Homeland: Season 5 Premiere Review

By Scott Collura

Warning: Full spoilers below.

And we’re back for Season 5 of Homeland, which in many ways is now a very different show than when it started in 2011. Brody and his family — that includes Dana! — are long gone, as are characters like Estes and Mike Faber (remember those two?). Quinn didn’t even join the show until Season 2, and hey, remember when Carrie used to work for the CIA? Yeah, she doesn’t anymore.

But at the same time, Homeland hasn’t changed at all in its attempt to graft drama and (sometimes over-the-top) thrills onto real-world situations. And this first episode of the season, “Separation Anxiety,” dives right in, placing good old Carrie Mathison in the middle of the current Syrian refugee crisis. But this is a Carrie who is very much changed from last season… or at least seems that way.

Can’t we all just get along?!

When we first meet Carrie here, she’s attending Catholic mass and praying. Praying for Brody? I think you can bet on it, but the character is never actually mentioned. Carrie is now raising the child she had with Brody, Frannie, and living in Berlin where she is head of security for German billionaire Otto Düring’s (Sebastian Koch) Düring Foundation. Two years have passed since last season, which ended with Carrie’s realization that Mandy Patinkin’s Saul Berenson — her former mentor and favorite person in the world (now that Brody’s dead) — had colluded with a terrorist. We learn here that Carrie quit the CIA following that and left it all behind. Sure she did.

Soon after leaving church, Carrie is told by Düring that they’re going to Lebanon in a few days so he can show support for — and donate some big bucks to — the refugees. Carrie balks, as they are not equipped for travel in “a war zone,” but the boss insists. Of course, knowing Carrie, maybe it was this she was actually praying for — a chance to get back in on the real action. “It’s like my old life came back,” she says. The lady doth protest too much, perhaps. War zones are like her life blood.

That said, she puts on a good show trying to be a normal mom. In a callback to last season’s debut episode, where Carrie’s CIA team sang happy birthday to her after she ordered a drone strike, it is now Frannie’s birthday. Balloon animals replace drones, just as Carrie’s new boyfriend replaces Brody. He’s a redheaded guy she works with, just like Brody. Think Brody Light.

Speaking of guys from work, when Saul — now back at the CIA after taking last season off — rolls into town because of a major security leak (echoes of Edward Snowden, who gets namedropped here), we see that things are quite frosty between him and Carrie now. As far as Saul’s concerned, Carrie has gone over to the other side and turned her back on her entire life. It hurts me to see these two fight! But you know it’s only temporary.

And then there’s Quinn, who has spent the past two years in the s#!t in Syria. His briefing for all the fancy-pants top brass at Langley was classic, pointing out the U.S.’s lack of strategy compared to the 1300-year-old approach of the terrorists. “They call it the end times,” he says. “It’s all in the book. Their f#@king book. The only book they ever read.” When asked for a suggestion as to how proceed in the region, Quinn says to “hit reset.” Bomb Raqqa into a parking lot.

Maybe he’d have been happier if he’d stayed with Carrie at the end of Season 4. But now Saul has Quinn back to his black ops ways, taking out a bomb builder here before giving him his next target, a female recruiter. How long until his and Carrie’s paths cross in Berlin? Because I really think Quinn needs her at this point.

I also thought it was interesting how, early in the episode, director (and executive producer) Lesli Linka Glatter introduced us to the Middle Eastern dude walking through the Berlin airport. The camera followed him in such a way that you assumed he was a bad guy, a new foe for Carrie. Or was that just me? Either way, we soon learned that actually he’s a computer hacker type who vandalizes online terrorist recruitment sites. His user name is douchebag spelled backwards! But Homeland is playing here with our perceptions of who’s good and who’s bad, something it’s been doing since the hallowed days of Season 1. And you know, just because he’s not on the terrorists’ side doesn’t mean he’s on our side. He did steal all that precious CIA data…

Of course, Carrie manages to get herself kidnapped before episode’s end, all as part of her attempt to get into Lebanon with some measure of safety. This is Carrie we’re talking about here. So as much as it’s nice to see Homeland color within the grey lines of moral ambiguity, which it does so well, we can also expect to continue to see the thrills and chills that sometimes short circuit its best parts. The key at this point is finding the right balance between the two approaches. So far, Season 5 is off to a good start in that regard.

Some notes:

• Carrie as a mom seems weird. I’m not sure she has it in her.
• Saul is stone cold when he bumps into Carrie, just staring silently at her while she babbles. Also, what’s this about her messing up his bid for the CIA directorship?
• Dar Adal never gets enough to do.
• Quinn! “He’s a martyr in paradise and I’m stuck here.”
• Miranda Otto’s Berlin Station Chief and Sarah Sokolovic’s anti-Carrie journalist both make their debut here, but neither make much of an impression yet.
• Saul on the Germans’ reaction to the data leak: “They’re going to s#!t.”