S08.E01: Deception Indicated

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

Carrie recovers in Germany. Saul negotiates. Max has a new mission.

Promo:

Clip:

Original air date: 2/9/20

[scrb]

Wow, they have some of the greatest villains from previous seasons on, Tasneem, Oleg and they even mention Hakami.

Would be nice to see the good guys get payback on all of them but looks like Tasneem and Oleg (Yevgeny) are too high up in the Pakistani and Russian govts. to take down or kill without repercussions for the US.

Saul at first accuses Tasneem of sabotaging an attempted peace pact with the Taliban and then he tries again to appeal to her.  They’re at this fancy place which looks like a Muslim palace with atmospheric lanterns.  Tasneem throws her cigarette on the floor.

She litters too, what a bitch!

 

Saul gets Carrie out of the psych ward and she flies off to Afghanistan without once mentioning Franny.

Oh well, guess they’ve completely dropped the Motherhood story line.

She meets a young female CIA officer and gives her some lean-in sisterhood advice — “you just have to get out there.”

But then the next day Carrie tells Jenna she can’t be in an important meeting.

Carrie returns to her cocky self immediately, saying the CIA chief in Kabul isn’t an  alpha and then barging into her former assets home and refusing to leave until she sees or as it turns out his widow calls him.

She wonders if she got this guy killed.  She really gets flustered when she comes face to face with Oleg.

 

 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I wasn't sure how this season would play out or if it would be interesting (I barely remember last season aside from the fact that I was getting a little tired of the Homeland-iness of it all).

But they definitely got my attention. I loved Max just quietly plugging away at his mission, willing to get left behind if it meant getting everything set up. He is really one of the unsung heroes of this show.

Carrie tends to be pretty cavalier so seeing her reaction when she found out Roshan had been killed was a good reality check for her, especially after her chummy reunion with the driver. I think she really thought it would be that easy to just slip back in.

And as much as I know that I'm supposed to root for Carrie, I can't blame Turro for questioning if she gave away asset information. By her own admission, she really only remembers the first 30 days clearly. Once she was off her meds, there's no telling what she said. Lucid Carrie would not start spilling info, but unmedicated Carrie being interrogated and tortured while sleep deprived and not being given enough food? Who knows? To me, that's more concerning than the polygraph (as the doctor pointed out, they're unreliable).

[Pike Ludwell]

I hope she at least gets a chance to do some harm to Yevgeny. His treatment of her in captivity, beginning with his severe, gratuitous punch to her face last season angered me. 

So, apparently this season is going to be filled with Carrie on the verge of insanity or having flashbacks to her severe insanity in captivity. 

It's been my understanding that her mental problem is manic depression. Do people with that problem really go as severely insane as Carries seems to, without medication? I never thought it would be that extreme.

[preeya]

19 hours ago, scrb said:

Saul gets Carrie out of the psych ward and she flies off to Afghanistan without once mentioning Franny.

And what could possibly go wrong???

[grommit2]

Some observations:
1) It seems that many of the CIA folks are suspicious of their colleagues.  E.g. the station chief in Kabul is monitoring Carrie's phone calls, etc.  Hey...let's put all this energy into watching the bad guys.
2) The soldiers really despise Max (who plays his role with great intimidation and fear).  But, I guess he has to prove himself.
3) Way to go Max! The comms device is picking up the bad guys' traffic.  Nicely done.
4) Geez...maybe Carrie did reveal a deep-secret contact's name.  Or maybe not...this show will throw curve balls now and then.
5) Ok...we all despised the Russian (Yevgeny) for punching Carrie.  And now we have him close by...time for Quinn to take him out.  Oh, no, wait.  Quinn is gone.  Or is he?
6) One again this show appears ahead of its time...Russians helping the Afghanis, blatantly, overtly. But...didn't the Afghans do a number of the Russians?  10 years and they could not subdue Afghanistan. The show really does portray a part of the world that we should stay away from.

[Lily H]

I hate to say this after enjoying almost every season, but I think I'm done with this show. I found it boring, nonsensical and unwatchable.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

 

[preeya]

7 hours ago, Lily H said:

I hate to say this after enjoying almost every season, but I think I'm done with this show. I found it boring, nonsensical and unwatchable.

I have to say I agree with this being nonsensical, however since I've already invested seven seasons into it, I'll just have to stick with it to the end.

That said, I have to believe that IRL even a Saul Bernstein act-alike would never consider someone as shattered as CM to get back in the field.

