S08.E02: Catch and Release

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

Carrie reconnects with an old ally. Tasneem seeks counsel. Saul finds hope.

Promo:

Clip:

Original air date: 2/16/20

[LoveLeigh]

I feel so lost. I watched this episode within a brain fog. There are so many characters and names and references and faces, I do not know if I am coming or going. I need a road map or diagram to keep up. Which characters are from past episodes and who are new? 

Gulom is the VP of Afghanistan. Who was the terrorist at the end who hit Saul before the episode ended? Who is the woman who was interviewed for some fake job and then was kidnapped after she took the photo? Plus, there is the woman whose husband was killed because they thought he was a traitor and the wife blamed Carrie for that. 

[dwmarch]

6 minutes ago, DakotaLavender said:

I feel so lost. I watched this episode within a brain fog. There are so many characters and names and references and faces, I do not know if I am coming or going. I need a road map or diagram to keep up. Which characters are from past episodes and who are new? 

Gulom is the VP of Afghanistan. Who was the terrorist at the end who hit Saul before the episode ended? Who is the woman who was interviewed for some fake job and then was kidnapped after she took the photo? Plus, there is the woman whose husband was killed because they thought he was a traitor and the wife blamed Carrie for that. 

The terrorist is Haqqani, the villain of season 4. He is meant to be an Osama Bin Laden level bad guy.
The woman who was interviewed is a corruption investigator who knew what the VP was up to with the fake military unit and base. She is a new character.
The woman from last episode was the wife of one of Carrie's old sources (unseen). She was there solely to establish that Carrie may have broken under pressure and betrayed her sources. I doubt we will see her again. She is also a new character.

I totally get where you are coming from because this show will not hesitate to drop in a new character and make it like you are supposed to know who they are.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Awwwww, I love how Max is now considered the unit's good luck charm now and they're all bringing him food and drinks while he works. So cute! I laughed when they all came by to touch his head before heading out and he said he doesn't like to be touched.

As soon as Saul's security guy said he was going to have a look around, I was like welp, Saul's fucked.

And Bunny's back! Tasneem referred to him as aba, so is that just an honorific title of respect or is he really her father?

It appears that Mike's lack of confidence in Jenna was not misplaced. She managed to fuck up the first real thing she was given to do and then couldn't recover quickly enough. On the plus side, she saw Yevgeny getting into his car after Carrie's panic, so at least now we know for certain that he wasn't a figment of her imagination.

[scrb]

Jenna may have messed up but if she sticks with Carrie, you hope she has a better fate than Farah.

Saul is so eager for the big peace deal.  Remember when he thought he was going to bring some lasting change in Iran?

I wouldn't think he'd have the authority to make an overture to the head of the Taliban on a secret mission to Pakistan.

But he jumps at the first sign and basically makes it obvious what he's up to.  So why didn't he figure that Tasneem would make this kind of move?

Pakistan is technically an ally of the US, though it's true that the ISI is suppose to be full of Taliban sympathizers.

Normally they wouldn't dare make an overt move against a figure like Saul, who is still the national security adviser to the president?

But when he goes half-cock on a secret mission inside Pakistan, of course he's going to be abducted.

You also wouldn't think Carrie would traipse around Afghanistan without being noticed.  She said Samira living as a single woman in Kabul is just something that's not done.  So how about a white woman with a head scarf ducking in and out of the alleys?

 

If Carrie "the black widow" Matthison really wants to take down Oleg, she just needs to start sleeping with him, so that he suffers the same fate as Brody, Aayan, Quinn.

[LoveLeigh]

19 hours ago, dwmarch said:

The terrorist is Haqqani, the villain of season 4. He is meant to be an Osama Bin Laden level bad guy.
The woman who was interviewed is a corruption investigator who knew what the VP was up to with the fake military unit and base. She is a new character.
The woman from last episode was the wife of one of Carrie's old sources (unseen). She was there solely to establish that Carrie may have broken under pressure and betrayed her sources. I doubt we will see her again. She is also a new character.

