‘Homeland’ Season Premiere Recap: Worlds Collide for Carrie
Watch the full Season 5 premiere of Homeland above.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for this week’s Season 5 premiere of Homeland.
“It’s like my old life came back — everything I moved here to get away from,” Carrie Mathison laments in the Season 5 premiere of Homeland.
“I don’t want to be in that world.”
Unfortunately for Carrie, her wish is not Homeland’s command, as her former CIA connections come crashing back into her seemingly idyllic new life. It’s been two years since the events of last season, and Carrie is out of the agency, living in Berlin with Franny and a new boyfriend, and working security for a billionaire philanthropist.
But it all starts to come undone in two ways. First, that billionaire, Otto During (Sebastian Koch), wants to visit a refugee camp in Lebanon as a stunt to raise funds for food and medicine. He needs Carrie to arrange safe passage, and the only way to do that is to contact Hezbollah. That leads to Carrie getting kidnapped by the main Hezbollah guy in Berlin — who turns out to be a bitter old acolyte of Abu Nazir who lost his own son to CIA forces.
Secondly, Carrie’s former mentor, Saul Berenson, travels to Berlin to manage a documents leak — think Edward Snowden — that implicates German intelligence in illegally spying on their own citizens. Saul and Carrie have a tense, fraught, chilly meeting, and it’s clear there’s a very, very long road to reconciliation between these two.
So with that, all of the hard work Carrie has clearly put into building a new life is getting wiped away, through no fault of her own.
What worked:
* Calm, sane Carrie is a nice sight to see. She goes to church! She hires a balloon animal maker for Franny’s birthday party! She has a hunky German boyfriend! And she seems to be on her meds!
* Though we like to see Saul and Carrie on the same side, it’s even better to see them at odds. That scene between them in the CIA lobby was brutal — and brutally good. Patinkin has never been as menacing as when he called Carrie “naive and stupid,” and Danes played the hurt and pain in Carrie’s reaction so well.
* The real-world similarities are striking and effective. Documents leak, a la Snowden? Great. Refugee crisis? Totally on target. Terrorist threats in Europe? Very real. Homeland has perhaps never felt so on point with current events as this. Quinn’s dressing down at that intelligence briefing was brilliant.
What didn’t work:
* We love, love, love Peter Quinn, but this version of him — a cold, calculating killer with no morality or emotional ties — is a little much. Maybe if he runs into Carrie, we’ll see a glimmer of his humanity in there. Somewhere.
* The new characters got very short shrift in the premiere, which is perhaps somewhat expected. But it would’ve been nice to get more of a handle on Berlin station chief Allison Carr (Miranda Otto) or Carrie’s boyfriend.
* That During Foundation writer who uploaded the leaked document was a total caricature. Does she even have a name besides “idealistic hipster blogger”?
Burning questions:
* How will Carrie get sucked back into the CIA proper? Because we all know that’s going to happen.
* What will be the consequences to Saul’s off-book operation with Quinn? Or maybe this is how he finally ascends to director?
* When will Carrie and Saul make up?
Homeland airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.
