5x12 A False Glimmer

This was a very good episode of Homeland. What I appreciated about it was the fact that, after all the ramping up excitement of the last couple of episodes, this was mostly about dénouement, about aftermath. It was quiet, about how the folks we know and have gotten to know over the course of the show are recovering from these events, or failing to recover.

This season has essentially centered on one major theme – whether Carrie could ever have a “normal” life, or whether she was simply too tainted from her past to ever have something like that.

And that comes through in Peter Quinn's death. Here is someone who couldn't escape the darkness, as he puts it, who tried to get out time and time again and found himself doing the same things over and over, turning to false sources of solace, and having the one person whom he truly seemed to care about over the course of the show risk his life for what she thought was the greater good, leaving him in a vegetative state. I haven't loved Quinn's arc, to the extent it's existed, over the course of this season, but I like him as a symbol for Carrie, as a sign of what going too deep into the world of spies and spooks leaves you with, and as another notch on Carrie's belt for people who have been caught in the web of her terrorist-hunting and paid the ultimate price for it.

It's also reflected in the scenes with Jonas who, more than any other character in this show, represented the normal life that Carrie yearned for. And he, as calm and understanding as he is, was kind with Carrie, but told her that he couldn't do this anymore, that he couldn't unsee what he'd seen. That not being a part of the world that Carrie had lived in for so long, he couldn't just accept it. And that was devastating to Carrie because Jonas symbolized that quieter, more idyllic life.

One of the recurring themes of The Sopranos was Tony Soprano as a malignancy, as someone who tainted everything and everyone he touched. This season of Homeland has leaned into the same type of thematic resonance. Carrie wins again -- she, with the help of noble Qassim, stops a major terrorist attack. But there is a cost. There's the cost of her ability to be a partner, to be a friend, and in some ways to be a mother. Carrie wants to move past all of this, she tells Saul as much, but there's a looming sense that she cannot escape it, that she is inexorably pulled back into intelligence work as the ghosts of her past resurface, and yet that continuing on in the same direction, whether by choice or necessity, just digs that hole deeper.

Carrie is a black hole, hurting those close to her even as she saves thousands, and that's a beautiful, tragic thing. I find myself drawn to stories where greatness extracts a price, where people make sacrifices, of themselves of others, to do something bigger and more important than themselves, and but find that they cannot emerge from these sacrifices unscathed, that there are scars and bruises and pains that are not so simple to recover from. This season played in that space to a significant degree, and proved to be the show's strongest since it's first because of it.

On the other end of this is Saul, who had been in so deep for so long that it was a shock when he found out that Allison was playing him. His scene with Ivan was an amazing one, where both actors conveyed a great deal apart from what they actually said. It was quiet, and intimate, and communicated the layers of emotions each was experiencing throughout the entirety of it.

Allison's part in all this carried a certain tragedy as well. She too felt like a bad actor but an understandable one, who was rendered compelling from the actress's performance as much as the writing. Miranda Otto was a boon for Season 5, and her character's ignominious end closed the loop on the aspect of this season that lit a fire under the plot, but also gave us as much character detail to dig into as it did story.

And then there's During, whose entire game this whole season was as mundane as wanting to date, and possibly marry Carrie. I'm tempted to reserve judgment to see what they do with his character in the next season as so much of his role here ultimately looked like a set up for that, but it's an underwhelming finish that may ultimately be more satisfying than if they had done something more bombastic like revealed he was in league with the SVR the whole time.

Then there was the last bit of tragedy with Laura Sutton and Numan. Sutton has been far from my favorite character this season, but she went out with a bang. Faced with the quiet strength of Astrid, there was something palpably sad about Sutton being strongarmed into recanting her positions to save Numan. I had a hard time with Sutton from the beginning, feeling like her intentions to release the documents writ-large were, at best, misguided and short-sighted. But there is something very sympathetic about a person having to go against their principles, against the things they stand for on a day-to-day basis, because the life of someone who's helped them tremendously is at stake. It ties together lightly with the broader story of Carrie, that no one escapes from this game unscathed or with their ideals intact.

All-in-all, this is as good a season as the show has been able to put together since its first. There was a unity of purpose to Carrie's story and the larger mystery that unfolded from episode-to-episode. It was far from perfect, but it still stands as an achievement and proof that this series still has juice left in it after its stellar start.