Episode Title: “Game On”
Writers: James Yoshimura & Alex Gansa
Director: David Nutter
Because of the New York Comic-Con, I missed the third episode of “Homeland” Season 3 and I still have not had a chance to watch it. Judging from the “Previously on Homeland” segment, I didn’t miss much. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) was approached in the mental hospital by Paul Franklin (Jason Butler Harner) about possibly working for a foreign power while Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) is bald, wounded and somewhere.
So I do have some catching up to do, but it does seem like there wasn’t much story movement between episodes two and four. The only questions I really had about the episode came from the conclusion and what we as an audience are expected to swallow.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Game On,” so if you missed last night’s episode of “Homeland” then you should probably skip this review or else Dar Adal will show up unexpectedly… and Quinn won’t show up at all.
The big reveal is that Carrie and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) have been working together to discredit Carrie in order to lure Franklin and his Iranian clients into attempting to recruit her. On one hand, I do love the idea of Carrie working for the enemy as an undercover agent. It’s a fresh way to keep her involved and it conveniently gets Carrie away from some troublesome Congressional hearings. Don’t forget, Carrie has a lot to answer for in the aftermath of the CIA bombing, including the way that she smuggled Brody out of the country.
But I also felt somewhat stung by this revelation because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Perhaps there were some obvious clues in episode 3, but in the three episodes I’ve seen this season (including this one), Carrie’s breakdown and Saul’s role in keeping her locked up seemed all too real. Even in their most private moments, Saul and Carrie kept up the act. The reveal allows them to repair their relationship and move the storyline forward. However, it just doesn’t ring true to me.
So much of Carrie and Saul’s plan seems needlessly complicated and reliant on coincidence. What if Franklin’s masters never took an interest in Carrie’s status? What if Carrie’s name leaks to the press? Keep in mind, Saul outed almost all of Carrie’s secrets on national television during the Congressional hearing. And there’s at least one reporter out there who knows that Carrie was the bipolar CIA agent in question.
Even this episode was built around the idea that Carrie was being systematically destroyed by the CIA, from her finances to her personal history. if this was all a lie, then why were CIA agents leaning on Virgil (David Marciano)? Does no one else at the CIA even know the truth? You’d think that Saul would at least tell Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham), since he seems like the kind of guy who would have Carrie killed if it suited his agenda.
I really liked Carrie’s half of this episode as she tried to stay one step ahead of both Franklin and the CIA. And it was powerful when Leland Bennett (Martin Donovan) described in detail how the CIA would discredit Carrie and eventually dispose of her. I also liked the way that Carrie called Bennett out on his bulls*** when he tried to argue that Carrie working for the Iranians would potentially be beneficial for both America and Iran. “F*** you,” indeed.
But when you’re drowning your audience in grief and intrigue, you’ve got to occasionally throw them a rope. I feel like the “Homeland” creative team tossed us a noose instead. Granted, it’s an interesting piece of rope, I just don’t know if I want to be wearing it.
Put more simply, I can’t bring myself to embrace this twist because I don’t buy it. The “Homeland” creative team may argue that this was always the plan, but it feels like it was tacked on to this episode with a stapler. It does offer some redemption for Saul’s darker turns this season, but there’s a certain desperation to it as well. The rest of the season will rise or fall on the basis of this storyline. So I hope it’s a good one. Anything less and the entire season could be a huge waste of time.
Meanwhile on the CW, the B-story is already a waste of our time. I like Morgan Saylor as an actress and I even like Dana. But this runaway plotline with Leo (Sam Underwood) and Dana is just a bad, bad idea that wouldn’t have even gotten a TV movie out of the Lifetime network.
The Brody family only works when they relate to Brody himself or when they deal the fallout from Brody’s actions. Without Brody to anchor them, Dana, Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and Chris (Jackson Pace) just aren’t very interesting. Although Jessica did get a nice moment when Leo’s parents tossed Brody’s actions in her face and called Dana a bad influence on their son.
On the plus side, it’s good to see that Mike (Diego Klattenhoff) didn’t abandon the Brody family despite his absence for most of this season. Klattenhoff moved over to NBC’s “The Blacklist,” but Mike deserved more than an unexplained disappearance. Whether Mike will be around much longer remains to be seen.
The revelation that Leo may have killed his brother was another groaner, and it was placed in the episode just to make it seem like Dana was in true danger with Leo. This is “Homeland’s” cougar moment, I’m calling it now. Remember when “24” had Kim Bauer being threatened by a cougar in season 2 and we never stopped laughing at that? Murderous Leo is the new cougar.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the rest of this season can salvaged if Carrie’s storyline is strong enough and if the Brody family gets less screentime. “Homeland” can be a great drama when it wants to be. At the moment, I’m not sure what it wants.
