Here’s the good news: the third-season premiere “Homeland” delivers a strong episode that repairs much of the damage done last season to this excellent show, when it went off the rails and Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) became Jack Bauer in a pantsuit.
After the bombing at Langley, which killed 219 Americans, including CIA boss David Estes (David Harewood) and the vice president’s widow (Talia Balsam), acting CIA director Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) and Carrie have a lot of ’splaining to do. Like, how can this agency still protect the country when it can’t even protect itself?
Odds are that Carrie’s answers at Congressional select committee investigating the disaster will be unsatisfactory.
Joining the cast this year is Pulitzer prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts, as the draconian Sen. Andrew Lockhart. After hearing Carrie’s lame denial of the CIA’s cozy’s relationship with her terrorist boyfriend, AWOL Congressman Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), Letts fries her ass: “Just what is it you’re smoking, Miss Mathison?”
While the CIA is assigned the task of finding Brody, who does not appear in the first two episodes, “Homeland” does not forget his traumatized family, in particular his daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor), who took the news of her father’s betrayal the worst.
Nor does the show forget about Carrie’s worried family. As Carrie’s father, veteran character actor James Rebhorn delivers in a scene where confronts his daughter about not taking her meds. It’s a measure of the depth of Carrie’s self-delusion that she thinks meditation and exercise will take the place of Lithium.
This scene underscores a question facing “Homeland” as the series goes forward. With Carrie’s credibility seriously damaged in the eyes of the government, how can she keep her job?
In the meantime, there are new terrorists to hunt. Agent Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) is on the case of one nicknamed The Magician. Emmy nominee Friend is now a series regular and can be counted to do some heavy lifting in the espionage scenes as when he scales the wall of The Magician’s compound and gets the CIA’s mission accomplished in under 10 minutes — with a catch.
In balancing action with character development, “Homeland” offers something for everyone. The performances, as usual, are excellent. Two-time Emmy winner Danes captures all of Carrie’s unswerving convictions and mood swings. Patinkin telegraphs Saul’s quiet dread that he’s not the manager the CIA needs with effective understatement. And relative newcomer F. Murray Abraham keeps everyone guessing as to his true intent as Saul’s rival, Dar Adal,
And when “Homeland”’s loyal fans finish watching Episode 1, they’ll all be asking: Where’s Brody?