Homeland - Why is This Night Different - Review:"Guns, Explosions and Really Cool Stuff"

“Believe it. Now, play fucking dead.” -Quinn

This week proved to be another solid episode for Homeland, as the show seems to top itself every week. After five seasons, the show still hasn’t lost its touch, its relevance and its capacity to surprise. The episode was filled with raw emotions, with knife splitting tension and with mystery, tons and tons of mystery. It was incredibly well acted, as usual, beautifully edited and the sound score perfectly balanced. I said it before, and I will continue on saying it, this show has everything.

Last week, Carrie, off of her meds, tried, in vain, to figure out who had tried to kill her, who still wanted her dead, and by the end of “Super Powers” Quinn had drugged her and knocked her out, before she could realise who had been tasked to kill her. The episode this week, has Carrie waking up from her drug induced slumber, very relieved to see that Quinn is the one holding her captive. Just like Carrie, for a moment there, I though Quinn really had changed for the worse during his time in Syria, he acted cold and detached, causing Carrie’s, and mine, panic to rise. He hasn’t though, he hasn’t changed completely. His two years in the special ops team was hard on the guy who was once ready to quit, but he still cares underneath, contrary to the persona he’s been playing for the beginning of the season.

When Quinn tells Carrie he was in Syria for the past two years, I didn’t really get what she meant when she said she looked for him wherever she went? What is that supposed to mean? What are we supposed to get out of that? What is he? At one point during the series, Quinn told Carrie he loved her. At one point in the series, I believed they would get together, even kind of rooted for it. In this episode, you could see he cared, he loves her even. He wants to protect her, there is no doubt about it, but there was nothing romantic about their interactions, and I’m glad there wasn’t. In my opinion, it would have ruined the ambiance of the episode and I quite enjoy the new no nonsense Quinn. He doesn’t seem to think it’s important anymore, his feelings, they aren’t what matter anymore. His response to her "How do I look?" held a lot of meaning in my opinion, as he simply answered "Different." They both changed, they're both different.

“Cut the crap Carrie. It’s time to disappear and fast.” -Quinn

After faking her death, it’s time for Carrie to put into motion her fallback plan and vanish. She has to disappear and leave everything behind, including her daughter. Carrie’s different this season than she was in the past. mainly in her role as a mother. Remember the epic, almost drowning baby in the bathtub, incident? She’s grown far from that person during the two year time lapse, and this evolution was made even clearer as she tried to make a video for her futurly estranged daughter. The scene made me cry, no shame, I cried like a little girl at a One Direction concert. Claire Danes truly is incredible and she was brilliantly tragic it in that scene.

Carrie manages to pull through, manages to find the courage, the strength to make a credible video for her daughter who she’s probably, in her mind, never going to see again, when Quinn makes it clear that if she wants Frannie to be safe, she needs to be dead. She needs to be dead if she doesn’t want the people going after her to use her daughter against her. Honestly though, could anyone be so mad that they use a three year old kid as leverage? Where the hell has the world gone? Throughout the episode, Quinn remains the pragmatic one, while Carrie gets to be the emotional one. She has the most to lose, and the most to understand in this operation though.

“It doesn’t make sense. Maybe Saul changed. Maybe I pissed him off, but Saul’s smart, and sending you to kill me isn’t smart. It’s fucking stupid.” -Carrie

A mix of misunderstanding and hurt is Carrie’s reaction upon learning Saul put her name on the list, and the entirety of the reaction was spot on, it felt natural, how I expected her to react. Hell, it would be how I’d react if I realised the person I looked up to, the person I trusted more than anyone, my mentor, wanted me dead. One of the great things about this show is how relatable the characters are even given their exceptional circumstances. It wasn’t always something I could say about Carrie, though, she was always hard to grasp, hard to understand, incoherent even, but I feel they’ve mellowed her down this season, and with that they humanised her a lot, and it’s easier to put ourselves in her shoes, to feel for her. More than being expected though, her initial reaction turns out to be right.

It couldn’t have been Saul to have put Carrie’s name on Quinn’s kill list, because Saul knew of Quinn’s feelings for Carrie. This means, since Carrie isn’t in on it, which was my theory two weeks ago, the only other explanation is that someone else had access to the deposit box. I had a feeling, ever since the first episode, that Allison was up to no good. I never though her shenanigans would go to that level though. I saw her as an ambitious woman, ready to do anything to get to the top, but I also thought she shared the same “Greater Good Values” as the rest of her clan. I was taken for a spin with the fiery ending for the episode, and I, as I am sure many other viewers too, shared Saul’s inflexion.

“Oh, my God.” -Saul

Dal Adar’s conversation with Saul in last week’s episode hinted at a play in the works, and it happened in “Why is This Night Different?” Saul and Allison work together in undercover operation. They get a Syrian General they are grooming to be president of Syria, to Geneva for kidney transplant for his daughter. In Switzerland, the man is violation of international sanctions, with no rights. They can, if they want to, arrest him for war crimes. General Ussef, as a likely candidate to replace Hassad, the president of Syria, would with the support of the United States, bring back the democratic reform to his country. The episode enrolls, and Saul seems to have well played his hand, and just when it seems to them that he might play ball with them, the general’s private plan bursts to flames, midair, along with 10 million American Dollars.

Re-watching the episode for the second time, I loved Saul’s foreshadowing of the conclusion to the general’s trip with his question to Allison, “Do you think he’ll burn?”

doubts about Saul, convinces Quinn to scout the Postal Office. They get more than they bargain for when someone, unknowing of Carrie’s presence, turns up wanting Quinn dead. It played in their favor that Allison was unaware of Quinn’s feelings for Carrie. In a fast pace and tension filled scene, Quinn comes out of the Postal Office and gets shot in the abdomen. He still manages to get a couple rounds in the guy, effectively killing him, and Carrie takes the time to get his phone, and snap a picture. After that, the idea of Carrie going into hiding is out of the picture, she’s not leaving him. She gets him back to the bunker and patches him up, somewhat, but it’s not going to be enough. He’s going to need medical help at one point.

The hacker storyline is still parallel to the main storyline, but the stakes in the B plot have also considerably increased in this episode. Korzenik, who didn’t want a journalist to get rich and famous because of documents they had hacked, decides it’s a good idea to sell the information to the Russians. After being contacted and informed by a fellow hacker helping Laura out, Numan gets a hols of his fairly stupid friend. The stupid friend goes to a meeting alone, without backup, and lies about having more than one copy of the documents. How could he have possibly thought of it as a good idea? He was way too naïve. I have to wonder how trouble will find Laura and Numan next, because we know it will come to it. Their involvement definitely isn’t over. It would kind of suck if it did, in my opinion.

The season is still separated in two distinct storylines, but how long is that going to last? Since we know Allison is part of “the bad guys,” do you guys think she caused the documents to get hacked on purpose? She was present when it happened, and it did cause a domino effect that got Saul to Berlin. She did mention having connections to the Ukrainians and Russians, no? Is that how the storylines will eventually merge together, is she the common denominator? Is KGB sleeper agent still a thing?

So many questions. That’s one of the many reasons I love the show.