Homeland: Oriole
November 16, 2015 2:31 PM - Season 5, Episode 7 - Subscribe

Carrie reconnects with old friends. Saul opens up to Allison.
posted by roolya_boolya (13 comments total)
 
Saul is just a blabbermouth now. Holy cow.
posted by scalefree at 8:21 PM on November 16, 2015


Saul's defection caught me off guard, but makes sense. I mean, I expected that the whole laundry thing was about *something*, I just wasn't sure what.

Poor doomed cab driver. He was so sweet and so obviously going to die.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:24 PM on November 16, 2015


I'm hoping that Carrie is actually suspicious of Allison and is setting her up. I mean, if she has questions for her about her time in Baghdad and all, it seems to me that she's the one person most likely to begin to suspect that it's Allison who intercepted Saul's dropsite.

The problem I have is that if people are willing to believe that Saul is double-dealing, then they (including Saul himself) should be willing to consider that someone like Allison might be the problem. I know the show has taken pains to set up reasons for distrusting Saul and no one else, but I feel like Saul is being a little dumb in trusting Allison and if Carrie is also trusting Allison, then especially Carrie is being stupid. In Saul's case, it's not so much that Saul should specifically suspect Allison, but that he shouldn't be trusting anyone in that station. And, you know, Allison did try to have Saul transferred elsewhere.

I guess Quinn has no way of knowing that it wasn't Adal who put the kill order on Carrie, but then he was around when Carrie began to put the pieces together that it wasn't an official CIA order. I say that because, wow, would things have been helped along if he had told Adal that he'd gotten a kill order for Carrie.

I didn't know how to interpret Düring's conversation with Jonas. He's showing a different face to Carrie than he is to Jonas, but I'm not sure why.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:51 PM on November 17, 2015


He's showing a different face to Carrie than he is to Jonas, but I'm not sure why.

Yeah. Theory in the AV Club comments is that he wants Jonas out of the picture so he can sleep with Carrie, and maybe with a side of Carrie/Jonas reminds him of his failed relationship with his ex-wife, per their chapel conversation.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:04 PM on November 17, 2015


The way Snow Quinn orders around the Seven Jihadis is strangely endearing.
posted by elgilito at 1:35 AM on November 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


Still enjoying the show, still hoping this is the last season. They're asking me to believe too many implausible things.

1. Saul has no idea Allison has set up him. Neither does Dar. Neither does anyone, despite Allison being the worst poker face for a double agent in TV history.

2. Quinn's angel of mercy encounter ends up with him busting a new jihadi Syrian cell to catch the Big Bad Guy. Because... kismet? Just absurd coincidence.

3. Carrie and Doomed Cabbie can park within 20m of their destination everywhere in Amsterdam.
posted by Nelson at 9:40 PM on November 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


Was I mistaken or did the Russian call Allison "Alexa"? Is she actually Russian and just playing an American???
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:21 AM on November 19, 2015


Yeah I heard Allison called by a Russian name too, but my memory is it was "Nadia". But in the first scene with Ivan, about 6 minutes in, he calls her "Allie, Alicka"; I think he's just riffing on her name Allison. There's a second scene about 28 minutes in too. Together they establish she's been doing this spying for many years now. She's not a recent traitor.

One of my favorite little things in the show is the production design for the hacker stuff. Someone actually made an effort to get this right. Here's a closeup of the stickers on his laptop, a nice bit of detail. I can only figure out the source for one, Sglatschtglei, which is some picture sharing site. It's a funny sounding word in German, there must be some slang meaning to it.
posted by Nelson at 8:35 AM on November 19, 2015


Here's a closeup of the stickers on his laptop, a nice bit of detail.

Link's bad for me, just shows a teeny tiny number 1.
posted by scalefree at 9:48 AM on November 19, 2015


I also thought it was weird that the hacker couldn't find this lady's address even though she's not even trying to hide.
posted by LizBoBiz at 11:44 AM on November 19, 2015


I'm wondering where the Amsterdam scenes were filmed, because that didn't look like Amsterdam to me. Can't find further info online though..
posted by mirthe at 11:57 AM on November 19, 2015


"Yeah I heard Allison called by a Russian name too, but my memory is it was 'Nadia'. But in the first scene with Ivan, about 6 minutes in, he calls her 'Allie, Alicka'; I think he's just riffing on her name Allison. There's a second scene about 28 minutes in too."

Despite my username, I don't know much about this. But diminutive names (e.g. Bill for WIlliam) are very common in Russian -- a lot of the Russian names that anglophones are familiar with are actually the diminutives, such as Misha, which is the diminutive of Mikhail. Alisa is a Russian name that's close to Allison, but I don't know of a diminutive for it. The restrictions on the use of diminutives are stronger in Russian than they are in English, so you'd use it only with someone in the informal context between implicit equals. So Ivan in those scenes is very likely signaling a close, comforting relationship between equals to Allison in those scenes, independently of her ethnicity and possibly selecting something idiosyncratic for her. Then adjust your evaluation for how much the writers actually know about this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:01 PM on November 19, 2015


Even though the Quinn storyline seems completely unbelievable (part of me still wonders if they'll come up with a credible explanation that isn't pure coincidence, even though I know they won't) I'm really enjoying this season. The dynamics of Carrie, Saul, the agency, Carrie's boss, and Quinn are all new and interesting, and it's pretty exciting.
posted by jjwiseman at 2:43 PM on November 20, 2015


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