Homeland's fourth season might be the most fascinating thing on television this fall. To stay that the Showtime thriller has had a tumultuous couple of years is an understatement; it was only 24 months ago that Homeland won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, but things started to break down about halfway through Season 2, only for the wheels to come off completely in a messy—though occasionally powerful—third season. Now, Damian Lewis's Brody is gone (unfortunately, so is his lovely daughter), and the show has set up shop in Cape Town, South Africa, which will stand in for Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of larger initiative to reboot the story with Carrie, Quinn, and Saul at the center.
The question Homeland faces now is whether the show's pointed reboot comes at the exact right time, or too little, too late. When you think back to the first few episodes of Season 1, it's sort of nuts to then realize that Homeland kept Brody around for another 30-plus hours (or was perhaps persuaded into doing so by Showtime, but at this point, that's neither here nor there). The idea of a show following Carrie and and the gang doing new spy things each season is cool, and it might've been especially cool for a theoretical Season 2. Now, though, Homeland is carrying a lot of baggage as it enters its fourth go-round—baggage that includes Carrie's supreme emotional instability, the baby she had with Brody, and the fact that Saul acted like a petulant child for half of Season 3, among other things. Nevertheless, while Homeland will almost certainly struggle with some of those issues as this season progresses, "The Drone Queen" and "Trylon and Perisphere" made for a very, very nice palate cleanser for a show that desperately needed it.
Let's begin with some context. Carrie passed on the chance to be the station chief in Istanbul—and to take her newborn with her—so that she could take the same job in the much more terrifying city of Kabul, Afghanistan. She's been working through a proverbial "kill list" of high-priority targets, primarily on the back of intel from an anonymous assert who's been feeding information to Carrie's Islamabad counterpart, Sandy (Corey Stoll, thankfully in all his bald glory). When some new intel from Sandy's asset led to a Carrie-ordered missile strike that killed a number of Pakistani civilians, all hell started to break loose.
That's a pretty good set-up for a new season of Homeland! Of course, it also unintentionally reinforces the show's largest problem: the fact that, historically, Carrie, has often proved incompetent and unfit to perform. Now, these first two episodes concentrated much more on why Carrie took the tougher job in Kabul and the psychological toll this job/life can take, but she did in fact order the missile strike that led to riots in the capital, the uploading of a juicy YouTube video of the victims dancing at a wedding, and apparently the unraveling of yet another CIA conspiracy involving leaked information. It's silly enough that we're supposed to believe that Carrie deserves a post of this stature in the first place—she's the youngest station chief ever, remember?!—but the nature of the key story here only further shined a light on that silliness. I really do hate to nitpick, but wouldn't eventually someone say, "Nah" to her advancement?
Still, there's no need to complain too much, because whatever instances of questionable logic these episodes highlighted, they made up for with some solid introspective-y character work for Carrie, as well as for everybody's favorite dude, Quinn. At times throughout its run, Homeland has tried to tell stories about how being a spy has basically ruined Carrie's life, to the point where she was willing to have her brain zapped on the reg just to keep doing the job. But I'm not sure the show has ever successfully considered how Carrie feels about the effects her job has on other people, or on the larger universe, if you will, and that seems to be the direction it's going in this season. The opening minutes of "The Drone Queen" lingered on how alone Carrie is in Kabul, how disconnected she is from her family (including the baby she's essentially abandoned), and how detached and cold it can be to order missile or drone attacks from the safety of a bunker located thousands of miles away from the target (hint: pretty gross).
But that was only the beginning. By the time the CIA determined that the attack had indeed taken the lives of a number of innocent people, Carrie had already been forced to deal with some of her job's ugly consequences. The pilot who flew the mission confronted her at a bar, and while she did her best to B.S. him with company lines about "the bigger picture," she couldn't make the same moves when Quinn—who opted to work in Pakistan instead of joining Carrie in Afghanistan—poked at her about how screwed up it is to do the job they do. Quinn has become the odd moral compass ofHomeland, a role that Rupert Friend plays very well, and if there's anything Carrie needs on a regular basis, it's a dose of reality.
Of course, things only got worse from there. Sandy's supposedly anonymous asset scheduled a meet (and it didn't appear to be the first), only to flip on him and leak his picture to the press. After Carrie and Quinn failed in their attempt to save Sandy from a mob of angry locals—an attempt that saw Quinn begrudgingly shoot at least three men—Carrie went into full agent mode, while Quinn clearly wasn't thrilled to have murdered randos in the street. And "Trylon and Perisphere" pushed their responses to the event even further, with Carrie trying her damnedest to make it back to Pakistan to learn the truth behind Sandy's asset, no matter the consequences, and Quinn continuing to spiral through drinking, fighting, and having a little sex.
The scenes focusing on Carrie "dealing with" her baby were, frankly, uncomfortable to watch. "Trylon and Perisphere" was a little wonky in that it essentially took a roundabout path back to where it began, but it was mostly worth it to watch her try to ignore the child, even as her sister delivered one lecture after another about how selfish Carrie had been. The sequence in the middle of the episode—where Carrie took her baby for the day, stopped by the Brody home to reveal about how much she still thinks about Brody and admit that she can't remember why she had the baby at all, and eventually considered letting the kid drown in the tub—was really great, and Claire Danes turned in some of the best work she's done on Homeland in a long time. SHE ALMOST LET THE BABY DROWN. That's messed up.