Also, why has she not been forced into some sort of disability retirement.  Give her the "job well done pat on the back" and send her off to domesticity.

[mrspidey]

So Carry is basically Brody now, yes?

[healthnut]

I thought this was a good first episode to set up the season. I agree it’s extremely unrealistic for Carrie to go back into the field so quickly or even get reinstated at this point but I’m always willing to suspend some disbelief for TV. 
I am very interested in both the Mike character and the Russian captor. I’m guessing the young female agent will have some kind of purpose otherwise why introduce her. 
Loved seeing Max, I hope he makes it through the season alive. 

[thesupremediva1]

1 hour ago, mrspidey said:

So Carry is basically Brody now, yes?

This is what I'm seeing for the final season - a mirroring of season 1, when someone returns from captivity and we're left to question what deals they made while undergoing torture.

The flashbacks of Carrie crying the Russian's arms were reminiscent of Brody crying on Abu Nazir. 

The show will never be what it was in seasons 1 and 2, but Carrie and Saul are important to me, and I'm going to watch until the end.

[Quark]

I thought this was great.

Looking forward to how this season progresses.

[Lemons]

On 2/9/2020 at 8:42 PM, Pike Ludwell said:

I hope she at least gets a chance to do some harm to Yevgeny. His treatment of her in captivity, beginning with his severe, gratuitous punch to her face last season angered me. 

So, apparently this season is going to be filled with Carrie on the verge of insanity or having flashbacks to her severe insanity in captivity. 

It's been my understanding that her mental problem is manic depression. Do people with that problem really go as severely insane as Carries seems to, without medication? I never thought it would be that extreme.

Those flashbacks they show her having while she was in Russia were the same as what they showed when that nasty Pakistani lady gave her LSD type drugs a couple of seasons ago.  

If she was on the very extreme end of bipolar she never would have been able to work because medication would not have helped her a whole lot,  that was ridiculous.

I wish they would stop focusing on her bipolar, they aren’t being realistic. 

Is it me or does this seem kind of “ripped from the headlines” where our country wants to just leave and it’s going to cause all sorts of disasters.  

[preeya]

28 minutes ago, Lemons said:

Is it me or does this seem kind of “ripped from the headlines” where our country wants to just leave and it’s going to cause all sorts of disasters.  

↑ This seems to be the direction they are going based on Saul's encounters with Tasneem.

[Pallas]

On 2/9/2020 at 8:42 PM, Pike Ludwell said:

It's been my understanding that her mental problem is manic depression. Do people with that problem really go as severely insane as Carries seems to, without medication?

Yes. Without effective medication, someone with bi-polar disorder can spiral up or down into a fully delusional, psychotic episode, often triggered by stress. This is one reason that before effective medication was developed, bi-polar disorder was often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, especially in women. 

[One Imaginary Girl]

I thought that some scenes, like Carrie being chased by the Taliban and Max and group's mission, were pretty gripping.  And a listening device under a fake rock is the spy stuff I eat up with a spoon.  I miss things like that from the days of The Americans.  I'll stick with this season, at least for now.

[TimWil]

Isn’t it at all possible that she just THOUGHT she’d seen Yevgeny pass by in that office? It’s a hoary storytelling device but I wouldn’t put it past them. 

Waiting patiently for Linus Roache’s character to return. I do know he will appear at some point in this final season.

Edited February 11, 2020 by TimWil

[scrb]

1 hour ago, One Imaginary Girl said:

I thought that some scenes, like Carrie being chased by the Taliban and Max and group's mission, were pretty gripping.  And a listening device under a fake rock is the spy stuff I eat up with a spoon.  I miss things like that from the days of The Americans.  I'll stick with this season, at least for now.

I agree it made for good tension, the mission to set a bug in the middle of nowhere.

It makes no sense whatsoever though, to use a bug in what seemed like wilderness.

if there was a village nearby where the enemy taliban lived, they didn’t show it.

Likely they’d use satellites and drones to try to catch surveillance.

Also, it would be a big parabolic dish, not something the size of a coin put under a fake rock.

but then, if the CIA had assets in Afghanistan, they would be managed by an Afghani or an Arab, not a Caucasian white woman who isn’t fooling anyone with the had scarf.

 

[scrb]

Does anyone remember if they exposited Carrie's bipolar state in season 1?

[Lemons]

19 hours ago, TimWil said:

Isn’t it at all possible that she just THOUGHT she’d seen Yevgeny pass by in that office? It’s a hoary storytelling device but I wouldn’t put it past them. 