I totally get where you are coming from because this show will not hesitate to drop in a new character and make it like you are supposed to know who they are.

Thank-you so much. I have another question. Who was the third dark haired woman who was seen in a scene eating with an older man? And who is he? I apologize for being so stupid but my brain is in a fog with this episode and appreciate the help. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

I can't with Saul making such bonehead moves like he's invincible. Is he suffering from some kind of diminishing of his mental capacity?

Yay, the opening credits are back. Very Brody-heavy. Cracking up at these spumors that he's not really dead even though we saw him die in front of a crowd of witnesses. It would be IMO a bad soap opera move to have him not be dead due to some insane switcheroo. But if they are gonna bring someone back from the dead, I'd vote  for Quinn before Brody. 🙄

[Pallas]

 

46 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Yay, the opening credits are back. Very Brody-heavy. Cracking up at these spumors that he's not really dead even though we saw him die in front of a crowd of witnesses.

Goodness. No of course Brody's dead, though I'm sorry about that, and glad to see him in the credits as we come home. It does bring Carrie and the show full circle for her to be the former prisoner who was turned inside out in captivity and then released. 

[dwmarch]

1 hour ago, DakotaLavender said:

Thank-you so much. I have another question. Who was the third dark haired woman who was seen in a scene eating with an older man? And who is he? I apologize for being so stupid but my brain is in a fog with this episode and appreciate the help. 

That's Tasneem, the Pakistani version of Carrie. She was also in Season 4, working for the ISI (Pakistan's CIA) and handing Carrie and friends their asses as they tried to operate in her territory. The man she was eating with is her father, who is apparently still a player somehow. He's new.

The only thing that bugs me about Saul's role this season is that he's supposed to be the National Security Advisor and as such, he's definitely micro-managing his assets. But that's a constraint of television since it would be difficult to show the seventeen layers of bureaucracy Max's breathless reporting would have to trickle through before ending up as a footnote on page 57 of a PowerPoint deck that the National Security Advisor may or may not have time for.

The note on Carrie's desk was weird. She's inside an ultra-secure CIA station in hostile territory, it's not like a friggin' courier could just drop it off right on top of her keyboard.

[Norma Desmond]

So, Saul is kidnapped by the Taliban...again. How original! What a fresh storyline!

 

Is Saul the dumbest person alive? I think he is.

 

The best part of the episode was seeing Quinn in the opening credits.

[Norma Desmond]

1 hour ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Yay, the opening credits are back. Very Brody-heavy. Cracking up at these spumors that he's not really dead even though we saw him die in front of a crowd of witnesses. It would be IMO a bad soap opera move to have him not be dead due to some insane switcheroo. But if they are gonna bring someone back from the dead, I'd vote  for Quinn before Brody. 🙄

I absolutely adore Quinn, but I would hate for Homeland to resort to such cheap storytelling. Same for Brody (except that I don't love him. At all)

 

I do have a feeling though that Brody's death was faked and that he's alive and will end up walking into the sunset with Carrie.

 

Hope I'm wrong.

[Pallas]

32 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

The man she was eating with is her father, who is apparently still a player somehow. He's new.

That was famously "retired" Pakistani general Bunran "Bunny" Latif, Saul's old contact. He appeared in several episodes in season 4. My guess is that ElectricBoogaloo is right and Tasneen called him "aba" not because he is her father but out of respect -- because he was her Saul.  

He's played by Art Malik, who was Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown. 

[dwmarch]

10 minutes ago, Pallas said:

That was famously "retired" Pakistani general Bunran "Bunny" Latif, Saul's old contact. He appeared in several episodes in season 4. My guess is that ElectricBoogaloo is right and Tasneen called him "aba" not because he is her father but out of respect -- because he was her Saul.  

He's played by Art Malik, who was Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown. 