Meanwhile, Quinn discovered that returning home didn't do much to ease his trauma. His charming morning-after moment with his overweight building manager turned very sour when some idiots started making fun of her, but even with that in mind, Quinn had no interest in returning to Pakistan to help Carrie search for the truth. Friend's portrayal of Quinn's confusion and fragility was excellent, and his line delivery of "it's not about you" to Carrie when he declined her offer to go back was tremendous. Great work from both of them.
Homeland doesn't necessarily need to jumpstart the Carrie-Quinn romantic relationship anytime soon, but the two really are a compelling pair. Plus, if Homeland actually wants to be about something other than BIG TWISTS, which I feel like it hasn't been for a few years, this is the way to go. Our "heroes" aren't in America anymore. They're not directly protecting our homeland. What does it mean to be in another country, dropping bombs based on maybe-good intel? When an operation goes south, as happened here, doesn't that mess you up? It's certainly a moral gray area, and that's the kind of thing Homeland needs to examine further. It can't be all leaks and double swerves and Carrie in a mental institution, you know?
Another way to explore the impacts of the American intelligence apparatus is through non-spy characters, and it looks like Homeland is going to try that this year as well. Life of Pi star Suraj Sharma debuted in the premiere as Aayan, one of the few survivors of the missile attack who also happens to be a college student. Aayan appeared reluctant to get involved in any kind of political uprising in Pakistan, but then his angrier and more rebellious friend obtained a video that Aayan had shot at the wedding right as it was bombed and uploaded it YouTube, causing a bit of an international incident. Episode 2 continued to explore their dynamic as Aayan tried to avoid media coverage while his friend mostly embraced it, and by having Aayan face threats from some nefarious characters for speaking up at all. I'm not entirely sure how Homeland will use this character moving forward, but it could be worthwhile for the show to step outside of the insular world it's been restricted to over the past couple of seasons.
These two episodes weren't perfect by any means. I already mentioned my minor frustration with Carrie being in such a powerful position, but I could also point to the seemingly immediate backtracking of Saul working in the private sector—shockingly, he hates it!—or his ongoing bad relationship with his wife as similarly less successful elements. Meanwhile, Lockhart continues to be such a self-interested putz that it's hard to look at him as anything other than a snickering but weightless villain who Carrie (and probably Saul) can push over. Homeland has an opportunity here to do better things with a figurehead character who isn't always in the heroes' corner; he doesn't just have to be a straw man. Yet, quite a few promises were made in these first two episodes—to the point where I'm much more confident about Homeland in the post-Brody world than I was earlier this week. If the show can commit to telling these stories without falling into some of the old traps, we might have a big comeback story on our hands.
NOTES
– Lesli Linka Glatter helmed the first episode, and I thought she did some good stuff with the locations. I'm not sure why American television is so dedicated to shooting the Middle East with a constant yellow-ish filter, but the sequence where Sandy was trying to avoid the mob and Carrie and Quinn were zooming in to help had some real zip to it. Homeland isn't really an action show, but it can do intense sequences like that one pretty well.
– Despite some of the awkwardness involved in bringing Carrie back only to have her leave again, the second hour made good use of her as a type of asset manager, or perhaps just a bully. She convinced the former Islamabad station chief to explain why he was axed, then flipped that info on Lockhart to get her desired outcome in the foreign post. Maybe she's okay at her job, sometimes!
– Another moment where it felt like the show was walking back its own mistakes: Dar's suggestion that if Lockhart falters frequently enough, Saul could be reinstated and take back his CIA post. Let's not and say we did on that story, huh?
– Although I'm hesitant to get too excited about an anonymous asset/media leak story, it adds the kind of mystery element that Homeland hasn't quite attempted in the past. Brody was more of a present, if still unknown, threat; Carrie and Quinn are simply flying blind. It is a bummer that Sandy almost certainly got beat to death in that mob, and that we'll only have the one episode with Stoll. Maybe there will be a few flashbacks, if we're lucky.
– I love it when people on TV send a text message and then immediately delete it, as if there's no way that can be retrieved. Also, here's a thought: If you want to have secret text conversations with your asset, maybe don't label the contact "X." Just use "Dad," or "Blonde from the Snakehole Lounge," or something. That would probably raise fewer suspicions.
– I don't believe anyone who had to work with Carrie on a regular basis would want to chip in for her birthday cake.
– Despite some of the awkwardness involved in bringing Carrie back only to have her leave again, the second hour made good use of her as a type of asset manager, or perhaps just a bully. She convinced the former Islamabad station chief to explain why he was axed, then flipped that info on Lockhart to get her desired outcome in the foreign post. Maybe she's okay at her job, sometimes!
– Another moment where it felt like the show was walking back its own mistakes: Dar's suggestion that if Lockhart falters frequently enough, Saul could be reinstated and take back his CIA post. Let's not and say we did on that story, huh?
– Although I'm hesitant to get too excited about an anonymous asset/media leak story, it adds the kind of mystery element that Homeland hasn't quite attempted in the past. Brody was more of a present, if still unknown, threat; Carrie and Quinn are simply flying blind. It is a bummer that Sandy almost certainly got beat to death in that mob, and that we'll only have the one episode with Stoll. Maybe there will be a few flashbacks, if we're lucky.
– I love it when people on TV send a text message and then immediately delete it, as if there's no way that can be retrieved. Also, here's a thought: If you want to have secret text conversations with your asset, maybe don't label the contact "X." Just use "Dad," or "Blonde from the Snakehole Lounge," or something. That would probably raise fewer suspicions.
– I don't believe anyone who had to work with Carrie on a regular basis would want to chip in for her birthday cake.
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