“Halfway to a Donut” was once again, a solid episode of Homeland. The episodes seem to be getting better with every week passing.
Carrie managed to get off the downward spiral she was on in “Redux” and the beginning of the episode was mostly about her getting back on her feet. Not the wobbly, unstable feet she woke up on, but back to career driven, doesn’t miss a beat, Carrie. In the first moments of “Halfway to a Donut,” she wakes up in bed, and all of us are wondering if she’s slept with Aasar, because in this show, it’s always hard to determine whether someone’s good or bad, but when someone f*cks Carrie, they’re usually not on her side. There’s a check we can make in the “Good” column though, because it didn’t seem to happen, yet.
Carrie’s feeling groggy, not remembering what happened (probably for the best), but at least she has a clear enough head to make the connection between her current state and her meds. It doesn’t take her long to act on it, to alert the others that there’s a breach at the Embassy and everyone becomes a suspect. I’m glad that they haven’t kept psychotic Carrie along for too long. As great as “Redux” was, too much would have ruined it; I feel they gave us just the right amount.
While it was obvious from the get-go that Brody was a hallucination, caused by the guilt she still feels, the guilt she managed to repress, I hadn’t given the Quinn incident another thought. It was revealed though, through a conversation between Aasar and Carrie, that the fight was also a hallucination. It wasn’t Quinn she fought off, but a hospital security guard. And that makes me wonder why she’d hallucinate Quinn, why she’d hallucinate him trying to help her, telling her he cared for her. Is there something more there?
Tasleem is pretty transparent about her sentiments towards Carrie, about the fact that Aasar shouldn’t have intervened, shouldn’t have helped her. The colonel doesn’t seem on the ISI agent’s side, doesn’t seem in on it, doesn’t seem to share her point of view on the necessity of shipping Carrie back to the US. And that’s another check in my “Good vs Bad List.” From the looks of it the Pakistani Military are not on the same page as the ISI about Carrie, don’t feel as threatened by her. This begs one question, why is the ISI so keen on pushing Carrie away, is the next in line for her spot with them? Because the one that was supposed to be chief of station was John, is he working with the ISI?
Haqqani revealed, in the end of “Redux,” his plan to Saul. In the beginning of “Halfway to a Donut” Haqqani revealed his plan to everyone else. It’s a prisoner exchange, his entire command structure against Saul. And no one’s happy with that plan, especially not Saul, because giving Haqqani, giving the terrorists back the control from Islamabad to Kabul, it isn’t much of a plan, it,s going back, erasing what they’ve managed over the years. I thought, last week, that prisoner exchange was a lame plan, I recant that statement, the episode was awesome.
This episode definitely belonged to Mandy Patinkin. He was great, his portrayal of Saul from a badass to distraught, to furious was more than great, every emotion was perfectly handled and poignant. He gets a dozen golden stars in my book.
Saul managed to escape by faking a hanging. (And yes, my heart stopped for moment, when I though he was really dead!) He strangled to death the guard with his chains and he’s on foot, in the mountains.
My favorite exchange of the episode:
“So, where am I?”-Saul
“Saul, I need you to calm down. Breath.”-Quinn
“I’m f*cking breathing. I usually walk two blocks to the deli, it’s flat.”-Saul
It’s the break they need to save him without compromising his morals, because Saul always had high morals, his love for his country. I thought, as did Quinn in last week’s episode, that Carrie was harsh when saying ordering the air-strike on Haqqani and Saul was the right call, was what Saul would have wanted. Turns out she was right, as she usually is. She knows him better. He doesn’t want them to save him if that means giving in to the Taliban’s demands; he doesn’t want his country to pay for his capture, for his mistake. He makes her promise to do it, to drop the bomb if it comes to that, if he can’t escape. And she accepts, not because she wants to, but because he threatens to throw himself off a cliff if she doesn’t and I’m sure he would have. She was ready to do it in the ops room the last time, so it shouldn’t be a problem for her, shouldn’t it? But even Carrie isn’t that apathetic. She loves him, loves him like a father.
Saul walks 20 miles to a town, where they’ll rescue him, and with 20 mile radius it seems like Saul will be a needle in the haystack for the enemy, but he isn’t. It’s the drone, like it’s been causing them so many problems since the first episode of the season. The darn drone, supposed to help them, not sell Saul out, not give away his position. The drone’s an asset but it turns out to be more like a liability for Carrie, for her team. The Talibans know where he is, and Special Forces can’t get in, Saul can’t get out. Their plan’s f*cked, f*cked big time, but Carrie can’t tell Saul, can’t tell him something’s wrong, that it is that bad because she knows what he’ll do when she does and she doesn’t want that.
He realises he can’t get through, and in one of the best scenes of the season to date, the one that’s probably brought me the more emotion, the one that brought me very close to tears, Saul contemplates putting a bullet through his skull as Carrie tries to convince him otherwise. The strong feelings they have for one another really transpired through that exchange. She manages to get him to trust her, to keep him moving, not to give up. But he’s not escaping, and she knows it, but she can’t just let him die. She leads him right to them and he’s mad, really mad, but at least he’s alive. Once again, I tilt my metaphoric hat to Mandy Patinkin, he was spot on.
It’s probably the most human we’ve seen Carrie in a while. Is the guilt she has over Aayan and Brody so much that she can’t add to list Saul? Probably, but we can also see that she cares, that her faith in the mission, in the greater good is shattering, and I like this humanized version of Carrie better. Two episodes ago, she called the air-strike on Saul, and convinced herself it was the right call because Saul would have wanted it that way, but it wasn’t the right call, not for her at least.
Dennis Boyd’s days as a free man are counted. Aasar knew of Tasleem’s dislike for Carrie, her desire to see her gone and he’s a witness to a note exchange between her and Dennis, making him suspicious. He calls Carrie up, and after making sure that she believes him, that she trusts him, he tells her. Is that the final proof that he’s one of the good guys, or is this just the opposite? Is it the plan to get her to trust him, by pushing Dennis under the push? We still have no idea what Tasleem wrote on that napkin, and I’m really curious as to what’s in store next with Dennis, how Carrie will deal with it.
Side note: It’s not usually the case, but I quite enjoyed Lockhart in this episode and loved this line.
“I think I’ll go back to the conference room. I was really looking forward to telling those people to go f*ck themselves, but I don’t see that happening now.”
I’d love to know your thoughts!