Thanks for clarifying, I don't remember him from Season 4 but it's been a long time since I watched it. In 8x01, Saul asks Tasneem how her father is doing and she corrects him with "step-father". In that same scene she says he has MS which is getting worse, he's going blind (bad news for a guy who amuses himself trying to shoot squirrels in his back yard!) and he passively disapproves of Tasneem's career choice.

[Pallas]

Ah, and thank you!  So Bunny is Tasneem's step-father and ailing. I don't recall that their intimacy was established in season 4, but Saul obviously has known of it all along. 

[Mysteyman]

Okay, its final season, what are the chances that Carrie is offered the Directorship of the CIA and what are the chances that she turns the offer down?

Carries biggest flaw isn't her Bipolar Disorder, its her addiction to the spy game.

[Pallas]

Yevgeny's gaslighting Carrie about having turned her is disturbing. His winking smile as he passed her at the VP's office in Kabul; his complicitous manner when she stumbled on him as he waited for her outside the loo. His knowing that Carrie had to immediately see -- no, feel -- so many of the implications of how and why she was put in motion to advance Russian aims, suspect her colleagues at the station and ultimately, implicate herself. Most of all, how there's no way for her to turn off or set aside the part of her mind that's begun building its own wall of crazy around the question of how much she gave up.

[Msample]

8 hours ago, Pallas said:

That was famously "retired" Pakistani general Bunran "Bunny" Latif, Saul's old contact. He appeared in several episodes in season 4. My guess is that ElectricBoogaloo is right and Tasneen called him "aba" not because he is her father but out of respect -- because he was her Saul.  

He's played by Art Malik, who was Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown. 

He was also the villain in TRUE LIES.

[parandroid]

9 hours ago, dwmarch said:

The note on Carrie's desk was weird. She's inside an ultra-secure CIA station in hostile territory, it's not like a friggin' courier could just drop it off right on top of her keyboard.

Yup. If, as from the previews, we see Yvgeny copping to that, the first concern would be "who is the friggin russian spy inside the CIA office?".

[Pallas]

And that brings us full circle again, to our side's being hobbled by "who's the mole?" suspicions and investigations. People at the station/overseeing from DC will have reason to believe that Carrie planted the clue herself. 

[TimWil]

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Jenna and Yevgeny are doing the horizontal mamba.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

 

[DFWGina]

Count me among the folks who can't keep everyone straight this year.  I thought the woman interviewing was the widow from the  last episode.   

I also commented to my husband that for Saul to be so high up and such a good spy - he gets himself kidnapped with too much frequency for me to believe he is actually a good spy.  I mean - come on!!!!  Again?

I am hopeful that all of this is going to come together soon.

[roughing it]

24 minutes ago, DFWGina said:

I thought the woman interviewing was the widow from the  last episode. 

Me too!  These first two episodes, I kept saying "wait, what?  who?  what?  come again?" 

Anyone keeping a running total of how many times Saul has been kidnapped?  literally and figuratively?

And if Crazy Carrie rears her ugly head again, I'm going to have to give up, because I just can't with that anymore

Edited February 18, 2020 by roughing it

[LoveLeigh]

OK: Haqqani (who kidnapped Saul) is the head of the Taliban in Afghanistan. G'ulom is the VP of Afghanistan. Tasneen is in Pakistan's CIA. The man she ate with was in Pakistan's high government. 

In episode 1, the woman was the widow of Carrie's contact in Afghanistan. He was dragged to death. In episode 2, the woman being interviewed for a job was the widow of a man killed by G'ulom when his car blew up. 

Is that correct? 

Edited February 19, 2020 by DakotaLavender

[WaltersHair]

Well, I'm conflicted. Too many new and old characters and Saul being kidnapped again.

Carries is like a little nervous dog. You don't know if she's going to bite you or lick your hand. I think Jenna messed up on purpose. Something not right about her.

Way too much wink wink nudge nudge. What's the old adage, never negotiate with terrorists. 

