Homeland: The Covenant
February 1, 2017 8:22 AM - Season 6, Episode 3 - Subscribe
Saul goes to Abu Dhabi. Carrie delivers bad news. Quinn senses something.
Alternate recap: Saul goes for a walk in the Occupied West Bank. Carrie fucks up again, but another deus ex machina old friend comes through to save her from herself. Quinn stars in a paranoid's remix of Rear Window.
Alternate recap: Saul goes for a walk in the Occupied West Bank. Carrie fucks up again, but another deus ex machina old friend comes through to save her from herself. Quinn stars in a paranoid's remix of Rear Window.
Hm on the disability cheque, I've seen a link somewhere recently where someone asked the same question and was pointed to the official site about veterans' disability payments, but I can't find it now. Anyhoo, it suggested that $3000 was not impossible, depending on the severity of the disability. I guess monthly rather than biweekly. I'll have another look later and post if I can find it.
I didn't have too much of a problem about the efficiency of his Tommy-beating. There's an interview somewhere where RF says his brief for Quinn this season was that he was "Both very capable and totally incapable," which sounds like a contradiction but I think he's executing pretty well.
He's become a man of two halves - left side all-but paralysed, right side still able to execute all the serious spy shit that is so hard-wired into him, as long as it can be done with one hand. So you saw him seriously limping up the stairs to Tommy's apartment, one step at a time, clutching the banister, wincing in pain... then, having had plenty of time sitting in Carrie's basement to plan his attack, pulls out the canned food (thanks, Max!) in a sock to bludgeon Tommy with. I feel like, as long as he doesn't start leaping over walls or doing star-jumps, it's still this side of believable.
The nightmare was pretty horrific, the all-out screaming a rare glimpse of Quinn unable to censor his emotions because he's asleep... hug was adorable, until it went oh-so-wrong - *cringe*.
Nice to see Saul out in the field again, it's the first thing that makes me slightly excited about the spy plot - the domestic NY stuff not really grabbing me so far, even with Dar being Dar-stadly and spying on Carrie. Plenty of time for it all to hit the fan on that side of things, though.
posted by penguin pie at 3:59 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
I didn't have too much of a problem about the efficiency of his Tommy-beating. There's an interview somewhere where RF says his brief for Quinn this season was that he was "Both very capable and totally incapable," which sounds like a contradiction but I think he's executing pretty well.
He's become a man of two halves - left side all-but paralysed, right side still able to execute all the serious spy shit that is so hard-wired into him, as long as it can be done with one hand. So you saw him seriously limping up the stairs to Tommy's apartment, one step at a time, clutching the banister, wincing in pain... then, having had plenty of time sitting in Carrie's basement to plan his attack, pulls out the canned food (thanks, Max!) in a sock to bludgeon Tommy with. I feel like, as long as he doesn't start leaping over walls or doing star-jumps, it's still this side of believable.
The nightmare was pretty horrific, the all-out screaming a rare glimpse of Quinn unable to censor his emotions because he's asleep... hug was adorable, until it went oh-so-wrong - *cringe*.
Nice to see Saul out in the field again, it's the first thing that makes me slightly excited about the spy plot - the domestic NY stuff not really grabbing me so far, even with Dar being Dar-stadly and spying on Carrie. Plenty of time for it all to hit the fan on that side of things, though.
posted by penguin pie at 3:59 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Here's the link I saw before: Veteran Disability Compensation - "The amount of basic benefit paid ranges from $133 to over $3,300 per month, depending on your level of disability and number of dependents."
That page links in turn to this one on Disability Compensation Rates.
posted by penguin pie at 6:35 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
That page links in turn to this one on Disability Compensation Rates.
posted by penguin pie at 6:35 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Plausible that an off-the-books ex-CIA operative might have a better pension?
Even at $3,300 - that'snot a lot pretty paltry, especially if healthcare isn't covered 100%.
posted by porpoise at 8:09 AM on February 2, 2017
Even at $3,300 - that's
posted by porpoise at 8:09 AM on February 2, 2017
Yeah, I'd kind of thought the same about him getting dumped in the VA hospital - you'd think if a CIA operative (even if off the books) was publicly tortured, and left with serious physical, mental and verbal disabilities, they'd have a way of stumping up for a private treatment programme for him. Either because they wanted to take care of one of their own, or in the hope of not wasting all that expensive training, and getting him back to work, or just not risking having a mentally unstable trained killer on the loose.
