'Beirut is Back' - Homeland, Season Two

Homeland

Season Two

Episode Two

‘Beirut is Back’ – 8.5

Saul is clearly sniffing Carrie's hair. Mmmm... Peroxide.

Even though I find the transition into an action drama the tiniest bit of a sell-out, at times Homeland seems like a high-class shoot-‘em-up piece, ala the Godfather or something. I’m not saying we’ll be watching episodes like ‘Beirut is Back’ for the rest of our lives and remarking how wonderfully subtle it is – it’s not that subtle, FYI – but the action isn’t over-the-top or implausible. It may be a little unnecessary though.

Following her escape from her tracker at her rendezvous with Saul, Carrie chooses to go straight to her informant’s mosque to catch her during Friday prayers. The two have a nice chat about what has changed in eight years, but by the end we know one thing; Abu Nazir is meeting her husband and they have the perfect opportunity to take them both out.

Issue is, for me anyway, that the husband is supposed to be Hezbollah and Abu Nazir is Al Qaeda. Last I heard from the media these two organisations were less than friends, that’s like a democrat openly working with a republican. Except worse, because these two terrorist factions believe themselves to be religiously incompatible. I guess you could make it work at a stretch. There have been suggestions from the US government that the two are working together, though the very fact they are Islamic-groups often rings alarm bells for the US.

After Carrie arrives back at Saul’s and the two share a relieved reunion, she reveals she visited the informant alone. He is less than impressed, as officially he was supposed to be present so that the non-CIA Carrie didn’t have to make any calls herself. Estes has a similar position, and the whole team worries that perhaps Carrie is falling for the word of a rogue informant who is planning to lure a team into a trap. Our bipolar heroine later overhears Saul telling Estes that he didn’t want her to be there, which sends her into an emotional flight that carries her up to the roof of the building, where Saul later finds her for a brilliantly acted chat about her mental state and her confidence. Carrie relays that she can no longer trust her own judgement after the Brody incident went so wrong, but she trusts her old self who recruited Fatima as an informant, and Saul relents, calling Estes to arrange the operation.

Unfortunately, as the CIA prepares to send in its agents the next morning, Brody is invited into the War Room so that he can watch his kidnapper get taken out. When he realises who is supposed to die today he begins to freak out, as a number of Arabic soldiers turn up at the meeting place in Lebanon.

It was very tense, and I kind of wanted to see Abu Nazir killed so that we can move on from that story, but in the end it is his two lieutenants who die, while a text message from Brody manages to alert him just in time. I could already see that one day this will be the deciding moment, when someone at the CIA will have his phone records pulled to discover he sent a message to Abu Nazir. Never a good sign.

Despite having failed to take out the big guy, Carrie, Saul and some other guy travel to Fatima’s apartment to pick her up and take her back to the US for safety. This scene was the real action sequence, because Carrie decides to investigate the apartment now that there’s no one in it, rushing out of the car while a mob of angry men start converging around it. By the time Carrie has shoved a whole bunch of files and CDs into some bag and rushed out the door, the car’s been forced to vacate to avoid being torn apart by the mob. When it leaves, a bunch of the men decide to turn their attention to Carrie, attempting to shoot and beat her as she tries to escape the building. It was tense, but only so much as we know they won’t kill Carrie. Anyway, she does manage to survive with the help of a brick and one of the men’s skulls, before meeting an agent as she comes down the steps and being escorted to safety.

Brody’s life this episode was comparatively uneventful – apart from supplying a warning to Abu Nazir – as he was called upon by old friend Mike to look into Tom Walker’s attack on the State Department as well as his later death. As a congressman, he apparently has a high security clearance, as well as motivation to release confidential information. Was there a point at all to this? Yeah I’m happy that Tom Walker’s death didn’t just go unnoticed, but I don’t see why it couldn’t get some subtle reference instead of a full-on subplot. There was a moment when Brody says ‘he stopped being a marine the day he became a traitor’ which was entirely unrelated to anything else on this show. If you know what I mean.

The biggest event of the night though happens at the very end, presenting perhaps Homeland’s greatest twist; Saul, going through the documents Carrie picked up, finds nothing. That’s not the twist though, so don’t worry. Instead, as he fumbles around with the bag she picked up, he notices a strange object sewn into the lining. He extracts it revealing it to be an SD card which he plugs into his computer. What pops up is fucking amazing; it’s Brody’s video, which he made in ‘Marine One’, meaning that Saul Berenson is now aware of Brody’s true allegiances. Haha! FANTASTIC!

Such a twist shows that Homeland is moving forward, and unless they kill Saul off next episode before he can say anything – which better fucking not happen – we are close to entering a new era for this phenomenal show, one where Sergeant Brody’s lies are made public and he has to go on the run. Better yet, perhaps they’ll just kill him off! This could be so epic! So many ways they could handle this, and most of them good! Don’t just sweep it under the rug though, writers. Don’t dangle a cake in our faces then hand us a carrot. If you’re going to hint at perhaps the most game-changing plot development this show’s thrown at us, don’t fucking mess it up, because that would involve killing Saul and I like Saul.

Aside from the ending, I quite enjoyed all of the Beirut-centred activities, with both the action sequences and any scenes between Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin being brilliant. I did mention last time that I’m finding the action to be catering to the masses too much, and I still do, but I admit that it is a little fun. And hell, since they are leaving Beirut and returning to America we’ll probably see a lot less of it, and be getting back to the political intrigue and conversation that made the first season so suspenseful.