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" What happens: Season two of Homeland (the first twenty minutes of which you can watch on Huffington Post now) begins with a moment that would have been unimaginable in season one: Claire Danes&amp;#039;s Carrie Mathison is gardening. Then she further shocks by taking her prescribed medications and looks at her reflection framed by a sign that reads BREATHE. But give Carrie all the lithium you want; she&amp;#039;s still the same obsessive, bipolar Middle Eastern terrorism expert, albeit one who&amp;#039;s a little more attuned to domestic tasks. Saul, on the other hand, is right in the action. Now that his wife has dumped him and absconded for India, he&amp;#039;s free to eat peanut butter with rulers and track down terrorists via codes written with invisible ink on money. He ventures into the riots in Beirut to meet an unreliable informant. Hey, someone at the CIA has to fill the wildly reckless and impulsive void left by Carrie. (Saul may not be dark enough to pull off Lebanese, but you&amp;#039;d think he&amp;#039;d try to blend in by dressing in something other than cat-ranch-era Hemingway.) Meanwhile, Brody is at the Capitol with his new best friend, the vice president, who asks Brody if he&amp;#039;d like to be his running mate in the next presidential election. Brody manages a &amp;quot;hell yes&amp;quot; before mentally drafting an excited text message to his terrorist boss, Abu Nazir. Then the veep says something more prescient than he realizes: &amp;quot;You were a prisoner a long time. Too long. You&amp;#039;re damaged goods.&amp;quot; Brody, like a husband caught philandering in the middle of the night: &amp;quot;You really want me to respond to that?&amp;quot; When he gets home, Brody downplays the news to his wife, who Lady Macbeths him: &amp;quot;My God, Brody, vice president of the United States...&amp;quot;  Less auspiciously, Carrie is visited at the adult-education class where she&amp;#039;s teaching English by mole suspect Agent Galvez, who tells her Estes wants to see her. Carrie: &amp;quot;Tell him to fuck off.&amp;quot; Carrie reconnects with Saul, who wants her to go see Estes, who is parked in front of her sister&amp;#039;s house. Carrie&amp;#039;s hardware starts to malfunction: &amp;quot;Tonight is Thursday. I cook dinner for the family on Thursdays. I&amp;#039;m making vegetable lasagna with vegetables I picked this morning from the garden.&amp;quot; Estes comes up to the porch and shows Carrie a photo of Saul&amp;#039;s informant. Of course Carrie knows who it is: Fatima Ali, wife of a Hezbollah district commander, whom Carrie recruited by plying her with Julia Roberts movies. According to Estes, Ali came to Saul with information about an American attack but refuses to speak to anybody but Carrie. Which means our woman is back in the game. But what&amp;#039;s up with the manic-episode jazz music in the background? Can Carrie resist the atonal siren song? What it means: These first twenty minutes feel more like a pilot than a season-two premiere, which is appropriate, since the central question of the first season \u2014 Is Brody a terrorist? \u2014 has been answered. For the series to thrill like it did last season, it needs to take a clue from The Killing (we know, there aren&amp;#039;t many) and find new plot lines instead of torturing last season&amp;#039;s. The fragile post-ECT Carrie will likely fly back into Brody&amp;#039;s orbit. Brody has to be ambivalent in his new role \u2014 his power is heady, but boss Nazir will eventually use it in a way that Brody finally can&amp;#039;t justify by invoking Issa&amp;#039;s name. And, of course, we can only assume that Carrie and Brody&amp;#039;s newfound self-control won&amp;#039;t preclude their bedroom activities. The clip in the &amp;quot;last season on Homeland&amp;quot; montage in which Brody tells Carrie, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t be with [my wife], but I can with you,&amp;quot; certain bodes well. We eagerly await finding out how they reunite, and whether they&amp;#039;ll destroy each other once they do. Homeland returns to Showtime on Sunday, September 30. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a15736/homeland-season-2-preview-12572558/?click=news>