Quinn faces his demons in 'Homeland,' and destroys us in the process
This recap contains spoilers for Homeland Season 6, episode 2, titled "The Man in the Basement." Refresh your memory with our episode 1 recap here.
Homeland's latest episode, "The Man in the Basement," proves that there is definitely more going on with both Carrie (Claire Danes) and her legal case with Sekou (J. Mallory McCree) than meets the eye -- though in both storylines, it's not at all what we expected. Bravo, Homeland.
And just when you thought you were going to get through an episode without crying, along come Carrie and Quinn (Rupert Friend) to hit you right in the feels.
The mole
Saul (Mandy Patinkin) comes to see Carrie at the law office, an encounter which goes from sweet to bristly in about 3.5 seconds. Basically, Saul thinks President-elect Keane's (Elizabeth Marvel) national security strategy sounds an awful lot like Carrie's agenda, so he's convinced Carrie is working as an advisor to the president-elect behind his back.
Carrie laughs it off very convincingly, to the point where, when she later waltzes into President-elect Keane's hotel suite, we're a little surprised. It really seemed like Carrie was laughing at Saul and saying, "Like I don't have enough on my plate, are you crazy?" (She's not wrong -- when does this woman sleep?) And yet, here we are.
Anyway, Keane asks for Carrie's recommendation on how to proceed, and she says Saul should be their man on the ground in Israel and Iran to make sure the Iranians aren't backing out of the nuclear deal. Carrie insists that Saul wants the nuclear deal to work and that they can trust him.
The person they definitely can't trust is Dar (F. Murray Abraham), who's still trying to play puppet master behind the scenes -- but no one yet knows that he's been secretly meeting up with General McClendon (Robert Knepper) so for now, Dar still seems to be on the up and up.
So, by episode's end, Saul is off to the Middle East. The only question is how long until Carrie has to go over there with him? Because how boring would it be if their storylines were completely separate all season long?
The hole
Sekou, meanwhile, is facing a lot of jail time. He was essentially set up to look like a terrorist by none other than FBI Special Agent Ray Conlin (Dominic Fumusa) himself, by way of Sekou's friend, Saad Masoud (Leo Manzari).
Masoud used to be Tyrone Banks Jr. and ran with a gang in Pittsburgh before he flipped and put them all in jail. Now he's an FBI confidential informant and basically forced $5000 on Sekou to help make him look guilty, all because Fumusa doesn't like Sekou's website. That's really what it boils down to.
But because Masoud is a protected CI, he can't be put on the stand to protect his cover, which means it's the FBI's word against Sekou's -- and it won't be hard to make Sekou look suspicious to a jury, even if he literally hasn't done anything illegal.
The soul
It wouldn't be Homeland without Danes' unparalleled crying abilities. Frankly, we can't believe they left that until episode 2.
But after Quinn has a seizure at a local bodega, Carrie tries to talk to him and realizes he doesn't really remember what happened to him in Berlin. So she shows him the video of him getting poisoned, which is really hard to watch, for both of them.
But the truly heartbreaking turn comes when Quinn wonders why Carrie would go to such great lengths to save him. She may only repeat "why" back to him in response, but the "because I love you," is written all over Carrie's face as she tries not to completely lose it.
Despite the ups and downs Homeland has endured in terms of quality, Danes' acting abilities have always been top-notch, and that's no different here. Friend, too, is doing powerful work in mining the depths of Quinn's confusion, frustration and despair.
Maybe Quinn realizing someone really does care about him -- and also what he managed to overcome by not dying -- will be what he needs to get up off the mat and keep moving forward.
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Here's hoping, anyway.
Homeland airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.
