SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Homeland series four. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen season four, episode six.
Read the episode five blog here.
To quote Quinn, “Holy fuuuuuuck.” That was cold. Even for Homeland, a show that has offered up its share of sudden, shocking moments in the past – Javadi’s graphic stabbing of his wife springs to mind – Aayan’s execution, by his uncle, no less, was delivered with a remarkable ruthlessness; the sucker punch at the end of an otherwise leisurely episode. Part of me wants to say that I saw it coming – in retrospect, Aayan’s “I love you” phone call to Carrie should have tipped me off that he was a goner – but honestly, I did not.
Largely, that’s down to how central Aayan has been to this current season, not only in terms of its plotting, but also in providing an innocent foil for Carrie’s increasingly cynical outlook. Homeland has been fixated on where Carrie’s boundaries lie, how far she is willing to go for her cause, and how much her professional self takes a toll on her personal self. From A to B and Back Again takes those competing tensions and pulls them to their elastic limit.
For much of this hour Carrie seems fully prepared to send Aayan off to his doom, outwardly at least. It’s Carrie who fakes the ISI raid on the safe house to give Aayan a gentle nudge in the direction of his uncle, and from then on watches him impassively from the CIA ops room. When she encounters hostility about the ethical implications of the mission, Carrie seems remarkably unconcerned about Aayan’s fate: he’s an adult who has aided and abetted a terrorist, she reminds Fara. She’s less impassive than she’d like to let on though: witness the tiny hint of Claire Danes cryface at the end of her soppy phone call with Aayan (broadcast in excruciating fashion).
Of course Carrie’s cool, detached persona shatters entirely in the episode’s climactic moments. Haqqani encounters Aayan at their arranged meeting point, but immediately makes him aware that he knows Aayan has been in contact with Carrie, and reveals that she’s a CIA agent. “You saved my life with your medicine. Don’t think I’m not grateful,” Haqqani says, before putting a bullet into Aayan’s forehead.
It’s a devastating moment, yet I’m torn between admiring the boldness of Homeland’s big twist and feeling a little cheated by what it implies. Getting rid of Aayan at this stage does send out a message about the show’s intentions – that no one is safe – but it does also suggest that much of the first half of this season has been consigned to the scrapheap. We’re right back to where we were at the season’s opening, with the CIA looking to take out Haqqani. From A to B and back again indeed.
There’s one crucial difference, of course: Haqqani has Saul, who was kidnapped last week by ISI operatives and used here as a way to prevent the CIA laying waste to Haqqani’s convoy. It was striking that Carrie was still willing to go through with the air strike despite Saul’s presence, with only Quinn’s intervention preventing the assault. While I didn’t buy that Carrie would sell her mentor down the river, even if she was in a state of emotional numbness following Aayan’s death, in pure clinical terms – and this season Carrie has largely operated in pure clinical terms – the move made sense: Saul’s future looks bleak, and Haqqani has now disappeared off into the mountains with someone who knows an awful lot of sensitive information.
So what now? Well, the most obvious lead is Dennis, who is becoming bolder in his acts of treason, this week breaking into the safe house and tipping off Tasneem the mysterious blackmailer about its existence. Given Dennis’s remarkable levels of arrogance about his surveillance skills – increased further here by Tasneem suggesting that he has “a real gift” for spying, I think it’s fairly obvious where this is going: he’s going to get sloppy, and he’s going to get caught. Then again, given the events of From A To B And Back Again, perhaps its best not to try and second-guess where this season of Homeland is going.
Notes and observations
• Some unusually lovely cinematography this week as Aayan moved further into the mountainous region. Not often that Homeland gets the chance to show off sweeping vistas like that.
• Credulity watch: a lot of convenient moments of dopiness this week, from Fara not noticing that Dennis had broken into the safe house (he left a fair old mess), to the agent looking into Saul’s flights failing to notify Quinn of his disappearance until the very last second. Most unbelievable of all was that no one in the ops room was keeping an eye on Haqqani’s vehicle when the his three-car convoy went their separate ways. Great job, guys.
• Homeland has just been renewed for a fifth season. How are we all feeling about that?
Quote of the week
Carrie: “It’s a discrete mission. It involves Haqqani’s nephew.” Quinn: “So I’m guessing clothing is optional.” Spying Naked, coming to the Discovery Channel in 2015.
