Carrie and Quinn finally meet up even as the Season 5 puzzle deepens.
Warning: Full spoilers below.
I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that this episode started right off the bat with a Quinn/Carrie armistice. Yeah, there were a few moments there where Carrie was tied up and Quinn was acting all menacing and it was like, “Hmmm, maybe these two are going to fight it out.” But that passed very quickly as it became clear that Quinn was all in on helping Carrie escape whoever it is who’s trying to take her out.
Dramatically speaking, it would’ve been interesting to see Carrie and Quinn at each other’s throats in “Why Is This Night Different?” But in terms of what we want from these characters, it was essential that Quinn come to his old colleague/almost-maybe-love-interest’s defense fairly soon. It’s the same reason we could never really buy into the idea that Saul was the one who put the kill order out on Carrie in the first place, no matter how insistent Quinn was about it. Having Saul do that would essentially break Homeland.
And so it turns out that it’s actually Saul’s underling/kinda-sorta-love-interest Allison who is the one who wants Carrie dead. Surprise! Though really, many of us watching pretty much figured it would be her. She’d already tried to go around Saul to Dar Adal a couple of weeks ago, so it’s not a surprise that she’d also pull this move without Saul knowing. Her jealousy regarding Saul’s treatment of Carrie is clear, though why exactly she wants Carrie dead is not as obvious. It can’t be just because she thinks Carrie is somehow involved in the leaked documents situation, right?
Whatever the reason, this now sets up a dilemma for Saul that is sure to come as he will have to choose between his two protégés at some point in the not too distant future. And they’re not just agents who he taught and guided for years, but Carrie and Allison also occupy important places in Saul’s life personally. One as a surrogate (albeit currently estranged) daughter and the other as a lover. He’ll be wishing he was back with Mira soon, I bet!
There’s also the matter of Saul and Allison’s whole plan involving the Syrian general, a classic CIA regime change maneuver that they carefully navigated through this week and seemingly were on the verge of making a reality. The general knew that Saul had him good, and he was likely going to cooperate (“It means he knows he’s f#@ked.”). But, surprise again! The general’s plane explodes on his way home, which leaves Saul and Allison back at square one. So even while the mystery of who wants Carrie dead has been solved — if the matter itself not yet resolved — we now have another question mark. Who took out the general?
(I find it fascinating to watch Homeland skirt so closely to reality at times like this, dealing with Syria which is obviously very much a focal point in the news of the real world right now. Of course we know there isn’t going to be a regime change or a general’s airplane blowing up in Switzerland or whatever in our world, but in the Earth 2 of Homeland this stuff is happening right now, and we buy it.)
Laura the journalist’s story continues to grate, however, and having her liaise with a super-hacker type certainly didn’t help matters this week. Numan’s realization of what his partner has done, and the fate of said partner, however, played much better. That idiot was way out of his league.
So now Quinn is in as much danger as Carrie, possibly more. And the cold, hard Quinn of this season finally softened just a bit after he took a bullet to the gut and Carrie was mending his wounds. As they embraced while she bandaged him up, the hug turned into something slightly more for Quinn, didn’t it?
Some notes:
- Quinn’s messing up Carrie with his own blood, and then taking her “kill” pic was pretty eerie.
- “You really think any of us murderers want peace?”
- Frank Mathison namedrop!
- Quinn has a kid? Did we know that?
- Quinn to Carrie: “I guess you weren’t sure your new life was gonna work out.” The near-miss of these two getting together last season is touched upon here as Carrie says she never stopped looking for Quinn the past two years and he blankly responds that it doesn’t matter now. Oh, but it does, Quinn. It does!
- Carrie’s wig. ‘Nuff said.
A fairly slow and steady episode of Homeland, “Why Is This Night Different?” chipped away at the central mysteries of the season, while adding new levels to those puzzles as well. But finally Carrie and Quinn have reunited, and despite their currently dire circumstances, it’s a very welcome reunion indeed.
