Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 74 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Duckling
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.01.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The spec op dwarves who rebuilt Brody take him to the Iraq border so he can seek asylum in Iran, kill this General guy to help Javadi's career, and then get back out again -- but between surprise gridlock, a random mine, and a very enthusiastic border patrol on the Iraq side, the crossing becomes complicated to the point of impossibility.
Peter Quinn starts the hour with an apology to Carrie for shooting her that time, and then mentions that he found out she was 15 weeks pregnant in the hospital after he shot her, and wonders if maybe she should be, like, cognizant of that or act like it matters at all. Carrie is firmly against treating her pregnancy as though it is actually occurring, and presumably takes thirty-four pregnancy tests over the course of the day.
Saul's shaking like a leaf and chomping on his lucky gum (Blackjack) the whole time, although Quinn and Scott Ryan are their usual calming selves with Carrie. Even Senator Lockhart shows up, acting seriously cool (by relative standards) and cheering the whole thing on. Then starts the constant death.
Random road congestion means an alternate route, so the dwarves pretend they're having car trouble while Langley figures out a better one; this draws the interest of some very intense Iraq police, who points guns in everybody's situation and eventually see Brody's face, which means the dwarves go into kill-craze mode on those guys. This sends Brody into a PTSD moment from which only the strong sexy arms of the dwarves can pull him back.
So they do that, and wipe the blood off his face, but before you can say "Rider Up," the Texas dwarf injures his leg when their truck runs over a mine and blows up in half. I would say that at this point they are Fucked Level: "Mostly." So Brody heroically saves the Texas dwarf and they all huddle together for hugs. Then a patrol gets interesting in what blew up, and decide to shoot at them just in case.
At this point the Chief of Staff decides that he wants to Hellstrike the whole mission, with the cover story being that Al-Qaeda was trying to smuggle Nick Brody into Iran, so they had to be blown up. Carrie is not down with this plan, but thanks to Nick it doesn't need to go down that way. They all decide to scrap the mission and get everybody home.
But Carrie recruited Brody too hard and too correctly, so there is no way he's giving up this shot at redemption. Even when Carrie reminds him that he's now off-book and has no sanction or extraction team, he just kind of says YOLO and that he counts on Carrie to get him out of situations like when you assassinate the third most important person in the Iranian military without a real clear goal after that. She acts like she hates this but she totally loves it.
So with everybody yelling at him -- and acting surprised that he's being crazy, when "being crazy" is like his only deal -- Nick and the best dwarf (Yousef) make it across the border, and right into the arms of the Iranian military. While Carrie is pressuring Fara to put her Tehran family in danger to help support Brody, and Yousef's getting ready to be tortured however long it takes Nick to get the job done, Majid Javadi shows up and takes Brody into his custody as the Langley Bomber. Then, JUST TO BE A DICK, he shoots Yousef through the head.
Which is not only horrible and decreases the amount of beauty in the world, but also puts Nick Brody into a crazy place, Yousef and AZ -- among all the dwarves -- were kind of his Issa this time around of being Frankenstein-ed into a new person. So now one of them has no leg, and the other one just got his head blown off. Just once I would like to see more of the charming side of Javadi and less of the "sudden inexplicable brutality" side of Javadi.
Next week: Lockhart is done being cool again, and I guess VP Walden presents as a form of Brody's crazy? That makes sense. He has already gotten to be crazy about everything else, we're probably right at Walden. But then maybe Nick will kill the guy and Carrie can do the thing and get him out of there alive and then everybody at the CIA will have a pizza party because terrorism is over now, and Carrie's monster baby will be totally fine and they will have a lovely wedding and Saul will give her away and Quinn is the ring bearer and they vow to have and to hold and to make good choices together for a long time to come.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Quinn shot Carrie for totally valid reasons, while Saul was off retrieving her crazy boyfriend from his limbo of heroin and not having any other problems or a personality of any kind. Now, we have a week to put him back together into a Marine, and ship him off to Tehran under Majid Javadi's custody, so he can assassinate the head of the Revolutionary Guard and then -- dubiously -- get extracted again. Carrie supports the mission, Dana supports anything that gets Nick the hell out of her life, and the rest of the team honestly seems to think he might come back from this one. Meanwhile, Fara has family back in Iran that would not love the fact that she's working for the CIA, and she's been feeling weird ever since that honor killing the other day.
QUINN
Quinn: "First of all, how is your shoulder that I shot you in?"
Carrie: "I have the unmitigated gall to be bitchy about that. I have got some nerve."
Quinn: "No surprises there. Hey listen, about your pregnancy you're ignoring..."
Carrie: "So what? You don't know my life. You don't know my life, so what? So what?"
Quinn: "So maybe you should stop pounding your chest at me, Jenny Jones? Or stop getting shot and doing drugs and having anonymous sex, and act like a pregnant person? Or even just start with acting like a person, of any stripe?"
Carrie: "First of all, we have no way of knowing I am pregnant. I will need at least sixty more pregnancy tests to be sure about that."
Quinn: "You don't have to be a part of this mission. This walking-Brody-across thing."
Carrie: "Why, because he's the father of this webfooted child growing inside me, with its extra toes and those gills on its extra toes? Guess what, maybe he isn't. Maybe I have no way of knowing which hot redheaded guy actually did the deed. I have slept with them all."
Quinn: "That's one coping strategy. But I mean like, listen, have you ever been objective about anything in your entire life?"
Carrie: "Besides my own well-being? Because I am a cold motherfucker when it comes to how I am treated."
Quinn: "Specifically about Nicholas Bro..."
Carrie: "-- Oh! No. No, I see what you mean. Absolutely not, are you kidding me?"
KILO
Meanwhile, those Special Forces dwarves are having a great time with their pet duckling Brody, who has been turned into basically a person under their watch. The Texan one who acted like he wanted to sleep with Carrie is named Aziz, AZ, or today Kilo-Alpha. The even hotter one with the sad eyes, Yousef Turani, is today called Kilo-Bravo. Brody is just The Passenger, or sometimes Jarhead. Because his head is like a jar of mixed ingredients that has been shaken up many times? Yes, but also because of the Marine that he used to be, and is now pretending to be. Wants to stop wanting to be.