It is hard to believe that Carrie decided to go for a snooze in the middle of the high-stakes intrigue. Perhaps it is an unfortunate metaphor for the tired feel of this episode. (Even the episode’s title, “From A to B and Back Again,” hints at Homeland’s derivative storytelling, which keeps hitting the same beats as previous seasons, although with much more lunacy than before.) It is even harder to believe that she would lose her head completely when Aayan died. Did she really feel anything for him, or is it the familiarity of the death of someone she was romantically involved with that still stifles her abilities as the station chief and puts her emotion above rational intellect?
This is a woman who does not panic when a Pakistani soldier questions Aayan, who is only armed with a British passport and some money, calling him “resourceful.” (Her confidence in him is a callback to the episode’s mawkish early scene of pillow talk between them). However, she does freak out at one of her inferiors who is taking a lot of time trying to track the payphone Aayan speaks from. A CIA director, more so than most occupations, should know where her priorities lie.
Meanwhile, though he had a lot of screen time, Aayan wasn’t a very interesting character this season. The doe-eyed Suraj Sharma – who was so terrific as the title character in Life of Pi – played him rather blandly from the first episode onward. It seems like his purpose was to be a surrogate for Brody, who was allied with Carrie as well as the series antagonists. The innocence of the character felt strained considering his conflicted nature, as he tried to balance dual loyalties. The writers tried to make him a bit of a loose cannon, but he was simply too placid to live in the same story universe as the CIA firecracker. His premature death was nearly as unconvincing as the affair that developed between him and Carrie.
As for the cast of other bewildering characters, Quinn’s presence in Pakistan still doesn’t have much of a point. Unable to quell his mood around Carrie, he also fails to make a few phone calls to find out where Saul has been, after hearing that Ghazi never landed in South Africa and Saul never got back to Washington. In this episode, Carrie gets the chance to viciously criticize both Quinn and Fara for not doing enough to help her efforts in Islamabad. Her complaints to the former make a lot more sense. What is occupying all of Quinn’s time? Perhaps now one knows why John Redmond (Michael O’Keefe) has remained such a key player on Homeland: he is the only character on the Showtime thriller who seems to have his head on straight.
Homeland is trying its hardest to be engrossing television that doesn’t mind taking risks, but it keeps embarrassing itself with unconvincing character actions and silly plot developments. From Carrie’s reactions at the CIA headquarters to Saul’s surprise reveal, to Haqqani’s decision to murder his nephew, the episode’s climax all felt spurred by the need to move the plot in a direction that was interesting rather than plausible. For a show trying to get its grasp on the inner circle of an intelligence agency, many of the characters cannot help but behave in ways that are unintelligent.
