Homeland ‘Blind Spot’: Thickening of the Web

Homeland‘s fantastic first season continued last night with ‘Blind Spot’, an episode about Saul’s life, Carrie’s determination, and as always, Brody’s unstable emotional and mental state. It was an episode full of twits, and I’m going to try and keep this fairly short this week, because I feel much of what happened this week is setting up for a faster paced episode next week. So let’s get into it…

Let’s start with Saul. This week, we meet Saul’s wife, who’s been soul searching while visiting family in Mumbai. It’s been clear from the beginning Saul is a career man through and through, and with the appearance of his wife, we’re starting to see the sacrifices he’s making to do his job. His wife isn’t bitter about leaving him again – and for good this time – she realizes the life he lives, and the fact she can’t live a normal life centered around the madness of his work. And when Carrie knocks on the door in the middle of the conversation (what many have wisely called a McNaulty moment) it only revealed more clearly how exasperated Mira is with the whole CIA thing. Add into it the whole blowup that followed with Carrie (who, among other things, called him a pussy) left Saul with two handfuls full of women troubles. It was depressing, and almost tragically funny how he was bombarded (in his own home, as he points out) by the two women in his life, his wife and protege.

The other focal point of last night’s episode was the continuing ambiguous behavior of Brody, a mystique which grows and grows, but continues to be well-written and doesn’t feel like a stretch or a cop out by keeping his motives somewhat cloudy. Things with the wife are still icy, things with Mike are so cold, that bowl of ice cream probably still has icicles in it, and the whole interrogation/suicide situation (we’ll get back to that) shows a lot of different emotions Brody is still struggling with (don’t forget praying with his son and continuing to worship in the garage). Brody is insulating himself from everybody around him, in a time when you’d think he’d be trying to re embrace them. He’s not putting family first, or else why would he go to the interrogation room instead of his son’s karate? This episode again has a handful of strong scenes with Brody, and Damien Lewis continues to knock it out of the park.

A few quick thoughts:

– the brief scene with Carrie’s father should be the first of many important ones. Through her father, we’re really going to learn a lot more about who Carrie is, and exactly what they are suffering from. Which, by the way, the stealing of said pills isn’t going to last forever, and this is another storyline we’ll continue to see develop in the background. Nice to see Carrie’s nieces showing her so much love, though. She might need some new work friends soon, the way things are going with David and Saul.

– Carrie continues to imitate the people she is watching: today while the man sits on the floor against the wall in the interrogation room, she does the same.

– phantom emails? the idea that shit might actually exist is one of those Big Brother things that really creeps the shit out of me. One thing I’m enjoying about Homeland however, is they don’t use these cool little gadgets for important, but usually contrived bits of information. There is a lot of old school spy legwork going on here, and this show is paying a little respect to the art of surveillance.

Another great episode, and if these three leads aren’t driving themselves straight into some serious Emmy conversation right now, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Homeland was also recently picked up for a second season, and the show’s creator has revealed he has larger plans for the future seasons of the show. I’m a little wary of these plans, but they sure have left themselves open for a number of different opportunities in the future. Can’t wait to see where it goes, and I’ll be back next Monday with a much more comprehensive recap as we pass the halfway point in Homeland‘s first season.