6x07 Imminent Risk

[7.2/10] There aren’t many great parents in Homeland. With the exceptions of Jessica Brody way back in the day, who was doing the best she could under impossible circumstances, and Carrie’s sister Maggie, pretty much every father and mother in the show has put their kid in pretty difficult situations, and that’s when they were around. That’s also extended to parental figures, mentors and avuncular types who are supposed to look out for you the way a parent would.

“Imminent Risk” zeroes in on that in a way the show has only dabbled in before. Whether it’s Carrie and Frannie, Dar Adal and Quinn, or even Javadi and his loyal guard, the episode grapples with the extent to which the people who are supposed to look out for those in their care put them in danger, let them down, or worse.

The most harrowing of these scenarios is Carrie’s, and what’s interesting about her story in the episode is the ambiguity of it. On the one hand, Carrie is being played, worked over by Dar’s mastermind plan that is slowly but surely falling into place. But on the other, neither the child care worker nor the judge who take Frannie away from her are on Dar’s payroll. There is a sense of injustice, even righteous anger on Carrie’s behalf in the moments where she pleads with the caseworker that Frannie is safe, or explains herself to the judge that accepts the agency’s information. But on the other hand, these people aren’t spies, just civil servants assessing an objectively fraught situation.

It’s akin to the attacks against Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, where the show knew the audience would be on his side, but had other characters presenting truths about his words and actions that, put together, painted a damning picture, even if it was a misleading one. We’re on Carrie’s side because she is the protagonist of this show, and we know how much she loves Frannie and cares about her safety. But there’s something to be said for the fact that Carrie does get into situations that put her daughter at risk, that she did leave her, however temporarily, with a brain damaged combat vet, and that she takes matters into her own hands rather than trust the authorities.

We also know that she does this because she has some good reason not to trust those authorities, between the legitimate conspiracy and shady shit going down that led to Conlin’s death and Sekou’s situation, and her own prior experience with rot in the CIA bunkhouse. What’s more, bringing up Carrie’s bipolar disorder is beyond a low blow, and as her lawyer points out, there is something especially troubling about having a child taken away due to illness, particularly one that Carrie has worked so hard to control.

And yet, how many times has Carrie put herself in these situations? How many times has she thought she could take on everything herself, take tremendous risks, and put the people she loves, the people she cares about, at risk in the process. Sure, it’s a snake-like move from Dar, presumably meant merely to distract Carrie or unhinge her so that she is too otherwise occupied or unstable to advise the President Elect against his election. But the other side of the coin is that while Carrie should not necessarily have her child put in foster care, there’s legitimate ill effects that may be inflicted on Frannie from the life her mother leads, and as uncomfortable as those are for her and the audience to face, it’s impressive that the show is willing to deconstruct a child’s emotional wellbeing like this.

Quinn is not a great dad himself, but we get hints here that he had problems of his own from the parental figures in his life. Dar is the closest thing to a father we’ve ever seen for him, and “Imminent Risk” not only reveals that Dar had a sexual relationship with him when they were younger, implied to be inappropriate, but that Dar’s still using him to further his plans.

While Dar frames it as a salvation for Quinn, and maybe partly it is, Dar also knows who the flies in the ointment are: Carrie, Saul, and Quinn, and he’s doing everything in his power to sideline them from his attempt to manipulate the President Elect and set the international relations agenda. That means preventing Quinn from following up on his leads as to who built the bomb that blew up in Sekou’s van. That means trying to estrange Quinn from Carrie, telling him that she’s a black widow, that she is not caring for him out of love but out of guilt for potentially causing his condition.

It’s diabolical, and frighteningly effective. Astrid’s presence is a nice touch, adding legitimacy and another personal connection that might keep Quinn in place (and the scene where they’re arguing with the guy willing to give Quinn a ride, where Quinn refers to her as a “German spy woman” is darkly funny). But it’s also a betrayal, another sense in which a de facto parent on this show has something they’re focused on, and are willing to stomach the possible harms to the people in their care in order to achieve the goal.

The same goes for Javadi, who is saved by a young guard that served with him in Iraq. When the rest of Javadi’s coterie turns on him, and even tortures him, it’s this young man who saves him. It’s a good thing too, because it leads to the meeting between Saul and Javadi where Javadi reveals that not only is there no Iran nuclear program, but that the “banker” Saul interrogated was a Mossad asset. The attack on Javadi’s life and the info that he was in New York had to come from Dar, as Saul pieces together, essentially confirming the hunch he’s been nursing for a while now.

But that’s not the end of it. When Saul moves to protect Javadi and have him deliver this information to the President Elect, Javadi takes out the young man who saved him, who clearly is honored to serve Javadi and looks up to him. “No loose ends,” he says, claiming it’s a lesson he picked up from Saul, someone who’s own dealings with his surrogate daughter Carrie have been less than admirable.

It’s no coincidence that this episode opens with President Elect Keane talking about her son, about honoring his sacrifice and her role as a mother, and closes with estrangement between her and Carrie on the same terms. Sometimes caring isn’t enough; sometimes parents and children aren’t on the same page. Homeland presents a world where the adult, the people who are meant to look out for others, can be blinded by what they’re after and miss or ignore the ways that their children are affected by them.

We know that Carrie loves her daughter; we suspect that Dar harbors some affection, however unsettling, for Quinn; we see that Javadi offers his gratitude to the young man who rescues him. But sometimes, that’s not enough to stop the bad things from happening, and the people in their care suffer the consequences.