Homeland- The Smile

I, RobinWong [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

What Happened- Carrie got mental help and is teaching English, puttering around in a garden, and living with her family when Saul and David Estes drag her back into her old world. An old contact knows of an impending attack on the U.S., but she doesn't trust anyone but Carrie and will only give her the information. She heads out to Beirut, but once she's there, she's spotted by a baddie. Saul tells her to abort the mission and get arrested/rely on her cover, but Carrie defies him and eludes the enemy instead, escaping. Then she smiles (see the title of the episode).

Meanwhile, Brody is a Congressman being tapped to run for VP, and Dana is going through a sullen teenage phase. While defending Muslims at her school, she lets slip that her father is a Muslim. Brody confesses to Jessica that it's true, and Jessica goes a little crazy and throws his Koran on the ground. Mean! A reporter meets Brody in his office and turns out to be an agent of Nazir's. Nazir wants Brody to break into Estes's safe and get information about possible targets for terrorism. Brody does it.

What we thought- The best new show from last fall is back! It deserved those Emmys, and if you haven't seen it, do that as soon as you can. It's cool that Carrie is teaching English to Arabic speakers. It shows she isn't prejudiced and knows that not all Arab speakers are her enemy, despite her past. Her whole life in the first 20 minutes of the episode proved that she can be healthy and stable, if only she could stay out of the spy/intelligence business. No can do though. The show must go on.

Dana is the best. She can have the worst attitude she wants to have. Dana saves lives. Brody's relationship with Dana is one of the show's emotional points that really work. We love how he wasn't mad at her and accepted her apology right away. We love that Brody is trying to simply influence politics rather than carry out political tasks. He's trying to do both. He's trying to fight for Issa and kids like him, and he's also trying to keep Americans alive. Of course, the actual terrorists want him doing way more. What did he expect? Of course terrorists would rather blow things up than change American politics from within using one congressman.

It was easy for the show to pull Carrie back in the game. Jack Bauer was pulled in for similar reasons. The haunting background music in this show really works. We love that Carrie went rogue. She is awesome. Crazy as she is, she's good at this. She needs to be blonde though. This wasn't the best episode of Homeland, and we wish we could have seen Carrie and Saul share a scene that didn't involve a cell phone, but it's Homeland. It's a good show, we see it setting up some interesting things, and what was compelling about it originally is still in play and not getting tired.

Episode grade: B+