It has everything that “Homeland” does best — capers, cat- and- mouse chases, the formation of unholy alliances, snappy banter about ideological dilemmas, whiplash- inducing plot twists, and a surfeit of grim- face Saul and quiver- face Carrie. By the end, the bell tolls for a well- loved character. And there’s a touch of “Flash Gordon” in the closing seconds that is forgivable because everything else that comes before is riveting.“Alt. Truth” is sharply written by Patrick Harbinson, razor- sharply directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, and grounded by incredible work (as usual) from stars Claire Danes (Carrie Mathison), Mandy Patinkin (Saul Berenson) and Rupert Friend (Peter Quinn). The look and feel of each sequence changes markedly depending on the primary character. Nothing is more unsettling than the world view of Peter Quinn, who is so far gone in his mentally challenged paranoia that he gut- punches his former lover Astrid, the German agent who crosses the Atlantic to help him out when summoned by CIA honcho Dar Adal.
Adal’s motivations are anything but benevolent, but Astrid doesn’t know that. Quinn doesn’t know much, but he knows enough to suspect Adal is up to no good, and thus he suspects Astrid is, too. The fact that Astrid winds up dying trying to protect Quinn from a sniper attack — most likely ordered by Adal — is another great big hunk of professional guilt that Quinn is going to have to work out some day.
Nina Hoss is so good in the role as Astrid that she makes you realize she was hurt more by Quinn’s angry declaration that “we f——d each other because we were lonely — that doesn’t make us friends” than by the connection of his fist with her stomach. Quinn warned Astrid — and viewers — that he was unpredictable early in the episode in a sequence with dizzying hand- held camera work that telegraphed his unstable sense of being.“My dreams have a realness, and my realness,” he tells Astrid, who prompts him with the right word, “my reality has a dreamnesss. Truth is annihilated more than once in parallel storylines converging around President- elect Elizabeth Keane. The episode opens with a return visit from ultra right- wing firebrand Brett O’Keefe, played to unctuous perfection by Jake Weber. O’Keefe is masterminding a plan to smear the character of Keane’s dead son Andrew — and his mother by association — by branding him a coward during his military service in Iraq. It’s a page from the shameful 2. Swift Boating campaign waged against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
O’Keefe brings former soldiers under Andrew Keane’s command to his TV studio to tell a selective tale of Keane’s actions on the battlefield, complete with carefully edited video footage. After all, this was “the You. Tube war,” as O’Keefe tells Adal when he shows him his handiwork.
O’Keefe’s zeal to tear down the President- elect at all costs — even when the footage clearly shows Andrew running to help save some of his wounded men — is chilling. And it’s all too timely for our real- life moment when partisan vitriol among liberals and conservatives has reached incendiary heights, whether in the extreme sentiments expressed on some signs at anti- Trump rallies or by the Internet- driven ravings of Alex Jones types. Hamish Macbeth Series 2 Episode 2 more. Sounds all too familiar. The assembling of the segment that diet Coke junkie O’Keefe so proudly plays for Adal runs the length of “Alt.
The fourth season of the American television drama series Homeland premiered on October 5, 2014, and concluded on December 21, 2014, on Showtime, consisting of 12. Metacritic TV Reviews, Homeland - Season 1, CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Clare Danes) is not convinced the rescued soldier Nick Brody (Damian Lewis) is not a double. Having escaped the motel shooting where Faisel was killed, Aileen continues her escape by buying a bus ticket to Mexico. The CIA now know that she was the lead and.
Truth,” making it a time bomb that seems likely to go off in next week’s episode. Even Adal seems to flinch when O’Keefe proudly tells him his planned tagline for the segment: “Cowardice — it runs in the family.” Without saying as much, this plot thread underscores how much political perceptions can be manipulated by what we now call “fake news.” The surname choice of O’Keefe for the character hardly seems accidental. In the real world of partisan propaganda wars, self- styled conservative activist James O’Keefe has been unleashing sting videos for years, most recently last month with his Wikileaks- esque release of hours of audio recordings from inside CNN years ago. Like Lennon and Mc. Cartney, Jagger and Richards, Garcia and Weir or Gallagher and Gallagher, these two were simply meant to work together. When they finally compare notes on the strange coincidences surrounding Carrie’s life and the roadblocks to Saul’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear ambitions (or lack thereof), the runway is set for them to kick some institutional ass in the remaining four episodes of the season.“You should’ve come to me,” Saul says, with a pained look, after learning Carrie’s side of the story so far.
Saul is sympathetic but still single- minded in his goal of getting his one- time double agent, Iranian Major General Majid Javadi, in front of the President- elect Keane. On some level it’s clear Saul also knows that the one thing that can lift Carrie out of her puddle of depression is a clearly defined mission. He sees his opening when Carrie expresses her desire to see for herself that Franny is safe. Saul still has the connections to help. As Saul and Carrie sit in the car outside the foster home where Franny is running around, neither of them have to state the obvious: at this point in Carrie’s ever- tortured life, the kid is probably better off.“I swore to myself it would be different here,” Carrie tearfully tells Saul. Ouch again. Saul and Carrie are determined to have Javadi assure Keane that Iran is not pushing a deal- defying covert nuclear program. But Javadi destroys Saul and Carrie’s credibility by changing his story once he’s in front of Keane, telling her to “watch your back” where his country is concerned.
Javadi turns traitor on Saul because he realizes how far out of the CIA power loop his old friend is. Why else would Saul have to enlist Carrie, who doesn’t even work for the agency anymore, to arrange the meeting with Keane? Saul can’t even find a safe house for Javadi to cool his heels while he waits for the U. S. He has to suffer the indignity of bedding down in a homeless shelter in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
When the time comes for Javadi’s covert rendezvous, he’s whisked away not in a standard- issue black SUV but Carrie’s dark- blue Volvo. The car sequence between Carrie and Javadi, played by Shaun Toub, is fantastic.“You?,” he says, leaning his head in the window. Get in.”Javadi pushes every button in Carrie’s worn- out body by going so far as to tell her that he found a nice final resting place for Brody in an Iranian cemetery for martyrs — this after Carrie obliquely references his sacrifice for the cause of getting the Iranian nuclear deal done. Javadi promises to draw her a map — as if she’ll be making a pleasure trip to Tehran soon. He also signals his coming betrayal with one of the many great lines in this script.“I’m worried about him,” Javadi tells Carrie, referring to Saul’s waning clout with the home office.
It’s a very painful moment when we realize we no longer make the weather.” Ouch. Back in the zone of Quinn, the final sniper attack sequence in the upstate New York hideout home that leaves Astrid dead is made more intense by the scream that Quinn lets out when he sees her fall. The burly guy who had been watching Carrie’s Brooklyn townhouse has hunted down Quinn — proving that while he is definitely paranoid, it’s not without reason. On the run, Quinn falls into the lake after taking a second shot, or at least grazing, from Burly Guy’s high- powered guns. He manages to stay underwater and dodge a half- dozen more bullets shot into the lake until Burly Guy takes off.
Yes, that’s a stretch, but by this time, Quinn has earned his reprieve, and so has the audience. My jaw was clenched for most of the hour. Stray thoughts: Got a chuckle out of seeing “Showtime” as a selling point on the marquee of the roadside motel where Quinn whacks the wrong guy over the head with a tire iron. The conk on the head that Saul suffers when Javadi pushes him away after the debacle with Keane seems likely to come back to haunt Saul’s prodigious brain.