Homeland Season 6 Episode 8 Review: Alt.Truth

| March 13, 2017 |

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This Homeland review contains spoilers.

Following last week'south episode where Dar Adal had Kid Protection Services take away Carrie girl—all to testify… he could?—I was worried that flavor 6 might become lost in the woods. Luckily, information technology found its path again in "Alt.Truth," a strong, timely, and immensely enjoyable hour of paranoia. That long dormant feeling of utter confusion and despair that we haven't regularly enjoyed since Nick Brody was a character is slowly reemerging in season half-dozen, and the darker things become, the more than addictive the show becomes.

In the case of "Alt.Truth," terminal week'south padding seems to be done, and things are kicking into gear for the final tertiary of the flavour with Elizabeth Keane isolating herself, and Carrie and Saul now officially on the outside with no visible trail back to the center. Of course, that's where they've thrived the most in the by too.

Indeed, this hour is very Carrie and Saul axial. Faced with the fact that he has to get Javadi in front of the president-elect, and the noesis that Dar Adal has essentially removed him from the equation of decision-making in what is looking increasingly like a coup, he turns to Carrie at a moment where she—and the momentum of the series—desperately needs a friend. Saul is able to show Carrie where her daughter is being kept, only more importantly, he is as well able to show her a path out of her funk.

Combining their shared information, the mentor and the onetime protégé get together a very clear picture, one with disquieting implications the viewers have long known: The CIA and Mossad are developing a phantom threat in Iran to either ensnare Keane in a false threat, or to but get rid of her. It is good to see Carrie and Saul work together without too much animosity for the start time in several years, but the all-time line of the nighttime comes after Saul's stupor to learn that Sekou probably did not detonate that bomb in Midtown, and that an FBI agent has been murdered. He asks, incredulously, why Carrie hadn't already come up to him. She replies, "Honestly, I didn't know whose side y'all were on."

In this game of intramural espionage, betrayal, and jockeying for political position through a level of lies and deceit worthy of any third charge per unit banana republic, there really is no such thing every bit loyalty or trust to exist had. Saul's non-answer to her explanation confirms that we've entered a brave new world on Homeland . The fact that government relations between career folks, intelligence agencies, and new assistants political appointees appears just as fractured from the outside in our world equally this fiction but heightens the appeal of the serial, whether it exist coincidence or non.

Eventually, Carrie and Saul practice succeed at getting Javadi before President-elect Keane, where one of the series' ameliorate twists has merely occurred. The unabridged journey for Carrie and Javadi left me suspicious. Narratively, information technology just seemed too like shooting fish in a barrel for them to place the pieces together this quickly, and that something bad must occur before she arrives. Mayhap they'll be ambushed and Javadi murdered? But if that were to happen, Dar Adal would've played his hand too broadly. Keane's a globe leader, not a disinterested denizen, and she'd be able to encounter where at that place'southward smoke at that place's fire.

The car ride over does, nonetheless, feature a solid reminder of the previous double amanuensis we'd lost many seasons ago, with Javadi promising to tell Carrie where he had Brody'southward remains moved to. It's apparently a dainty shady infinite subconscious in some pine trees. Granted, Javadi seems to lie about everything else, and then I practice not blame Carrie for quietly declining his offer for a map. It is also in these petty moments where at that place are non tears but far more visible lines of silent pain that Claire Danes really gets to show off.

But in example she might've had second thoughts on that map, Javadi reveals that (surprise, surprise) he is yet a snake. Off-screen and between episodes, he somehow miraculously contacted Dar Adal and made the choice to, by his own words, "bet on the sure-matter." In this example, he willingly stoked the flame of war for the president-elect with lies. Past making the conclusion to tell Keane that the the Iranians are cheating on the bargain, he has caused her to seemingly permanently banish her trust for Saul Berenson and specially Carrie Mathison.

Information technology is a special level of self-serving cowardice that Javadi exhibits when he is willing to push the U.S. and his native Islamic republic of iran toward war over a lie simply to save his own skin. Actually, he already had a bargain that would save his skin with Saul and Keane, just he was so craven about the reach of Dar that he notwithstanding threw his home country nether the bus. Meanwhile, Keane rather foolishly makes the hard cut from Carrie in this moment.

As Carrie tries to put logic and context into this situation, Keane simply says that she was wrong to ever take Carrie'southward communication. Obviously believing that Carrie is every bit much responsible for the Sekou disaster as the media, she'll likewise leave Mathison out to dry out while willingly letting herself continue to be fooled by a CIA charmer that previously locked her up in a makeshift house arrest.

For Carrie and Saul, it is dorsum to the days when no 1 would allow them to peak over Brody's shoulder, so I suspect they'll now land on their anxiety equally the two all-time characters on the show are forced to collaborate one time more.

