6x10 The Flag House

[8.4/10] How do you get to somebody who’s made of steel? That’s always the questions for people trying to write Superman stories. Someone who is so capable, so invulnerable, is difficult to challenge, difficult to move, in any real way. The characters on Homeland are not quite so physically undefeatable (though Quinn occasionally seems like he’s indestructible) but they are each skilled in espionage, smart folks, and tough cookies. That makes it hard to topple them, even though each has feet of clay.

But the answer for them is the same as it is for Superman – go after someone they care about. Carrie, Saul, and President Elect Keane all start out tough as nails, ready to go out and do what needs to be done, to stand up to the forces that not only threaten them, but threaten the security of the country. Then, in turn, each of them is moved by someone close to them, someone who they’re not willing to see hurt or sacrificed in their name.

The most straightforward instance of that is Carrie’s story. Carrie seems to have taken her court-mandated psychiatrist from last week to heart. Max is telling her about what she’s uncovered, what it means, the apparatus that could be fueling all of this, and she can barely pay attention. She’s hours away from seeing her daughter again, and national security suddenly takes a backseat, or at least diminishes in importance to getting back the most important person in her world.

Then, Dar Adal (or goons on his behalf) threaten that person. The driver’s warning to Carrie to double check her three o’clock is chilling. Her phone call to her social worker confirms it – the powers that be are sending a message that if Carrie goes through with the deposition that will throw Dar under the bus, she’s going to be kept from Frannie.

That is something Carrie cannot abide. She walks out of the deposition. She brushes off the future President herself. There is a look in her eyes that tells the people across from her that she doesn’t have a choice. However much she may believe in these people, in stopping what’s been happening this season, she believes in being with her daughter more. Snake that he is, Dar knew the best way to get to her was through the person she loves.

It’s the best way to get to Saul too, though thankfully nobody appears to know that but him. For the first time in two seasons, we see his on-again-off-again wife Mira, who goes on a thrilling handoff through the Upper West and Upper East Side to meet Saul at his request. It’s part and parcel with Saul seeming especially paranoid here, looking cautiously at delivery men spilling boxes, waiting impatiently at doors to be buzzed in, grabbing go-bags in the diamond district to get the hell out of dodge.

But why? While the notion of his dalliance with a Russian agent coming out would, as he protests, likely humiliate him, but as Mira points out, he’s never particularly cared about that sort of thing. The truth becomes clear as to why he’s willing to leave the country, leave everyone he knows, rather than be exposed. He still cares about Mira, and he doesn’t want her to know, or at least cannot face the possibility of her knowing. She is the thing that moves him, the thing that makes him willing not to help take down Dar despite the security of country being at stake.

Just as the idea of Mira is able to move Saul to go, the real Mira is able to convince him to stay, to see this through. She can talk sense into him, make him think about what he’s proposing and what he’s leaving. She is one of those few people (Carrie being one of the scant few others) that can cut through who spy-built walls in these moments.

Keane has a steely demeanor as well. The best scene in the episode is the charged exchange between her and Dar Adal. They both essentially put their cards on the table. They are more explicit than anything in the dance they’ve been doing up to this point. Dar makes veiled threats. He condescends to her, tells her not to start a fight with her own national security apparatus that she can’t win. She stands firm, gives him a speech about taking this country into the light, and telling Dar that he’s going to jail. At the end of it, she seems more resolute than ever.

Until, naturally, Dar uses his web of lies generated by O’Keefe to slander Keane’s son. The dig video the radio host showed earlier makes it out in public, and begins dragged her son’s name through the mud. Keane is clearly shaken, angered, disregarding the advice of her lieutenants and kicking herself for ever bringing him into this. Keane has been the vision of strength and determination this season, but she, like all the other strong people in this episode, find themselves rattled by the harms done to the people that mean the most to them, even people who have passed on.

Quinn isn’t as strong as he used to be, but he is still crafty. He manages to track down the Dar Adal goon who attacked him and Astrid. He finds him at a bar where Quinn used to frequent; he sees him living in a house where Dar’s team, including Quinn, used to gather. History is repeating itself, and Quinn is taken back to those salad days when he was just another one of the boys doing what he was told.
But before he takes the shot, before he eliminates the man who’s caused him so much pain in the last few weeks, he has to bring in the person he cares the most about. He sends for Carrie. He has to show that he was right, that he was protecting her. Quinn is no longer as steely as he used to be. He is easily agitated, not all there, and prone to anger and impulse. But even, and perhaps especially he, is moved by the person he loves, even love that has brought him nothing but pain.