Another Homeland episode means Dar Adal commits yet another heinous deed. In this episode, Dar allows the Mossad to kidnap top CIA asset Majid Javadi, Chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Dar has to tie up loose ends. He convinced Javadi to lie to the President-elect and claim Iran was violating the nuclear deal. While Dar is meeting Javadi, he admits two Israeli thugs into the hotel room who throw a hood over the Iranian’s head and spirit him away in a hotel laundry basket to a probable brutal interrogation and execution.
Thanks to Javadi, Dar has convinced the incoming President to seek his advice on shaping a hardline policy towards Iran. As an aside, one of the more unrealistic aspects of this season is Dar’s frequent interaction with the President-elect. CIA directors are normally the principal contact for newly elected presidents and don’t delegate this to their subordinates. The CIA Director in Homeland this season simply doesn’t seem to exist.
Dar’s perfidy backfires thanks to a clever move by Javadi, who dials Carrie as the Mossad thugs subdue him. She hears the hotel room tussle and alerts Saul who tracks the call to the location. They arrive too late to save Javadi but find his cellphone, which contains a video of his interrogation of Iranian middleman Nafisi, who admits he spied for the Mossad and lied about Iran’s violation of the nuclear deal. Carrie and Saul show the damning video to the President-elect, and Carrie also reveals to her Dar’s involvement in the staged terrorist bombing. Furious, President-elect Keane now wants to shut Dar down.
A new plot twist develops when technician Max, ever loyal to Carrie, goes undercover and gets a job in the shadowy corporation that’s hiring former intelligence community cyber specialists. In a new development, the shadowy company is run by Bret O’Keefe, the rabid right-wing TV anchor conspiring with Dar against the incoming President. Max fixes a serious glitch in the company’s computers which allows resumption of its sensitive project—managing hundreds of false social media identities spouting right wing propaganda. The project is an interesting twist on current events—Russian “trolls” allegedly used phony online identities to spread conspiracies about Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.
When will Quinn spring into action? He almost does but refrains at the last minute. He escapes his cabin prison as the police investigate reports of shots fired. Ever resourceful, Quinn lights a fire outside a gun store and in the ensuing melee robs an armload of heavy duty weaponry. He confronts Dar in his apartment with the conspiracy, but Dar denies everything. He would never hurt Quinn and confesses “I love you.” This is the second suggestion this season of Dar’s earlier homosexual relationship with Quinn and seems a bit gratuitous. Dar’s actions have proven he is sufficiently evil without this added dollop. Dar’s confessed love, however, may have struck a chord. Instead of shooting Dar, Quinn wallops him and leaves.
For the first time the connection between Dar and the mysterious stranger surfaces. Immediately after Quinn leaves, Dar angrily calls the stranger to advise him Quinn is still alive. Quinn, meanwhile, is sitting in his car listening to the entire conversation.
Maybe Quinn will return to Dar’s place and riddle him with bullets once and for all. Then again, we still have a few more episodes of intrigue left in the season so Dar will have to survive a bit longer.
Nailed, then Failed: Carrie meets with President-elect Keane and her Attorney General nominee who advises her there is no solid evidence to prosecute Dar. The nominee is correct—a videotaped confession of a foreign agent under torture and a few photos of Sekou’s van in a parking lot are hardly the cornerstones for a successful prosecution. The alternate option they propose is to prosecute Dar for lying to Congress about last season’s Russian mole breach, which Carrie will initiate with an affidavit. Unfortunately, the case will also implicate Saul.
This development creates dramatic tension as our heroine has to face conflict between her loyalty to Saul and desire to bring Dar to justice—but it’s unrealistic. Dar has left a trail of telltale breadcrumbs in his complex conspiracy. The FBI is undoubtedly conducting an intense investigation of the terrorist bombing and most certainly pursuing the murderer of one of its own, Agent Conlin. The input from Carrie and Saul connects many of the dots of the conspiracy and provides significant lead information that investigators can pursue to acquire hard evidence. The incoming President and her new attorney general are apparently unaware of the FBI’s considerable investigative capabilities.
Failed it: Defectors like Javadi usually possess information of interest, not only to their hosts but to the host’s allies. In many cases, the host arranges access to the defector for debriefings. The arrangements do not include kidnapping the defector and smuggling him away in a hotel laundry basket for eventual torture and even execution. Dar’s treatment of Javadi certainly won’t encourage further defections of intelligence sources once word leaks out. The Mossad’s actions are also reprehensible, and once the new President is inaugurated, the CIA-Mossad relationship will be in need of some serious repair.
