Homeland
Season One
Episode Four
'Semper 1' - 3.5
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| There isn't much colour in Homeland. Apart from Damien Lewis' hair. |
'Semper 1' begins as Carrie's FISA warrant nears its end, meaning around three weeks have passed since the death of Lynne Reed last episode. Carrie is a day away from having to break into Brody's house and take down the surveillance equipment, ending the moderately legal operation. In the first scene, we get an insight into how acquainted she has become with Brody and his family, watching him prepare to speak to some young Marines in training and narrating his preparation routine. She even knows where his tie was when he didn't. The pre-emptive commentary was actually effective in demonstrating how observant, obsessive and attached Carrie is with her mark, and predicts her almost mindless pursuit of him following the end of the warrant.
Meanwhile Estes is approached by a Lizzie Gains, the chief political operative for the vice-president, who wishes to investigate Brody, and it is suggested he's being considered as a possible candidate for office. What office? I have no clue - I don't understand American politics. Seems like civilians over there can be elected for anything. Gains organises a meeting with Brody after encountering him while his family's at church, but we haven't seen the meeting yet. Next week, probably.
Now would be a good time to mention that I was actually quite bored watching this episode. I'm not sure why, it is intriguing, but it didn't really grab me as much as the first three. Until the end of the episode, nothing really happened, and the characters all seemed to be walking in circles around one another. For example, Jess continues to fuss over her affair with Mike, while Chris and Dana worry that their family is about to fall apart. Saul keeps pretending to help his protégé and friend, while simultaneously talking down to her, and Estes just acts like a prick the whole time.
On that note, what was up with Estes? He and Carrie's scenes together told us two things; first, Estes doesn't trust her, and rightfully believes she's up to no good behind his back. Second, the two had a little fling in the past that ended with Estes' wife leaving him, effectively explaining their mutual dislike. That's just great, Homeland, but I honestly don't care a single iota about Estes or his relationships, present, past or future. Carrie's, maybe, but considering how pointless it ends up sounding I think it was a bit unnecessary. It is nice that the two kind of made up with each other in the scene at the bar, but it was just a bit more sentimental than important. I also don't know yet if I can trust Estes' demeanour. It just shifted from hostile to sincere way too quickly.
We seem to have a non-Nazir face to our enemy, with the couple we saw buying a house last week getting a proper introduction tonight. When the prince from the last two episodes' chief aide visits the a laundromat the FBI has noted as a Hawala broker - seems to be some sort of Arabic-world banking system that allows funds to be transferred without records - Carrie suspects he swapped that $400,000 necklace in. This means that someone who visited the laundromat afterwards may be part of a sleeper cell in need of funds. Raqim Faisel, an assistant professor at some generic sounding university is photographed leaving the laundromat, along with a whole mess of others. Noting a couple suspicious visits to Pakistan, Carrie and her partner tail Raqim home from work. Seems the sleeper cells are smarter than that though, and just as he's about to enter his new home - which isn't the home listed in his file - his wife receives a cryptic phone call. Instantly, she freaks out, rushing up the stairs of the house and putting an American flag outside a second-storey window, and Raqim slams his brakes on and keeps going, able to hide the real location of his home. No doubt these two will be integral in whatever Nazir is planning, and it is interesting they chose a Caucasian woman to be part of a sleeper cell.
The best scene of the episode occurs while Brody and his family are at church, giving Carrie enough time to get into his house and remove all the camera and microphones. Of course, it's actually Virgil and his brother who do the physical labour, while Carrie searches for that elusive clue hidden somewhere in the garage. At one point, she even lifts his Muslim prayer shawl up in order to open the box beneath it. Anyway, the best part of this sequence is that it is scored by the hymn being sung at the church. It was a very moving, beautiful hymn that had dramatic organ music not often heard in television or film. The final shot of Carrie unscrewing the last camera was great too, showing it on one of her monitors back at her house.
With the surveillance supposedly over, we knew Carrie would find some new way of keeping tabs on Brody. Now, she's not being particularly subtle about it, simply tailing him around and watching him from her car.
Brody is still having a tough time, and in a suspenseful moment the show tries to make us believe that he is going to shoot Mike. After building up the implication that Brody is actually aware of his wife's infidelity, Mike ends up being invited to a get-together at his friend's house. As Brody watches Jess and Mike converse in the kitchen, he pulls down a gun he stores above the fluorescent light in the garage, just as there's a shot of Mike coming in. We cut back to Jess who's having a nice, normal moment with some other friend when two gun shots ring out. It was a bit of a shock, and for a second there things were looking bad, but he ends up just having shot a deer who was eating the flowers. Jess freaks out nonetheless, and fair enough. Any excuse really to see Morena Baccarin do her stuff, and do her stuff she does, with Jess telling Brody that he needs to get help or she'll leave him.
Carrie follows Brody to a Veteran's support group, where she seizes her opportunity to get a little closer to him, pretending to be a part of the group. She 'accidentally' bumps into him, then fakes a freak out at seeing a familiar face and bolts, fully expecting him to fall into her trap and follow her. Brody proves he's not the brightest bulb when he does exactly that, meeting her out in the parking lot for some none-the-wiser flirtation. Damien Lewis and Claire Danes play off each other like best friends in a Mensa meeting, with the two being quick but secretive simultaneously, and there is an obvious spark the second the two begin talking. Straight away, you can sense that this is going to go somewhere new, somewhere much more personal than the original long-distance surveillance gimmick had made it look. As Carrie walks away, a big satisfied - and probably aroused - grin on her face, you just know that despite a comparatively lifeless episode, Homeland is about to get very, very interesting.
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