6x08 alt.truth

[6.8/10] I’m in no position to say how accurate Homeland is when it comes to the life of a spy. But I have to imagine it’s a hard profession to make friends in. You are in the business of deception, of misdirection, of fooling people to further your own ends, so how could you then turn around trust the people in the same business. How do you know that when your interests aren’t aligned, they’ll use those same abilities on you?

“AltTruth” seems to be playing on the recent Trumpian notion that facts are slippery and malleable. It features plenty of the major players thinking they have a hold of the truth, and having the rug pulled out from under them. It has them doubting who their allies are, questioning whose side everyone is on, with real serious consequences. It raises the question of whether, in a world of spies, you can trust anyone else, or even your own paranoid instincts.

The turns come fast and furious here, the most notable of them being Javadi flipping on Saul when he realizes that his erstwhile partner is on the outside looking in of the intelligence apparatus. When Saul gets him in front of the President Elect, Javadi is suddenly spouting Dar Adal’s party line, telling Keane that there is, in fact, a parallel program, confirming the line of B.S. that Dar has been pitching to her for a long time now.

It is a twist, and a mildly shocking one, but also unsurprising. Javadi was never a true believer, and as much as Saul wanted to believe that Javadi wanted to preserve what they’d built, that they were brothers in arms and not just strange bedfellows, Javadi was also first and foremost interested in saving his own ass over any larger cause or sense of loyalty, which is part of why he became an American agent in the first place.

Because Javadi sees that the winds have changed, and that his best ticket out of this situation is to hit his wagon to Dar Adal. It is a betrayal of Saul, after Saul stuck his neck out for Javadi several times, and it’s cravenly mercenary, but it’s also smart. Who knows if Saul could deliver what he promised. Who knows if Dar wouldn’t just take Javadi out using the same guys he’s been employing as of late. They’re in a business where friends cease to be allies and allies cease to be friends because the power has shifted, and Javadi recognizes that.

Hell, even Carrie recognizes that when she spills the beans about what she’s uncovered and admits that she didn’t know what side Saul was on. He’s certainly been Dar’s pal and running buddy before, and put pressure on her not to advise the President Elect, so it’s not crazy to think that Carrie’s own closest ally in the agency might have been working against her, whether he knew it or not.

But the biggest case of mistaken truths, false hunches, and terrible consequences is Quinn and Astrid. Quinn is paranoid, finding a gun, his papers, and various attendant facts about this wonderful lake house where he can somehow stay indefinitely and begins to realize it doesn’t all add up. He sees a familiar guy skulking around the grocery store; he knows Astrid’s been in contact with Dar Adal, and he thinks something’s fishy.

The neat thing about the story is that he’s not wrong, even though he’s completely wrong. When he stalks whom he thinks is the guy from the grocery store, he knocks out the wrong man. And before that, he thinks Astrid is there to take him out, that she’s untrustworthy. In a charged, skin-crawling scene, he interrogates her, berates her, and hits her. Brain-damaged Quinn has had a woman-beating problem, and it’s uncomfortable as a well the show goes back to. But still, given the history between these two characters, what’s most affecting in the scene is the way he tries to wound her emotionally, telling her they were never friends, just lonely people who had sex.

He doesn’t know who to trust anymore. He thinks Carrie betrayed him. He has reason to believe that Dar has betrayed him, even if he gets the methods wrong. And thanks to Dar’s little talk with him (plus, you know, a lifetime of trauma) the seed has been planted for him to think that nobody would help him just out of the kindness of their heart. He believes that they must have an angle, and tragically, it leads to him contributing to death of one of the few people who really did just love him.

Unfortunately, that’s also where the episode just gets silly. The show has always been a bit hit or miss about these big action thriller set pieces. (Lest we forget Carrie’s serial killer run-in with the terrorist mastermind in Season 2.) This is no exception. It’s a shocking, if cheesy moment when Quinn is shot by (presumably) Dar’s goon through the window of the house. Suddenly, the whole thing gets unrealistic, with people surviving bullet wounds easily and lumbering around to get into combat situations with the guy.

On top of that, the trick with Quinn taking the bullets out of the gun is a little too neat. Sure, it sells the main story and theme of the episode -- people mixing up who their enemies and their friends are in dramatic ways, but it just reeks of a lesser show, one more devoted to ironic twists than theme. It’s Homeland at its most pulpy, and that has always been a mixed bag for this series. Giving Quinn another miraculous near death experience, one where he can hold his breath and evade gunfire despite being grazed and suffering from mental and physical disabilities strains credulity. It brings down an episode that was already on shaky ground.

But it does work with the larger leitmotif of the episode, including the scene that opens the episode, where the Alex Jones analogue is doing a takedown of President Keane’s son. With creative editing and commentary and tinseltown gloss, somebody who was trying to save other can be painted to look like a coward. The line between a hero and “the opposite of a hero” can be incredibly hard to discern, even for the people who were on the ground. And when somebody is offering you envelopes full of cash, or guaranteeing your safety, or ensuring you’ll continue to get to do things your way, it can be very easy to throw the heroes under the bus, with innocent people suffering along the way.