Homeland: A False Glimmer

December 21, 2015 12:47 PM - Season 5, Episode 12

The season finale. Carrie attempts to prevent a terror attack in Berlin. Allison flees Germany. Quinn writes a letter. Saul has a wallet with Bad Mother Fucker on it.
posted by leotrotsky (12 comments total)

I should have gone with, "Saul plays Elvis Costello's Greatest Hits" but was afraid the reference was too opaque.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:35 PM on December 21, 2015

...so great though.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:42 PM on December 21, 2015

Man, convincing your employee that his girl (also your employee) is crazy, and then making moves on his girl after they break up, that has to be bad for employee morale.

Also, Quinn's VO has just the perfect tone when he says "Well, I guess I'm done....".
posted by sideshow at 6:55 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I thought for sure the show was building up to Carrie suffocating or otherwise euthanizing Quinn after his status was downgraded to Minimally conscious.
posted by Justinian at 8:22 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I liked it and I liked the season overall. I still can't handle Carrie's quivering lower lip when she's upset, it actually causes me physical distress. Get it together, woman! It's been 5 seasons, you can handle talking to Saul without sulking.
posted by lydhre at 8:23 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think we were meant to assume she (probably) euthanized him, but it just wasn't shown. Why else would she put on his pulse oximeter?

i'll miss Quinn. I liked him as a character, and enjoyed their long arc together.
posted by jjwiseman at 2:10 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

That was a lovely episode. It was structured much like the end of the last season. An anticlimax, a time of quiet reflection. And depressing as hell. But well done for that. Quinn's ignoble end: six episodes of ineffectual silence followed by being mercifully suffocated with a pillow. Allison's unheralded death in the trunk of a car in Poland. Carrie's turning her back for good on the CIA only to be skeezed on by her boss. All just misery and quiet. A fitting end to the show.

Only argh! No! There's going to be a sixth season. This last episode was such a strong ending to the series, and honestly a good ending to what was (for me) a relatively iffy season. I really can't imagine what they do for another run. I sure hope a writer pulls a brilliant idea out of a hat, but I'm pessimistic. These characters all feel wrung out, and there's no new ones waiting in the wings.

I liked the bit with Dar Adal. He's such a villainous character. But there he is sitting vigil over Quinn, asleep in a chair, a caring father. And then he casually explains how he found his protogé and recruited him as a 16 year old orphan to be a boy-whore to entrap someone. Without a hint of moral compunction. :shiver:
posted by Nelson at 8:24 PM on December 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm going to remember Quinn at his best, boinking his BBW motel manager girlfriend. She sure made him happier than Carrie ever did.
posted by Nelson at 10:07 PM on December 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

Showtime is structurally incapable of letting a show end when there's any glimmer of life still in it.

I'll miss Quinn.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:18 PM on December 25, 2015

Aww, they killed Quinn. Slowly, finally.

This season was surprisingly watchable. Maybe because it had more spycraft and zero mooning over Brody, which is what I wish they'd been doing since season 2.

I like how everyone was sure Carrie was just pretending to be out of the CIA. I'm glad they didn't pull anything like that, though for a long time I was thinking Dar was playing some kind of long game.

I thought Miranda Otto did a great job though. One of my favorite moments in the whole series is when the Russian sting is revealed and she just lets out a curse.
posted by nom de poop at 10:25 AM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I loved the season, but the one disappointment for me was Quinn's demise, by which I mean that they tried to wring too much out of it. I get that they wanted to make it personal for Carrie, but the better, more dramatically fitting end would have been in the Sarin chamber, dying as he lived, a cog in the CIA culture of death and deceit, which Dar summed up in his brief backstory of Quinn: pretty enough to use as bait when he was new, and then turning out to be really good at his job as an assassin.

I quite liked Allison's observation that Saul is a very angry man. His face as he took in her corpse pretty much confirmed that; he didn't look satisfied, he looked royally pissed, like there weren't enough bullets in her.

Anyhow, I wonder what next season will bring, because as someone here said earlier, these characters are wrung out. I mean, by this time we all know that getting involved with Carrie is poison, don't we, even though she's usually right? (I imagine the billionaire will turn out to have nefarious purposes, which I hope is not the case, since it's so obvious.)

But, that said, I'm in!
posted by Short Attention Sp at 4:58 PM on December 31, 2015

I know I'm late to this, but I lost interest in the series and then decided to binge watch Seasons 4 and 5. Wow, amazing.

I love that it surprised me: most of the time with these tv series you kind of know exactly what is going to happen, but not here.

My thought is, I'm really suspicious of Otto, but nobody else seems to be. He was a little too blase in Lebanon, like he knew who the real target was. Then he wants to terminate Carrie's contract, but later he wants to marry her? Come on! Is he a Russian spy too?
posted by PJSibling at 3:46 PM on May 28, 2016