Homeland: All About Allison

November 23, 2015 2:16 PM - Season 5, Episode 8

Carrie needs Allison's help. Quinn's plans change.
posted by roolya_boolya (3 comments total)

I really liked the main story this episode, particularly the flashback storytelling about Allison. The writing had a very strong Le Carré feel, the miserable lives of spies. Except with women characters. I loved the instant shared sorority between Allison and Carrie when they first meet, Allison talking about hot guys and swigging down a drink and generally just fucking done with Iraq. Good stuff.

But then the B-plot with Quinn, oy, so terrible. I mean at least it's more interesting than where it'd been going but it still feels entirely irrelevant and deus ex machina. This Reddit discussion also reminded me that Carrie seems to have entirely forgotten about Quinn. Last she knows, he'd wandered out of Jonas' care all septic and bleeding to death.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, what the hell is going on with Quinn? I assume the planned terrorist attack in Berlin is going to be relevant to Carrie somehow, but it's just a mess. Why take Quinn along if they were never going to Syria?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:45 AM on November 26, 2015

So Allison was turned in Baghdad, and that's the big secret they're trying to protect? I had assumed that Allison was a sleeper, that she'd ALWAYS been in league with the Russians. What did she yell out when she realized she'd been trapped? It sounded like a Russian curse to me, but I have to admit that almost all Russian sounds like cursing to me. Whatever it was, it wasn't English, so if she's American I don't understand why she yelled it.

The behavior of Quinn's party only makes sense if you assume that they realized he was some sort of agent, and were actually baiting him when he thought he was setting a trap for them. I agree that, if that's the case, they certainly didn't set it up well.
posted by ubiquity at 12:59 PM on November 29, 2015