Waiting patiently for Linus Roache’s character to return. I do know he will appear at some point in this final season.

Which character is that?

[grommit2]

2 hours ago, Lemons said:

Which character is that?

Linus Roache played David Wellington, Chief of Staff for President Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel).  President Keane resigned the Presidency at the end of Season 7, much to the surprise of Wellington. 
Note:  IMDB.COM is a comprehensive source!

[Joimiaroxeu]

Claire gunning for that Emmy right out of the gate.

Oh please, how could Carrie possibly return to the job? It's absurd they let her back in the last time.

Carrie went all that way to meet with a guy she didn't know was already dead. Bet the Russians arranged for him to be killed because she gave up his name while they had her.

Station Chief in Islamabad and that new female CIA agent shadowing Carrie both seem shady to me.

So did they dispense with the intro? Still love the end credits music.

[Pallas]

3 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

So did they dispense with the intro? Still love the end credits music.

Season by season, HOMELAND first episodes don't use the opening theme. Expect it on Sunday: maze, lion mask, urgent and on the nose one-liners and all.

[Msample]

I just hope by the end of the season Tasneem gets whacked. She hung the US embassy and convoy out to dry back in S4.

[scrb]

5 hours ago, Msample said:

I just hope by the end of the season Tasneem gets whacked. She hung the US embassy and convoy out to dry back in S4.

The Sopranos thread is that way:

--->

 

Yeah she deserves comeuppance but not sure she's going to get it considering her position in the Pakistani govt.

 

[Ottis]

On 2/8/2020 at 11:25 PM, scrb said:

Wow, they have some of the greatest villains from previous seasons on, Tasneem, Oleg and they even mention Hakami.

Would be nice to see the good guys get payback on all of them but looks like Tasneem and Oleg (Yevgeny) are too high up in the Pakistani and Russian govts. to take down or kill without repercussions for the US.

Saul at first accuses Tasneem of sabotaging an attempted peace pact with the Taliban and then he tries again to appeal to her.  They’re at this fancy place which looks like a Muslim palace with atmospheric lanterns.  Tasneem throws her cigarette on the floor.

She litters too, what a bitch!

 

Saul gets Carrie out of the psych ward and she flies off to Afghanistan without once mentioning Franny.

Oh well, guess they’ve completely dropped the Motherhood story line.

She meets a young female CIA officer and gives her some lean-in sisterhood advice — “you just have to get out there.”

But then the next day Carrie tells Jenna she can’t be in an important meeting.

Carrie returns to her cocky self immediately, saying the CIA chief in Kabul isn’t an  alpha and then barging into her former assets home and refusing to leave until she sees or as it turns out his widow calls him.

She wonders if she got this guy killed.  She really gets flustered when she comes face to face with Oleg.

 

 

If they have dropped the motherhood story line, hallelujah! That was such a drag on the show.

 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Carrie sees Yevgeny:

 

[grommit2]

Shoot him...shoot him now!

[John Potts]

Sorry - there has to be zero chance that Carrie would ever be readmitted to the CIA. At this point, she's not just burnt, she's ash! I get that Saul sees her as an adoptive daughter, but seriously - has the CIA nobody competent? At least she covered up her highly distinctive blonde hair when going on her mission (which was not at all to allow the stuntman to do the motorcycle riding).

For a spy, Saul really wears his heart on his sleeve. The Pakistani Spymaster was far better at keeping a poker face when he was ranting at her. And she was 100% right about US attitudes to Afghanistan (well, real world ones, presumably also fictional ones)

Max! Glad he's back in the game. But I cannot believe anyone on active military service would be as openly insubordinate, particularly while they were on a mission. Never mind the fact he was questioning his orders, for what was a stealth mission, a public shouting match is likely to attract attention. Did he just want to die?

On ‎2‎/‎9‎/‎2020 at 6:25 AM, scrb said:

Tasneem throws her cigarette on the floor.

Smoking AND littering? Is there no end to her villainy?

On ‎2‎/‎10‎/‎2020 at 2:47 AM, grommit2 said:

Geez...maybe Carrie did reveal a deep-secret contact's name.  Or maybe not...this show will throw curve balls now and then.

Or maybe her driver wasn't as reliable as she thought? He may not have dropped her at the door, but he could probably work out who she was visiting.

On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2020 at 6:32 PM, TimWil said:

Isn’t it at all possible that she just THOUGHT she’d seen Yevgeny pass by in that office? It’s a hoary storytelling device but I wouldn’t put it past them.

