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"What&amp;#039;s in a name? Unlike some of its cable drama contemporaries, Homeland isn&amp;#039;t a show whose titles tend to benefit from much analysis; when they do try to get clever, as with this season&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Uh\u2026 Oh\u2026 Ah\u2026&amp;#039; you&amp;#039;re generally left wishing they hadn&amp;#039;t. But &amp;#039;Gerontion&amp;#039; is a title that actually elucidates this muted, contemplative episode, giving more weight to the characters&amp;#039; status quo.  Gerontion isn&amp;#039;t technically a word, but a reference to a TS Eliot poem of the same name, which centres on an aging man&amp;#039;s fragmented view of post-World War I Europe. Reading the full text, it&amp;#039;s easy to see the parallels between its tone of weary bewilderment and Quinn&amp;#039;s disillusionment with the CIA, or Saul&amp;#039;s bitter nostalgia for his early days with Mira, Javadi and Fariba in Tehran.   The aftermath of Quinn accidentally killing that child in the season premiere hasn&amp;#039;t been explored heavily, which is to the writers&amp;#039; credit - hand-wringing would have felt out of character for him. But it&amp;#039;s clearly been eating away at him in a smaller, deeper way, and while his confessing to Javadi&amp;#039;s brutal murders was a sad and shocking moment, it might have felt more like absolution to him. What he&amp;#039;s really confessing to is the murder he did commit in the name of national security, hence his touching eagerness to throw himself under the bus in the name of keeping Saul&amp;#039;s Javadi plan alive.  &amp;quot;Have you ever done anything that makes things worse?&amp;quot; is a question that Quinn&amp;#039;s been asking himself long before the cop voiced it, and while his &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m done&amp;quot; speech to Carrie would have had more weight if he hadn&amp;#039;t given the same one to Saul in episode two, he&amp;#039;s arguably become the most morally interesting character on the CIA side. And let&amp;#039;s not forget that Carrie was half-ready to be done with the CIA herself in season two&amp;#039;s finale.  But while Quinn&amp;#039;s losing his faith in the CIA&amp;#039;s integrity, Saul and Dar Adal are fighting to keep what&amp;#039;s left of it. We mentioned last week that it was strange to see an actor as notable as F Murray Abraham in such a seemingly thankless role, but seeing Dar Adal back in cahoots with Saul made him immediately more interesting. He&amp;#039;s cut his teeth on what Lockhart calls &amp;quot;the old games&amp;quot;, and unlike Lockhart he&amp;#039;s more interested in getting the very best intelligence possible than in scoring political points. Because although you can&amp;#039;t entirely blame Lockhart for his head-in-hands response to Saul basically telling him he&amp;#039;d been played for a fool, his only agenda here was his own reputation. Executing Javadi would be great PR for the CIA because it would &amp;quot;give the American people closure&amp;quot; after the Langley bombing, which is what Lockhart&amp;#039;s been all about from the start. But the last thing the director of the CIA needs to be focusing on is the short term.  So, Saul and Dar Adal locked Lockhart in a room and flipped the one-way blinds on him. And it was awesome. Tracy Letts is doing a fantastic job of making Lockhart a much more compelling &amp;#039;love to hate&amp;#039; character than Estes ever was \u2013 his note-perfect delivery of &amp;quot;What the f**k!&amp;quot; really made that scene. So, the wry celebratory toast told us that Saul is now acting director of the CIA for just ten more days. We&amp;#039;re guessing that the rest of the season is going to take place within that period, with the dawn of Lockhart&amp;#039;s stint as director being the ticking time bomb to lend everything more urgency.  Now Carrie knows that the man who built the bomb and framed Brody is still in the country, she&amp;#039;s going to be like a dog with a bone. The question is whether Javadi was telling her the truth, or whether perhaps he wanted to send her on a wild goose chase to distract her from something bigger, and knew that invoking Brody&amp;#039;s innocence was the way to do it.  For the moment, there&amp;#039;s no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt - since he could be facing a public hanging in his own country, it wouldn&amp;#039;t seem smart for him to jeopardise his relationship with the CIA now that they have a use for him.  Shaun Toub is just so fascinating to watch in this role that we sort of don&amp;#039;t want Javadi to go back to Iran just yet. The ambiguity-laced car scene between Javadi and Carrie could easily have become tiresome, but because the characters feel so evenly matched it was pretty riveting - she sees his manipulation for exactly what it is, but at the same time he&amp;#039;s basing everything he says in emotional truths that she can&amp;#039;t deny. She does feel betrayed by Saul, by his leaving her in the hospital for so long, by his nonchalance when she was kidnapped, and maybe by his doubts regarding Brody&amp;#039;s innocence.   Did Brody know the blast was coming at Walden&amp;#039;s memorial? Javadi brought this question up thinking that it would unsettle Carrie, but what he doesn&amp;#039;t know is that it was Carrie who gave Brody the &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s get out of here&amp;quot; head nod that saved both of them from getting blown up in that room. Brody was just following her lead, which suggests that he really didn&amp;#039;t know anything about the bombing.  The other question is why Javadi seemed so set on turning Carrie against Saul and Brody, doing his best to sow the seeds of doubt in her mind about both men. Is he just trying to destabilise her because he&amp;#039;s a sociopath and that&amp;#039;s what he does, or does he have an endgame? Other thoughts: - So, Mira&amp;#039;s lover. He&amp;#039;s a plant, right? Digging for information on Saul or potentially planning to use Mira against him? There&amp;#039;s too much attention being placed on their affair for it not to be going somewhere. Then again, we thought that about both of Dana&amp;#039;s boyfriends, and look what happened there? That&amp;#039;s right: nothing. Ever. At all. - Of course there&amp;#039;s a police captain in Bethesda who owes Carrie. Just like there&amp;#039;s a lowlife mercenary in Caracas who owes her enough to turn down a $10 million reward for Brody. Did she just spend a year doing strategic favours for potentially useful people and building up a little black book of debts? - &amp;quot;I thought your friend was going to take care of this.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, me too, he boned me!&amp;quot; We can&amp;#039;t be the only ones who sniggered. Not sure that means what you think it means, Carrie. - It&amp;#039;s been a while since Homeland felt really contemporary, in terms of having a finger on the pulse of modern politics or surveillance culture, but the police chief warning Carrie that Quinn&amp;#039;s photo could end up on WikiLeaks was a nice exception. - The obligatory morning sickness scene with Carrie felt a little... obligatory, although if we&amp;#039;re being fair, even a non-pregnant person might struggle to keep their breakfast down at that grisly crime scene. - Did we know that Dar Adal was the one who originally recruited Quinn? We knew there was a connection, since it was following Quinn&amp;#039;s trail that led Saul to Dar Adal last season, but that&amp;#039;s an interesting new wrinkle to the CIA dynamics. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/homeland/review/a531516/homeland-recap-tensions-rise-at-the-cia-in-gerontion/>