With that said, I imagine this choice is going to come back to haunt Keane, considering she is letting double-speak push her closer to Dar Adal, who had a single telling scene this episode.

Indeed, the hour is titled "Alt. Truth," which is clearly a dig at the alternative right, which manipulates facts to brood conspiratorial innuendo and distortions. One wonders if the producers even considered changing the title to "Alternative Facts" after Kellyanne Conway's infamous spin, but that would've likely simply too belabored the point. Instead, we run across the series' version of Blitz Limbaugh crossed with Sean Hannity casualty on an Iraqi vet who admits to suffer from crippling PTSD; they trick him to semi-admit that Keane'southward dead son was a cocky-serving coward in the war.

Further, the pundit really finds video of young Keane'due south decease, which when taken in context proves he died trying to salve the lives of his men. Yet, when edited in a way that makes Karl Rove's infamous "Swift Gunkhole" tactics from the 2004 U.S. ballot await tasteful, they transmutate the image of a fallen American hero into one of a coward abandoning his postal service. It's a twisted partisan game he's playing that would identify party over country, all in the hope of besmirching a gilt star parent who has already won her election. It likewise is entirely plausible that sure media personalities would play this carte du jour in our postal service-Swift Gunkhole and post-birtherism world.

What is slightly more surprising is that Dar Adal shows up to watch the tape and is thrilled. For starters, he tin trust the alt-right media to make its own propaganda without his assist. Just I foolishly had hoped for a half-a-2nd that a CIA man would cringe at this articulate spread of misinformation. He doesn't need this to undo Keane. Then I realized that, as Carrie and Saul insinuate to, he is committing a form of treason to work against the Iranian bargain. What's trampling on the grave of a expressionless serviceman to achieve his ends?

And indeed, he must be moving closer to those goals since Keane is now in consummate isolation from anyone who could warn her of the dangers to come. For that reason, information technology appears at present is the time to tie up other loose ends…

Which brings us to who is certainly the soul of flavour six, Peter Quinn. Like Quinn, I was suspicious that Dar Adal offered the handicapped and tortured spook a risk at peace on a lake. In many ways, it was odd that he fifty-fifty bothered to invite Astrid dorsum into the testify. Maybe he really did desire to meet if he could essentially buy Quinn off? But Adal doesn't seem similar the kind to bet on silent obedience. Perchance Dar simply created this scenario, because he knew Astrid would handle the take chances of sneaking Quinn out of Bellevue?

In whatever result, at present that he knows where Quinn is, and that he is still enamored of Carrie Mathison, it is time to wrap things upwards and take him out. But not before Quinn gets paranoid and fantasizes that there are spies where there are none. Suspecting that Astrid is working for Adal, Quinn is so adamant to detect the spy watching the spies that he he claims Astrid means goose egg to him, that he just slept with her out of loneliness. Then he took horrible things even farther by punching her.

I don't believe that Astrid, before or after the accident, meant "nada" to Quinn. But honestly, she never has been a very important graphic symbol to me or likely many other viewers since she was always the foil to Carrie—the other adult female who even if we liked, we quietly rooted against, whether she was better for Quinn or not. Nonetheless, this episode pulled a very time honored play a trick on in television writing: making you truly care about a grapheme before you take her abroad. Seeing Quinn punch her in the stomach was as shocking every bit information technology was disturbing, and instantly made us see him more than for what he is: a broken man.

Astrid probably should have left him flat no matter what afterward that instant. Despite his issues, he has at present been physical. Nosotros might sympathize with Quinn, but nosotros also understand that who is at present is not who he once was. Quinn fifty-fifty articulates this to Astrid, which is what gets her to say in spite of his poor attempt at an apology. For a cursory moment, I finally saw Astrid as something Carrie will never be: stability and patience. She could be an out for Quinn, and she herself showed remarkable grace given how awful he was to her. And that is when they take her away, because of Quinn's paranoia regarding her gun, no less.

So here nosotros are, the merely take a chance Quinn actually had for peace is gone. Again. At present he is common cold, wet, and severely pissed off that Dar Adal put him and Astrid there simply to die. He'south a homo with cypher to lose, just as his testify will always be discredited, I'm not certain what he can do except take matters into his own hands. At which point, this could end even more tragically than it already has, and we merely saw Quinn continuing over Astrid's dead body—a death caused by her refusal to let Quinn get.

At to the lowest degree until the gunman showed up (at which point, I recollect nosotros all knew how information technology was going to become down), tonight was a series of unexpected events, and one that leaves the pieces on the lath in disarray, and Dar Adal closer to his checkmate against an oblivious queen. I really practice not run across how the "heroes" prevent this collapse, which leaves this reviewer more keyed into Homeland than he's been for a long time. So let'south see where the pieces move, because it'southward get irresistible to look abroad.