I wondered that, too.

[Roseanna]

On 2/9/2020 at 4:47 PM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

And as much as I know that I'm supposed to root for Carrie, I can't blame Turro for questioning if she gave away asset information. By her own admission, she really only remembers the first 30 days clearly. Once she was off her meds, there's no telling what she said. Lucid Carrie would not start spilling info, but unmedicated Carrie being interrogated and tortured while sleep deprived and not being given enough food? Who knows? To me, that's more concerning than the polygraph (as the doctor pointed out, they're unreliable).

I don't think that the problem was if she gave information for of course she did. If Saul had known all her sources, he could have saved them after she was captured. But being Carrie who likes to work alone, she kept at least some of her sources' identity secret which meant that when she was captured, they couldn't be saved.

On 2/29/2020 at 2:54 AM, John Potts said:

Sorry - there has to be zero chance that Carrie would ever be readmitted to the CIA. At this point, she's not just burnt, she's ash! I get that Saul sees her as an adoptive daughter, but seriously - has the CIA nobody competent? 

Saul couldn't work for the CIA, either, after his mistress in Berlin turned out to be a Russian agent. 

Edited March 23, 2020 by Roseanna
correcting spelling

[Roseanna]

On 2/15/2020 at 2:06 PM, Alistaire said:

The major problem for me is that I regard the series' protagonist as a psychopath. "Homeland" has been an exquisite thriller for eight seasons. I was very glad to see Dar Adal meet his fate and sickened by (belatedly) learning he was a pedophile. I still want to know who the mole in Season 1 was, and I freely admit I want to see Carrie punished for the way she equates her own interests with the country's. This protagonist was not a heroine. The people who have died or worse (Quinn) because of her is repugnant. 

"Homeland" can be both a brilliant thriller and a morally repugnant series. 

Well, as spies do repugnant things, how could they be moral people?

Of course Quinn was an interesting case: an assassin who had more morality than Carrie and all others together.  

 

[Roseanna]

On 2/15/2020 at 2:06 PM, Alistaire said:

In the past two seasons, references to "old school" and even subtler references to age have interested me. Dar Adal's "coming out" as plain evil, for example, to me seemed equated with the fact that he's older. I'm not making an issue of this, but the references in the Season 8 opener to Carrie doing things "old school" will make it interesting to see if age and/or aging animosities and alliances play any role in the narrative. 

"Old school" methods doesn't mean that those methods don't work any more. In some cases they do.

Saul, if anybody, is an "old school" spy. To him technology is a servant, not a master. We have seen that he thinks that turning one of the enemy's top persons and making a deal is better than constant war.

On the other hand, in other cases new methods must be invented.   

[Roseanna]

 

On 2/29/2020 at 2:54 AM, John Potts said:

For a spy, Saul really wears his heart on his sleeve. The Pakistani Spymaster was far better at keeping a poker face when he was ranting at her. And she was 100% right about US attitudes to Afghanistan (well, real world ones, presumably also fictional ones)

Yes, the female Pakistani spymaster has good reason not to trust in the Americans. When the CIA chief had to choose whether to save Americans in the embassy or to reveal Afghan sources who had worked for the CIA, he chose American lives over a huge political defeat.

Also, when Saul was a prisoner, the Americans could be blackmailed to free prisoners.    

[Roseanna]

On 2/15/2020 at 2:06 PM, Alistaire said:

and I freely admit I want to see Carrie punished for the way she equates her own interests with the country's. This protagonist was not a heroine. The people who have died or worse (Quinn) because of her is repugnant. 

Quinn didn't die for Carrie, he died to save his president, as is the duty of every soldier. 

I don't especially like Carrie, either, especially when she manipulatates foreigners for US interests and then leaves them in stick. But she did right when she chose to offer Quinn and save Berlin. 

As a general principle: instead of revenging for personal reasons, Carrie, Saul and other spies should be able to cooperate with former enemies in order to reach great political goals. 

[jabRI]

On 2/9/2020 at 1:25 AM, scrb said:

Carrie returns to her cocky self immediately, saying the CIA chief in Kabul isn’t an  alpha and then barging into her former assets home and refusing to leave until she sees or as it turns out his widow calls him.

She wonders if she got this guy killed.  She really gets flustered when she comes face to face with Oleg.

We just finished this season/series on Hulu.  Was it ever resolved what happened? Did she give him up?  Like Saul said, everyone talks under Russian torture at some point.