Homeland Review - S1, E9
13/03/2012
Show: Homeland
Episode: Season 1, Episode 9 – Crossfire
Aired: Sunday 8:30pm, March 11th 2012
Channel: Ten
Recap
*SPOILERS – THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE AND PREVIOUS EPISODES OF HOMELAND. CATCH UP HERE: https://ten.com.au/homeland.htm*
After feeling mentally overwhelmed in the supermarket, Brody is physically overwhelmed in the parking lot by two unknown attackers. They stick him with a syringe and drive off with him in the back. Carrie returns to the mosque from last episode to meet with the imam who reveals that he knows something about Walker – who knew a little too much about the layout of the mosque. The catch is he won’t reveal anything until the families of those who were shot by the FBI get justice. He wants the FBI to admit they have lied and compensation for the families.
No wonder Carrie is struggling to find Walker, he’s out in a forest practicing using his new rifle on homemade targets. He is interrupted by the only other person who appears to be out there, innocent-looking hunter Dan, who senses something is off with this man. Dan appears to get away, back to his car and to the newspaper with Walker on the front, before poor Dan gets a bullet in the head and Walker drives away in his car.
While Brody is lying unconscious in an unknown location it’s the perfect time for a flashback. He remembers three years earlier being brought to Abu Nazir. He is given proper living quarters in Nazir’s house and told to teach Nazir’s adorable son, Issa, English. Issa and Brody are able to bond over soccer and, as Issa quickly picks up English, you can see a father/son relationship begin to grow between the two of them.
Back in the present Carrie records a conversation she has with Special Agent Hall of the FBI, where he admits that his men made the mistake but Estes refuses to let her use it. Changing tacts at a meeting with the imam and his wife in his home, appealing to his better side, Carrie tells him what will happen to his community if another attack happens. After appearing to leave with nothing, the imam’s wife, Zahira, calls to organise a meeting. Zahira tells Carrie that Walker has been to the mosque eight or nine times in the past week, not to pray but to meet with the man we saw last week – the Saudi Arabian diplomat.
Brody finally wakes up and finds a screen and a web cam with Abu Nazir on the other end. Brody starts off pissed off but Nazir reminds him of the promise Brody made to revenge America. Now we get to see why Brody screams Issa’s name in his sleep. We see a flashback of Issa’s school after an American missile hit and Issa’s lifeless body in Brody’s arms. As if Brody needs more to nudge him back on Nazir’s path, the Saudi diplomat puts on a video of the TV broadcast of the event where American officials are lying again. The diplomat tells Brody he should accept the offer from Vice-President Walden to run for office, when the offer comes.
As Brody leaves the Saudi diplomats house, Carrie and Saul pull up just missing him. We find out the name of the diplomat is Mr Zahrani. Brody arrives home late with his groceries, to a frustrated Jessica who softens when she hears his story of a mugging, a good way to end an episode that was all about lying.
Thoughts on the Episode
Well if last week’s episode wasn’t grey enough for you, it was hard this week to tell where my loyalties lay. Nothing brings people together like the death of a child and with the American missile that killed Issa, it’s easier to believe Brody’s motivations for turning. Especially when we saw the Americans in such a bad light this episode, lying about killing innocent men at prayer and children.
And yet, Brody has his own family in America, would he really put someone else’s child before his own, especially for a man who convinced him he’d killed his best-friend and who ordered him to be tortured? I also don’t believe Brody hadn’t seen children killed as casualties of war while he was fighting before his capture and understood the cost of war. And I don’t believe that some part of him wouldn’t blame Nazir for Issa’s death. The Americans were trying to get Nazir, not a school building - we have seen terrorists insulate themselves in areas with schools and hospitals hoping the good guys won’t dare to try to attack them with so many innocents around. It’s a lose/lose situation for America and it’s beyond awful that they lied and covered it up but I still remain unconvinced that Brody turned just because of a misguided missile.
I also didn’t like the Walker storyline, mainly because it wasn’t really a storyline. It felt very much like the show’s writers wanted to remind us that Walker was still out there and fill in a little extra time so threw this in.
While the pacing in this episode was a little off, most shows struggle with flashback episodes and Homeland managed it better than most. We were getting to a place where we needed answers and we needed to understand the enemy and this episode was there to achieve that. So while others are calling this episode a dramatic drop, I would call it a necessary plateau. Homeland is still head and shoulders above most shows on TV at the moment and I’m always left eager for more.
What Did We Find Out?
The clues in this show seem to lead to more questions, but here’s what I found important:
- While Brody’s reasons for turning were humanised and softened his character in our eyes, Walker seemed to get far more psychopathic and cold. This begs the question, what did they do to turn Walker?
- With Carrie almost being busted in Saul’s office taking her medication, how long is it before someone other than Virgil figures out Carrie’s secret? And with her little breakdown at meeting resistance from Estes, how will she deal when things really go to hell (as I assume they will in the final episodes)?
- While Issa’s death looked incredibly real something Nazir said stuck in my mind, he told Brody he didn’t plan any of this. It’s like when someone tells you they’re not lying but you get this feeling that actually they are lying and that’s why they said it. Nazir has faked one death already that Brody was sure of, I’m not sure I trust anything we see on this show, as it has a habit of flipping it back on us. Taking another approach, we do know of fundamentalists who are willing to sacrifice their children for their beliefs. I may be reading too much into this and Issa is a popular Arabic name, but it’s also the name that corresponds to Jesus in English, Jesus who sacrificed himself...
- We saw Walker practicing on targets and we heard Nazir say he’s part of the plan... but who is Walker’s target? I have two theories, that the plan is to use Brody to get the Vice-President elected as President and then Walker will shoot Walden. Alternatively, the target might be Brody, we’ve seen the show throw us some really big curve balls, why not have one POW shoot the other, especially since it will give Brody the strongest cover of all. If he’s a terrorist working for Nazir, why would he get shot by another terrorist on the same team? Or combining the two, Brody will take the bullet for Walden and will get injured (not fatally of course) which will make him a hero once again and even harder to touch by Carrie and her team.
- We know only a few people knew about Lizzie’s plan for Brody, so who leaked it to Nazir? I have my fingers crossed every episode that it’s not Saul but it really isn’t looking good for him at the moment.
- Brody was out for a long time, we saw a doctor examining him and sticking him with a syringe, I just wonder if they did anything extra to him while he was asleep (such as implanting a tracking device or something?) would he even notice with all the scars he has on his body? Let’s hope they didn’t but I don’t see the point of knocking him out and beating him up to get him to the diplomat’s house, surely there was another way to get your message to him, especially if you want to convince him to stay on your side.
- Finally, another ‘it may be nothing but...’ what was Saul doing on the floor with his iPod when he was on the phone to Carrie? It went unexplained and in this show if they have something on screen that isn’t explained it’s often a clue.
Hopefully we’ll get some answers next week. If you picked up anything else in the episode to hint at what’s to come, let us know below (but for those ahead overseas, please no spoilers).
Written by Libby Popper