After an excellent season premiere, Homeland’s second episode, The Tradition of Hospitality, doesn’t drop off, delivering a strong instalment that really sets up the backbone of what is to come throughout the season, or at least, the next few episodes. It’s a much slower episode than the premiere, but it’s very still enjoyable to watch.
At the CIA station in Berlin, Saul and Allison aren’t on great terms. The aftermath of the hack, unsurprisingly, left serious problems for both the CIA and the Germans, and there are repercussions for that. By the end of the episode, Allison makes a pretty big move that will cause quite a bit of fallout. I was impressed by Miranda Otto here; she didn’t have too much to do - only appearing in four scenes - but was great to watch.
I often think of Peter Quinn as a Terminator-like spy, and that’s none more evident than in this episode. He has just one piece of dialogue throughout, yet Rupert Friend makes each scene he is in extremely compelling. There’s a real remorseless intensity about him this week - more so than usual, I felt. The ending of the episode, which features Quinn, sets things up nicely for next week’s episode (which I have seen - and it’s terrific).Elsewhere, Laura Sutton goes on TV to discuss the CIA document and, as expected, gets into quite a bit of trouble over it. Atheer Adel’s character, one of the hackers, is set on giving Laura the remainder of the documents but it doesn’t quite go to plan.
Of the three episodes sent out to the press, I’d argue this is the weakest. However, it’s still a good episode that progresses the various storylines pretty well.
The Tradition of Hospitality airs on Sunday 11th October at 9pm on Showtime.
.JPG)