Saul should go out with a bang ,suicide vest and all.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

They're going to hit the convoy:

 

[Espy]

On 2/20/2020 at 2:10 PM, WaltersHair said:

I think Jenna messed up on purpose. Something not right about her.

Yeah. I thought it was just the actress was bad but maybe she’s trying to tank Carrie’s operation deliberately, maybe a conflict somewhere?

[John Potts]

Loved the little touch of the General checking out Carrie's butt!

"These are POWs, not terrorists..." Funny hearing an American government official saying that.

Did Saul not consider the possibility that the Taliban were feeding their bug false info? It seems mighty convenient that just when you are considering releasing hundreds of their prisoners, the bug tells them they are serious about the peace talks. And the mission to repair it was ambushed but nobody on Team America (World Police!) died - you might just be a little suspicious about the timing.

For somebody struggling for money, that was way too nice a pad (unless the point was that she had way more money than she should).

On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2020 at 12:28 PM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

It appears that Mike's lack of confidence in Jenna was not misplaced. She managed to fuck up the first real thing she was given to do and then couldn't recover quickly enough. On the plus side, she saw Yevgeny getting into his car after Carrie's panic, so at least now we know for certain that he wasn't a figment of her imagination.

I'm still withholding judgement. It seemed Saul didn't know where a senior KGB* officer was, which is something I would expect the CIA to keep track of. Then again, there are only about three competent CIA officers on Homeland - one of those is nuts and another one is dead!

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 3:41 AM, dwmarch said:

The note on Carrie's desk was weird. She's inside an ultra-secure CIA station in hostile territory, it's not like a friggin' courier could just drop it off right on top of her keyboard.

Yeah, what was up with that? I'm sure it's possible to sneak a package inside the CIA offices, but Carrie just seemed to accept that as perfectly normal. Did she even ask who had left it there? Was it another indication that Carrie may be an unreliable narrator (as if we needed one)?

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 6:39 AM, Mysteyman said:

what are the chances that Carrie is offered the Directorship of the CIA and what are the chances that she turns the offer down?

In any sane universe? None. In this one - who knows?

* OK, I know they're not called that any more

[Milburn Stone]

Not this again.

[Roseanna]

On 2/17/2020 at 2:15 PM, Pallas said:

Oleg's gaslighting Carrie about having turned her is disturbing. His winking smile as he passed her at the VP's office in Kabul; his complicitious manner when she stumbled on him as he waited for her outside the loo. His knowing that Carrie had to immediately see -- no, feel -- so many of the implications of how and why she was put in motion to advance Russian aims, suspect her colleagues at the station and ultimately, implicate herself. Most of all, how there's no way for her to turn off or set aside the part of her mind that's begun building its own wall of crazy around the question of how much she gave up.

Oleg is such a good character: so good-looking and so sinister. 

[Roseanna]

On 2/17/2020 at 5:41 AM, dwmarch said:

That's Tasneem, the Pakistani version of Carrie. She was also in Season 4, working for the ISI (Pakistan's CIA) and handing Carrie and friends their asses as they tried to operate in her territory. 

Then Tasneem beat Carrie 6-0. She has an advantage: she uses coolly her head and has don't have realtionship to disturb her judgments. 

[Roseanna]

On 3/2/2020 at 2:58 AM, John Potts said:

"These are POWs, not terrorists..." Funny hearing an American government official saying that.

That's how things change if one is willing to do a peace treaty. 

[Roseanna]

On 2/18/2020 at 6:40 PM, DFWGina said:

I also commented to my husband that for Saul to be so high up and such a good spy - he gets himself kidnapped with too much frequency for me to believe he is actually a good spy.  I mean - come on!!!!  Again?

How about Carrie? For all her famous skills and hunch, she utterly lost in S1, S2 and S4.

And when she won, something terribly happened those dear to her (to Brody S3, to S5 and S6 to Quinn) and lastly herself in S7.