Brigette Watches Homeland, S4/Ep7: "Redux"

Things we learned:

1) Saul is currently a human shield for Uncle Terrorist aka Haqqani (aren't you proud of me for looking up his name?) and is chillin' with his whole brood. Until they move him.
2) Negotiations are being made to get Saul home, and Carrie thinks they should have just let him die.
3) Boyd STILL hasn't turned off the sound on his camera phone!!!! (Aren't you proud of me for looking up his name?)
4) It IS possible for Carrie to have a freak out without hearing jazz music.

One thing I like about Homeland, even as it seems to be decaying, is that every character is a real person. No one is just pure evil, not even the terrorists, even though they do evil things. As we saw largely though Brody's storyline, who the "good guy" is and who the "bad guy" is depends entirely on perspective. There are points in this show where people are just people. That seemed to be apparent when Saul and Haqqani were in the car and Haqqani talked about how happy he was to see his family, as well as when all those little children ran to hug him, and when Haqqani scolded his son for throwing his shoe at Saul. But this guy is no angel, and Saul can't  play nice. Who could blame him? After being as involved with catching these guys as Saul was, how could anyone keep their mouth shut and not call Haqqani out?

Saul: "You just executed your nephew, and before that you killed his family in an airstrike. How is that necessary?"
Haqqani: "You point your finger at Islam, but if Christianity is to be judged by the misery it has caused mankind, who would ever be a Christian?"
Saul: "I'm a Jew."

ZING!

All Haqqani can say back is, "Yeah. Well," and Saul pays for that by having to listen to Haqqani and his wife have sex after three years apart. He is Haqqani's human shield after all. I feel like if Saul hadn't won that dinner table convo, Haqqani would have at least given Saul some cotton to stuff in his ears, but no. If Saul wished for death at any time during all of this, you know it was then. Yikes!

Speaking of which, I think I agree with Carrie that Saul would have wanted the mission completed, even if he got killed. You can see that in Saul's repeated insistence to Haqqani that he's really not that special, and in the disappointment at the end when he's informed that a hostage negotiation is in fact taking place. Saul is in a very special kind of nightmare right now in which living undoes a large amount of his life's work. But at the same time, we know he doesn't really want to die. And let's hope Carrie doesn't want him to either, because really Carrie?

But Carrie can't really help Saul right now, much less herself. Why aren't these pills working???? she wonders, as she takes five more, not knowing that Boyd switched them. Are they just sugar pills and her bipolar is taking its effects, or are they pills that are actually making her worse? Was this all explained and I missed it? Probably.

Regardless, as painful as it was to watch Carrie's rapid meltdown, it also gave us some of the best moments of the night. I swore at my T.V. when Carrie "shot" the guys in the car, then swore again when we see that she didn't actually have a gun and it was just her hand. Oh, and how could I forget the moment before that when she broke Quinn's nose and balls, assuming he was actually there?

Did that ending make anyone else EXTREMELY confused? Carrie was taken to Assar Kahn's house, right? (I am just on FIRE looking up names!) The one who claimed they had no footage of Saul in the area he was kidnapped? The one who is working with Boyd to mess with Carrie (right)? Why on god's green earth is she at this guy's house? I think we're not supposed to know that yet, actually.

Of course, I gotta mention the Brody hallucination. I'm a fan of ghost stuff, so I was hoping that it was really him. I was like, "Wow, this show is getting spiritual? What are they doing here?" But nah. Carrie was probably so far gone that part of her brain went to Brody, the safe place, to calm herself down. Even though Kahn knew what was happening to Carrie as he cradled her because HE had been behind it (creepy), he still must have been like "WTF."

Will Carrie figure out what happened with her meds? Will Saul die? Will Quinn need nose and ball surgery? Let me know what you think! Until then, in honor of Carrie's freak out, watch that Homeland skit on SNL with Anne Hathaway because it's still one of my most favorite things ever, and I know it's one of yours too.