It felt like there was a real disconnect between him being in such a clean, shiny military hospital in Berlin, and then getting transferred to the house of hell in NY. But I'm assuming Homeland decided the "we treat our veterans so poorly" tale was one they wanted to tell this year.
posted by penguin pie at 8:40 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
It felt like there was a real disconnect between him being in such a clean, shiny military hospital in Berlin, and then getting transferred to the house of hell in NY. But I'm assuming Homeland decided the "we treat our veterans so poorly" tale was one they wanted to tell this year.
posted by penguin pie at 8:40 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
That was an interesting exchange between Saul and his Israeli friend/contact about the settlements.
Wasn't it though? The show has long since diverged from its Israeli TV roots in Hatufim, and I don't think that any of the writers of this episode are Israeli. But it felt like a very personal and struggling accounting of settlement politics. Particularly the connections back to growing up in America, the joke about being one of just a few Jewish families.
posted by Nelson at 10:02 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Wasn't it though? The show has long since diverged from its Israeli TV roots in Hatufim, and I don't think that any of the writers of this episode are Israeli. But it felt like a very personal and struggling accounting of settlement politics. Particularly the connections back to growing up in America, the joke about being one of just a few Jewish families.
posted by Nelson at 10:02 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
the house of hell in NY
Am I missing something here? I spend most of my waking hours nowadays working in hospitals and it did not seem to me like this one was being portrayed as especially bad. The VA gets a lot of deserved criticism about things like wait times to see specialists and especially behavioral/mental health services, but when it comes to physical medicine and rehab of the young and recently very able bodied, I actually think the VA does it quite well (albeit in a setting that is not as aesthetically pleasing as a fancy private hospital), and this was reflected in the episode when we saw the rehab/PT area, the nice physical therapist, fellow patients, etc.
posted by telegraph at 4:00 PM on February 3, 2017
Am I missing something here? I spend most of my waking hours nowadays working in hospitals and it did not seem to me like this one was being portrayed as especially bad. The VA gets a lot of deserved criticism about things like wait times to see specialists and especially behavioral/mental health services, but when it comes to physical medicine and rehab of the young and recently very able bodied, I actually think the VA does it quite well (albeit in a setting that is not as aesthetically pleasing as a fancy private hospital), and this was reflected in the episode when we saw the rehab/PT area, the nice physical therapist, fellow patients, etc.
posted by telegraph at 4:00 PM on February 3, 2017
Hey, telegraph - no slight meant to the actual VA, but it felt like Homeland was pushing us to feel that this fictional version of it was not a great place for Quinn to be right now - based on things like:
* A nurse/orderly who will take a vulnerable patient out, take a cut of his disability cheque, leave him with prostitutes and drug dealers and not even fetch him back safely afterwards.
* A system that didn't notice when that same vulnerable patient was missing overnight, and didn't make any effort to find him even when they did notice he was missing, so that his friend had to go find him, beaten, robbed, high and alone.
* Security guards who yanked his bad arm painfully behind his back to restrain him, reducing him to tears.
* A system that could only deal with his resistance by threatening him with the locked ward.
* A shouty neighbour, who judging by Quinn's familiar "Shut the fuck up, Reyes..." spends a lot of time hollering on the other side of the wall.
I guess it's all plot-driven - they had to get them to a place where Carrie felt like she had no choice but to take him home. Part of that was due to Quinn's resistance to being there, but they also had to make it look like he was in a place that Carrie could see was not great for him.
posted by penguin pie at 6:52 AM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
* A nurse/orderly who will take a vulnerable patient out, take a cut of his disability cheque, leave him with prostitutes and drug dealers and not even fetch him back safely afterwards.
* A system that didn't notice when that same vulnerable patient was missing overnight, and didn't make any effort to find him even when they did notice he was missing, so that his friend had to go find him, beaten, robbed, high and alone.
* Security guards who yanked his bad arm painfully behind his back to restrain him, reducing him to tears.
* A system that could only deal with his resistance by threatening him with the locked ward.
* A shouty neighbour, who judging by Quinn's familiar "Shut the fuck up, Reyes..." spends a lot of time hollering on the other side of the wall.
I guess it's all plot-driven - they had to get them to a place where Carrie felt like she had no choice but to take him home. Part of that was due to Quinn's resistance to being there, but they also had to make it look like he was in a place that Carrie could see was not great for him.
posted by penguin pie at 6:52 AM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
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Way to mess up that drug dealer, Quinn!
(PTSD nightmares aside, I'm not a fan of Quinn being much less disabled much too quickly. I was half expecting him to cock the confrontation up.)
Presumably he wouldn't be able to salt the (returned) wound since the gun's probably unidentifiable; highly doubt a drug dealer would have a registered weapon, much less one tied to their identity.
--
That was an interesting exchange between Saul and his Israeli friend/contact about the settlements.
posted by porpoise at 7:13 PM on February 1, 2017