Game On - HL

Homeland episode 3-04 "Game On" which brings to mind Jed Bartlet's last debate

Written by James Yoshimura, previously of Homicide: Life on the Street

Directed by David Nutter, of the final two Game of Thrones episodes this season, including"  The Rains of Castamere"

TWIST!

Have you seen The Prestige?  If you haven't, it's going to be for the 2000s what LA Confidential is for the 1990s, retrospectively one of the best movies of the decade.

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

"Are you watching closely?" Because the entire season just turned around at "Game On"'s conclusion.  It could be called "The Prestige".  A reveal like this one does not only change the game going forward, but forces the viewer to think about the previous three episodes differently.

While Saul still cared for and about Carrie these past episodes, he had a role to fulfill as acting director of the CIA, which meant that part of restoring the credibility of the agency was to find a patsy for its shortcomings, or at least to find a way to draw attention away from the agency itself.  With Carrie, they had the opportunity to not only present a fall girl, but pile it on so much that they would create a target ripe for the picking by the enemy.  Sources, whether for newspaper articles for intelligences agents, are often people who feel they've been wronged in a way by their country/employer, so it was easy to turn Carrie into someone who, from the enemy's point of view, fit that profile.

So, like the Dark Knight, Carrie allows herself to be publicly smeared in the interest of a greater good. 

It's unclear when Carrie and Saul hatched this plan, but a Q&A with Alex Gansa says it came about (off screen, obviously) at the end of season two almost immediately following the 12/12 bombing.  What makes it more unclear, is the interaction between Saul and Carrie at the end of "Uh...Oh...Ah" when Carrie, in a private moment between them, says "Fuck you, Saul".  This is apparently one of the points where Saul had to go off book.  While that muddies the waters as to the details of their plan, it gives a whole new meaning to Saul's response "I'm...so...sorry".  It's been strange to see what we've seen of Saul this season, but I had chalked it up to his new role and separating the man from the office in a Jed Bartlet presidency sort of way.  Her reaction to the hearing appears in a completely different way too now.  She had showed no urgency to see what was going on with Saul's testimony, and I think her reaction was pained in a way that she knew it was coming but surprised at how difficult it still was to hear.

At this point he apparently cuts off communication with her, giving new rationale to Carrie trying to get a message to Saul via her Dad.  Was she going to give up on the operation?  One could not blame her, being in the dark about Saul's plans.

When the target reveals itself to give Carrie a 24 hour furlough, she kicks back into spy mode.  Alone and alienated by everyone without access to travel or money, Carrie is so vulnerable Javadi LLC follows her and picks her up at her mountain biker's house.

Mission: Impossible 2 was on TNT this weekend and a major plot point is that after IMF recruits Nyah Nordoff Hall, international thief, they need her to infiltrate Sean Ambrose's inner circle. Knowing it will look suspicious if she simply shows up at his doorstep, they put out every kind of police alert in the book on her, expecting Ambrose to catch wind, extract her from Madrid and bring her to his house in Australia himself.  Javadi LLC essentially does the same thing with Carrie.

Part of the twist no doubt is supposed to rely on us thinking Carrie has turned, but that's not something I bought.  Following her meeting with Javadi & Partners, I thought her (understandable) fear of being re-institutionalized was dominating at that moment and she was simply buying time until she could figure something out, feeding them useless information in the meantime.  While Brody was turned to a double agent about this time last year, Carrie goes TRIPLE agent here and now.  It's the labyrinth of mirrors. 

The plotting for this is a lot like Justified, which I personally consider the best plotted show on television*.  Season Three has combined events that would make total sense in the real world (scapegoating) with the natural reactions of the characters (Carrie and Saul's devotion, duty and competence) within the universe they've created (terrorists everywhere, especially Caracas) to connect everything in a way that is both completely reasonable and shocking.  And it sets up beautifully to connect the three points of focus this season, Iran, the CIA and Venezuela, in a completely organic way.

* Also, my favorite show on television.  They are the best or near best at a lot of things.

• Dar Adal asks Saul about a DOJ paper, which he uses to continue Carrie's confinement.  Only mentioning this because my Google machine tells me Dar Adal could roughly be translated to  Abode of Justice, which is basically DOJ.
• Laundering terror money through Venezuelan soccer teams brings to mind laundering drug money through Columbian soccer teams, leading to very rich teams and an incredibly successful Columbian soccer league.  
• See "The Two Escobars" covering Pablo Escobar (drug lord) and Andres Escobar (murdered soccer player)
• Had to laugh at Carrie's cooperation and participation in craft time at the nuthouse.  Please show me the birdhouse she made
• Carrie lives in Adams Morgan!
• Mike returns.  We like Mike because he drinks Rolling Rock.
• As good as the Carrie/Saul stuff was, that's how bad the Dana stuff is.  Scenes like the infuriating one with Leo's parents (my child would never do that!) and openly persecuting Jess and Dana for Brody's crimes fall so flat it makes me thankful for those scenese in Justified where one and two scene characters are better fleshed out than leads on other shows**
• Good to see Virgil and a coded message
• Carrie robs the guy date  spending her last dollar on a cab. But she doesn't take all of it, just some so he'll likely not notice or at least be unsure how much was there. If she took it all that'd b  obvious an  could lead to other problems easily avoided
• They love the paralells in an episode's plotlines, with Carrie (trying to get) on the run and Dana on the run
• Leo is trouble.  He's going to try to talk Dana into a suicide pact, which is apparently his thing.
• And I'm not even going to pay the time of day to figure out what this poem meant because everything after "Ozymandias" falls short
• DC area!  Carrie goes by Rock Bottom Brewery in, I assume, Arlington
• If you are the sort of person who likes Homeland, this will be a favorite.  The thing about this twist is that as far as I can tell it was not even a glimmer in the eye of the craziest crazed conspiracy Internet poster.  
• If you are the sort of person who likes to complain, then there is plenty to complain about (Dana) and you will probably also not like the twist

 ** One of those other things Justified is so good at, including a character who had two scenes two years apart, didn't say a word and still absolutely killed it, even getting a laugh

EDIT 10/22 - More on the twist