Homeland: The Return
February 27, 2017 3:58 AM - Season 6, Episode 6 - Subscribe

Carrie follows a lead. Saul meets an old friend. Keane takes a stand.
posted by roolya_boolya (6 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Astrid!

Poor damn Quinn. That guy can never catch a break.

So was Keane being kept away maliciously or through a combination of incompetence and over-caution? If they wanted her out of the way so the privatized-sub-basement-NSA can move ahead with their nefarious plans, wouldn't they have stopped her from returning or was the 2 or 3 days enough to get the momentum behind the PATRIOT act renewal?

How would a federal law affect what private corp. could do? In the real world (which Homeland is not), [ars technica]' "business records" maintained by a "third party"... are not protected by the Fourth Amendment.' This previously applied to things like telephone call metadata (who called who) but was affirmed to apply to where phones were (cell site records) in 2015.

Tapping a fiber optic cable to do Quality-of-Service analysis and "help" people get their Netflix & Youtube in HD stutter-free could be considered a legitimate business use. There must be something simpler (explicable to a TV audience) that will explain the sub-basements, no?
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:09 AM on February 27, 2017


Loved this episode. Particularly the menacing exploration of Onyx, the secret private military force. Such a lovely expansion of the paranoia of current times. (Fun fact: did you know Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has a brother? Erik Prince, the founder of private mercenary company Blackwater.)

I liked the painful Quinn scenes. Particularly that he didn't give Carrie anything useful. Poor Quinn, he's been used and abused by Carrie and everyone else around him so many times. Just leave him the fuck alone already.

The conversation in the car between Keane and the housekeeper (Marjorie Diehl) was just fantastic. A real moment of serious human and political commentary that I can't particularly pigeonhole into any particular political agenda. Just a nice moment of shared humanity in the loss of a son, and how you grapple with it.

I share the confusion about what happens next in the plot with Keane though. Did taking her out of the world for a couple of days really have any effect? I guess it ends up just discrediting her, making her look cowardly. And so far she's kind of playing along with that narrative, it's not like she came out the gate saying "I was held hostage". Keane is playing like it's gonna keep being politics as normal, she's more worried about her future relationship with the Secret Service when she's president. But I still think the story they're telling is that she may not be. (Loved the tense moment in the car drive where Keane says something like "you'll never have the chance to be in the car with the next President of the US" and the housekeeper lady waits a beat, teasing us that maybe she's about to say "actually, about that...")

The way Saul's buddy Viktor reads Saul out with the photos of Tovah and Dar Adal is amazing. "Well clearly you're out of the loop now". Ouch.

Who is Max? Why is he available to Carrie for sleepovers and random high tech security consulting? I feel like we need a whole season just about him.
posted by Nelson at 10:01 AM on February 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Tapping a fiber optic cable to do Quality-of-Service analysis and "help" people get their Netflix & Youtube in HD stutter-free could be considered a legitimate business use. There must be something simpler (explicable to a TV audience) that will explain the sub-basements, no?

My guess is that Onyx is going to turn out to be a Palantir Technologies type company, merged with a Blackwater type company, x1000. And instead of being hired by the gov to do data analysis, Onyx is going turn out to be an unofficial shadow government, complete with private army, with people like Dar Adal's CIA running the show.

They planted some seeds that perhaps Keane "sequestration" wasn't 100% on the level. That combined with Keane being portrayed as "soft" on terrorism might be a setup for the CIA staging a coup towards the end of the season.
posted by sideshow at 2:31 PM on February 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Everybody's spying on everybody!

Hopefully, Astrid helps Quinn, with the fact they've got history together. I agree, my man needs a break.

For me, the whole Keane containment bit was definitely staged in order to further a secret plan.

Really enjoyed the cat and mouse scene with mystery guy at Conlin's house. Wished Carrie would've took him down, though.
posted by mountainblue at 8:47 PM on February 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Holy wow, the backroom stuff. "Me, he looks like Government, man. He looks like you."

Yeah, fractured loyalties.
posted by porpoise at 8:59 PM on March 2, 2017


Really enjoyed the cat and mouse scene with mystery guy at Conlin's house.

So good! The housekeeper had me slightly terrified though. She had such a blank affect that I was afraid she was an assassin. I mean, not really but that would be a hell of a twist.

Who is Max? Why is he available to Carrie for sleepovers and random high tech security consulting? I feel like we need a whole season just about him.

Max goes way back. I think the most meaningful Max moment was after Fara got killed and he bitched at Carrie for giving Fara a hard time.
posted by kat518 at 12:06 PM on March 29, 2017


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