
Carrie: "Ask you what? I know it wasn't Brody. Obviously."
Javadi: "Yeah but how did they get his keys?"
Carrie: "That is true that Langley didn't have valet. Do you know it was?"
Javadi: "Is it like the main thing you're constantly thinking about?"
Carrie: "I got a lot on my plate, tbh. I constantly think about mostly everything."
CIA
Lockhart: "I'm a dipshit, but not that much of one. Who killed the ex-wife?"
Saul: "Oh, right. Uh, that was Majid Javadi."
Everybody: "WHAT?"
Saul: "Did I not mention he came into the US through Vermont?"
Lockhart: (Shits himself.)
Dar Adal: "This is the best day I've had in months. Do go on."
Saul: "Okay, that's the other thing. We made him come here. We turned up Carrie's crazy so high that it was like a bat signal, and he came to get her."
Lockhart: "But that means you lied in front of Congress! At my own personal tea party of treating you like shit in front of the universe in order to get your promotion!"
Saul: "Yeah, and you ate it up like a total sucka."
Lockhart: "I need more people to yell at! Go get Carrie!"
Saul: "Carrie is busy putting him on a plane back to Tehran."
Dar Adal: "Oh ho ho!"
Lockhart: "Gyeeeaahhhhh!"
He runs around in circles screaming for about eleven hours, putting the perfect capper on Saul's day -- and Dar Adal's, now that he knows the whole story. Oh, Andrew wants to tattle to the POTUS, Andrew wants to ground the plane, Andrew wants to smash all of the breakfast pastries in the building with his angry little fists. Andrew, to be honest, looks a little bit in need of a nap.
Lockhart: "I am the Director of the CIA!"
Saul: "Actually you're not, yet? So suck it?"
"We fry Javadi's ass publicly, that's shortsighted. It's justice, but it's ineffective, because the head that grows in his place isn't a controllable or known quantity. The cycle continues over and over, and you and your gross shock doctrine buddies get fat off the proceeds? No thanks. Instead, we will shift the power structure of the entire Middle East without disrupting a single regime."
Lockhart: "I am calling the President to tattle that you are a clown show! How do you use this conference room phone?"
Saul: "I don't know, I hate technology. But I do know how to lock you in there..."
Lockhart: "Oh my God! Let me out of here you dicks!"
Saul: "...And how to blackout the windows and doors so it's even scary in there."
Lockhart: "It is so scary in here! Let me out!"
Saul, verbatim: "MAKE ME."
Dar Adal: "No homo, but..."
Saul: "It's cool. I'd blow myself right now, if I could get the angle right."
TARMAC
Carrie: "Just kidding! Hold up!"
Security: "Woman, do not make fast movements toward the plane!"
Javadi: "Let her, you guys. She's tiny and not dangerous."
Carrie: "Ha! I can tell that was a joke. Okay, tell me the things."
Javadi: "You keep saying I'm a liar and a jerkoff and all this mean stuff..."
Carrie: "Oh my God, just tell me. We can be bros."
Javadi: "Fine. The guy who built the bomb and moved the SUV is alive and in the US."
Carrie: "What is his contact information?"
Javadi: "You'd have to ask Martin Donovan, whose face you almost spat in last time."
Carrie: "UGH. Give me a break, dude! That guy is SO GROSS."
Javadi: "Uh, look where we're standing. Trust me, he's fired as my lawyer. You might want to get to him quickly, if you know what I mean."
CIA
Saul: "Dar Adal, pass me that whiskey. That phone ringing is going to be the people telling us that the plane has left American airspace. Godspeed, you evil old fucker."
Dar Adal: "Seriously though, you're amazing. I forgive you for being a bad friend."
Saul: "I knew you would. Secretary Lady, could you call Facilities? A varmint is locked in the conference room that needs out. And so I bid you all goodnight."
PORTER
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
Carrie: "On a scale of one to ten, how bad was it and is it over with?"
Quinn: "It is over with, and as for how bad it was... It wasn't bad."
Carrie: "You confessed to a couple of murders you didn't commit?"
Quinn: "Cross-applied. I feel better for confessing to something. Half the pain of this job is never being known. Now they know I killed somebody, and that makes me more real."
Carrie: "Don't get carried away with that. You start in with authenticity and then..."
Quinn: "Too late. I am over the CIA. I don't believe it anymore."
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
Carrie: "The whole thing?"
Quinn: "The big lie. The ends don't justify the means, Johnson was right about that."
Carrie: "Okay, well, unlike Saul last season I'm not going to give you trouble about it. But before you quit, can I drag you into one more of my huge messes?"
Quinn: "How long will it take?"
Carrie: "About five episodes probably."
Quinn: "Let me guess."
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
Carrie: "You know I don't think he did it. You were nice to me about trying to find him, it was our best moment of all time, but you know me better than that."
Quinn: "You actually believe that you can clear his name and get him back here and be married and have his baby."
Carrie: "I am crazy. Did you not get that memo?"
But of course he goes for it. How can you not? This is the wound he needs to heal now. This is the world he puts back together. A world he's saved more than once already. And just like last year it's not for the Agency and not for Estes or Dar Adal or even the shuddering Bear -- who doesn't stop at the door, who doesn't stop until he's in her arms, shaking; until spring's first green shoots appear again -- but because some things are just beautiful enough to keep alive, if you can.
I don't hit back: I save us all.
WEEK
Martin Donovan and the other lawyer go into burn mode when the team closes in on their CIA plant. With POTUS steamed as heck and Lockhart on the warpath, Dar Adal ends up running a mission against Saul's wishes that, in true Mathison fashion, puts Carrie right in Quinn's crosshairs.
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.