Showtime’s Homeland #301 “The Tin Man is Down”

Claire Danes as Carrie in "Homeland"

In the Land of Oz

By Catherine Giordano

The premiere show of Season Three of Showtime's Homeland which aired on Sunday September 30, 2013 opens six months after the CIA bombing. Saul (Mandy Patinkin) and Carrie (Claire Danes) and what is left of the CIA are dealing with the aftermath of the bombing of the CIA building that occurred in the last episode of season two

Carrie is off her meds again—she feels the meds dulled her mental functioning so that she missed vital clues that could have helped her prevent the bombing. She’s dulling her pain with alcohol and casual sex with random men.  (Also meditation, or so she explains to her father.) A Congressional committee is investigating and Carrie is being grilled mercilessly.  She is holding it together, being cool under fire, but when Saul appears to turn against her, her emotional anguish is so great she is in danger of losing her hard-won sanity.

Saul, who is now head of the CIA because he was the highest ranking person left standing after the bombing, is also being grilled by the CIA. Someone is leaking information to the committee about the secret Carrie/Brody mission and about Carrie’s sexual relationship with Brody. Saul testifies that he knew nothing about either of these two things. He also tells the committee that Carrie is mentally unstable and that she hid her bi-polar disorder from him. Is he “throwing Carrie under the bus” or is he buying time to pursue his own investigation?

Saul is also under pressure at home.  His estranged wife, Mira (Sarita Choudbury) returned from her job in India to be with her husband after the bombing. They are back together, but not quite back together—separate bedrooms.

Everyone believes that Nicholas Brody is responsible for the bombing. We last saw him in the season two finale when Carrie let him at the Canadian border with a new identity. He does not appear in this episode. I have read that he will be in only a few episodes this year. Since the Brody/Carrie relationship was so central to the plot in seasons one and two, this suggests that the show is going in a new direction.

Brody’s wife, Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor) are also under a lot of pressure. Dana has been in rehab for the past six months after her attempted suicide. She’s back home now, but she has a new boyfriend who she met at rehab. I think this new boyfriend is going to be trouble.

The main event was a CIA operation to take down six key players in Azir’s network,all in different countries. There are six teams in the field, one for each man.  The mission calls for all or none—all of these men must be assassinated in a 20-minute window. The mission is almost aborted when Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend), assigned to place a bomb on the bankers” car, bails because a child is in the car. Rupert saves the mission with some quick thinking,  and kills his man at his home after a fierce gun-battle with five or six men who I presume were his accomplices or body guards.  Quinn calls in his report: “The Tin Man is down.”

The other agents are given the go ahead to take down their targets One by one, they call in “Toto is down,” “The Scarecrow is Down,” The Cowardly Lion is down,” “Glinda is Down,” Dorothy is down.” Mission accomplished. Will this successful mission help to restore Saul’s reputation?

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The whole mission was almost aborted because Quinn did not want to kill an innocent child. In the “there–are-always-unintended-consequences” moment of the week, we see that it didn’t work out. As Quinn is leaving the banker’s home, he sees the child lying in a pool of blood on the floor, presumably dead.

This episode was a little slow. Aside from the assassination mission, it seemed like the episode was about exposition, setting things up or the rest of the season.

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