I would rate this at roughly a 7.5/10. Again, things seem to be falling into place.
The star of the episode was the actress Allison, who did a tremendous job selling the character's anxieties and concerns about her Russian mission without making it feel too over the top. Mandy Patinkin was in rare form was well, in both his tet-a-tet with Dar Adal and in the various scenes were he gave of an air of being a caged animal.
I liked Carrie's story too, though again, not as much. I'm coming to appreciate the structure of this season, where there is a central conspiracy that Carrie and her band of merry men are slowly but surely uncovering it and tying disparate threads together. The sequence with her snooping through the Iraqi lawyer's house was appropriately tense, and her cab driver friend being killed in the snooping process is another great way to feed back into the season that Carrie is a force of destruction, hurting people she cares about in her wake.
Also, the grammar of television suggests that there's more to During than he's letting on. It seems unlikely that he's in league with the Russians, because why would he give Carrie that thumb drive if that were the case. But he definitely has another angle on this whole situation, hinted at in his statement in the church that he's not a good man, and his manipulative conversation with Jonas (and earlier with Carrie) where he seems to be keeping the two of them apart. Maybe it's as simple as him wanting to be with Carrie, but it feels like there's more there and I'm not sure what.
Otherwise, Saul defecting was a taut sequence with a lot of interesting directions the story could go. Quinn's adventures as the Pirate King of Berlin were better than last week, with Dar Adal's involvement an intriguing wildcard, though it all still seems fairly implausible, especially that these extremists would follow his every word. And Carrie + Allison after more of the cards are on the table is a promising development to come. As is often the case with this show for me, I am intrigued, if still a bit mistrustful, as to where they're going with all of this.
I'm really enjoying the plot, but the way Carrie solves things like: hey someone is trying to kill me, I need misterious documents, let's call the reporter and the hacker to help me. I'm going to Amsterdam. Hey I know someone in Amsterdam who can drive me around. It looks like she can take a rabbit out of her magic wig.
Sure as hell looks like Allison uses a Nexus 6 or an awfully similar phone. Not sure how I feel about that, since I have one. (But of course it makes iPhone noises for typing and incoming messages, because ALL smartphones sound the same, right?)
Oh Carrie, I wouldn't have called her!! I can't tell though if it's a play? Is she driving into a trap.
It's a real shame about the taxi driver, making the best of his life only to be left for dead in his seat. That said, he really was a bad under cover 'tail', even I would have spotted him.
Carrie descubrio a Brody sin pruebas y con nadie a su favor, ahora que todos quieren ayudarla entonces si confia con los ojos cerrados en un doble agente. Give me a break Homeland.
Y por cierto, quiero meterme dentro de la serie nada mas para matar a Laura. Que tipa tan fastidiosa, su plot ya se acabo.
Watching Homeland will eventually lead me to have a heart attack.
Shout by Calvin1BlockedParent2015-11-17T12:44:24Z
OK, that was definitely not Amsterdam.
Main part was filmed in Potsdam (Berlin): Dutch quarter (Benkertstraße). Nice try though.