Homeland Season 6:“Imminent Risk”

Posted: March 9th, 2017

By Michael Sulick

Michael Sulick is the former director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service and is currently a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk assessment. Sulick also served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Chief of the Central Eurasia Division where he was responsible for intelligence collection operations and foreign liaison relationships in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union. He is the author of Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present.

The CIA’s Dar Adal was eventually revealed as the mastermind of a plot against the incoming President, but in this episode, the villain emerges as the very personification of evil. We shouldn’t be surprised. Dar’s warped conspiracy has involved a terrorist attack on U.S. soil to undermine an incoming president considered soft on terrorism. So far, Dar’s machinations have resulted in the death of two innocent civilians in the staged car bombing and the murder of an FBI agent. In this episode, his perfidy reaches new heights.

Dar tries to eliminate remaining obstacles to his plot, which happen to be Carrie, Quinn, and Saul. Carrie is advised by a Child Services social worker that she may lose custody of her daughter after the police raid on her house. A court hearing the next day isn’t going well while Carrie struggles to explain Quinn’s living in her house and his actions the day of the raid. The social worker delivers the final blow when she reveals that Carrie also suffers from bipolar disorder. At the end of the episode, we learn that Dar provided the social worker the information on Carrie that results in the judge’s decision: Carrie must undergo psychiatric evaluation and her daughter must stay in a foster home. The staged terrorist plot is no longer her main concern.

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