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Homeland Review: “Game On” (Season 3, Episode 4)

We might finally be closing in on something tangible, something exciting, something that will tie together the loose threads that Homeland has been creating over the last few episodes.

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“But what,” I hear nobody ask, “of Dana?” She goes on the run, stealing Jess’ car and picking up Leo when he breaks out of school. They go for a drive, the latest in a long line of Dana & Leo Getaways: For When You’re Stressed, OK? They take each other around various important areas of their life, Dana to the military base from which Brody was initially deployed to Iraq; Leo to his older brother’s grave. This leads to some really clunky exposition, shoehorned in to remind us that yes, these are the reasons we should care about these two. It doesn’t really work though.

Jess’ scene with Mike when she told him about how she could just kill Brody for what he’s done to them felt like it had been a long time coming, especially when placed in such close proximity to Dana and Leo struggling to swap Jess’ car with a creepy mechanic who may or may not recognize Dana from somewhere. Leo’s parents sitting and staring at Jess, judging her for what Brody did was the icing on the cake in that regard, but does it have a place in the show? Is it really necessary? In other words, why should I care about this? Brody is holed up in a drug and paedophile-infested squat in Venezeuala. Saul and Fara are watching up a Venezeualan football team embroiled in laundering money from the Iranian government, and Saul is setting up a separate scheme to doublecross the bad guys using a mentally unstable CIA agent. Why the heck do I care about two kids and how much of a handful they are for their parents?

Random Robservations:

  • No Brody. Boooo.
  • Great code work on the phone there, Virgil!
  • I mean, seriously, when did Saul and Carrie agree this plan? Does Carrie even have a phone? Did they meet in person? Although it did make for a great ending, it raises more questions than it answers.
  • Did I mention Virgil?
  • When are we going to find out what is going on with Dar Adal? What’s he hiding under his goatee?
  • Fara is really coming along; we might be seeing that rarest of creatures (in TV land, anyway) emerge before our very eyes – Heroic Muslim Woman. If she turns out to be a double agent, I’m not covering the show anymore.

See you for more Homeland next week!