Homeland, "About a Boy" Review: Playing a Strange Game

Homeland S04E05: "About a Boy"

After turning in one of the more cringeworthy scenes in recent memory last week, Homeland tried to get back to the business at hand in "About a Boy." Somewhat unfortunately, said "business" included Carrie's continued efforts to emotionally and sexually manipulate Aayan, but at least there was a sense by the end of the episode that Carrie's intense focus on the young Pakistani asset was causing real harm to the other members of the team. So, progress? Maybe. Probably not.

There's not much use in further critiquing the writers' choice to have Carrie seduce Aayan. I understand why they went this route, just as I understand what a few of you pointed out last week (as if we're all espionage experts, myself included): It does make sense as a way for Carrie to get closer to Aayan. I still find it frustrating, though, mostly because of what it says about Carrie's in-the-moment decision-making, and because Homeland likes to that as a crutch for "big" twists and the like. But, all things considered, "About a Boy" did an okay job of moving beyond the creep factor of the first seduction and illustrating how, exactly, Carrie can use her body and her sexuality to pull information out of Aayan. If, like me, you were hoping that Homeland would provide a decent-enough justification for Carrie's behavior, "About a Boy" may've delivered it by spending quite a bit of time on Carrie walking Aayan through the awkward morning after and quelling his fears over what sex means for his religious beliefs, then later building their relationship through more pronounced emotional openness. In those moments, Carrie did a pretty darn good job of "working" Aayan back from the precipice of leaving the safe house—so much so that, by the end of the episode, he was willing to admit that his uncle is, in fact, alive.

There were also a couple of very brief moments between Carrie and Aayan where it almost seemed like Carrie wasn't just acting, particularly when she cried mid-coitus. I'm certain that the "You just make me happy" line was a total ploy, but I'm not so sure that talking through some of her issues with the baby and Brody didn't provide a kind of release for Carrie. The whole thing is icky and a little dumb, but I'm apparently more intrigued by what's happening between Carrie and Aayan that I let on last week. Good news/bad news is that this "romance" doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon, so yay? Let's hear from those Cayan shippers out there!

The other thing that worked re: Carrie and Aayan was that the rest of Carrie's team—including Saul, who will evidently never get on that damn plane back to the United States—felt some of the crappy consequences of Carrie's 48-hour wooing session. Quinn and Fara established a new observation site across the street from the spot where Fara saw Aayan's uncle and needed Carrie's help chasing him down, with a drone apparently, but couldn't reach her. Meanwhile, Saul stumbled into the ISI goon Farhad Ghazi at the airport, attempted to track him for an extended period of time, and got too close once he couldn't get ahold of Carrie either. While Quinn and Fara simply lost a major lead, Saul was knocked out, wheeled out of the airport, and thrown into the trunk of car. Now he's perhaps on his way to a secret ISI black site, or perhaps to somewhere much worse.

These kinds of follow-up stories went a long way in establishing how we as viewers are supposed to feel about Carrie's seduction ritual. By the end of "About a Boy," it was clear: She's spending too much time with Aayan, to the point where she's ignoring everything else, and that's bad form. This being Homeland, Quinn's frustrations with Carrie's inability to answer the phone seemed to stem more from some dumb jealousy than from professional annoyance, but at least he made a clear attempt to call her out on her crap. Carrie dragged Fara into a relatively high-stakes operation when the latter wasn't exactly ready for it, just as she begged Quinn to come out of psychological damage-induced quasi-retirement to join her in Islamabad. And within what, four days, she's shacking up with the asset, ignoring important calls, and absolutely not fulfilling any of her assigned station chief duties? Girl, that's pretty rough.

Nevertheless, while Homeland wanted us to note the unfortunate byproducts of Carrie's choices, in doing so, it only reinforced how sloppy she is as an agent, emphasizing the fact that—and here I go again so bear with me—she's probably not qualified to do this job at all. Consider that really odd, exposition-dump scene midway through the episode, with the two ISI agents discussing how confused they were by some of the things Carrie and Saul were doing: While I don't think it was intended to serve as weird meta-commentary on the show's writing, it definitely hit those buttons for me, because Carrie and Saul never know what they're doing until it's some out-of-nowhere master plan gone-wrong.

With so much of the focus on Carrie and Aayan, "About a Boy" felt like a transitional episode of sorts. Things certainly happened, but Homeland is still moving pieces into place for a much bigger, and likely bloodier, story in the back half of the season. That's not a bad thing, especially for a show that spent much of its first two seasons with a foot on the gas and its third stuck in neutral for nearly the entire 12 hours. To keep the half-baked metaphor going, Season 4 feels more like a methodical acceleration, with so many more characters entering the mix and a much larger array of stories being established before it all goes to hell.

For example, the drama between Ambassador Boyd and her traitorous husband still has a long way to go, although Mr. Boyd spent this episode snooping around Carrie's apartment and taking photos of her medicine bottles, so that's probably going to result in some kind of ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW nonsense. The ISI agents didn't have as much to do, but they're clearly monitoring everything that Carrie's team does, which suggests that a significant international incident could be right around the corner.

As long as Homeland continues to show us some of the repercussions of Carrie's odd decisions and tightens the connections between what is now a cast of nearly a dozen players, there could be something very good here. We've still got a long way to go, after all.

NOTES

– Do you guys even think Saul's wife remembers that he's gone? She's surely not sitting around saying, "Huh, I could've sworn he told me he was going to leave three days ago."

– No Lockhart again this week. What about the senate committee or whatever nonsense he was chattering about a few weeks ago? Why don't we get to see that?

– Quinn and Fara have a good rapport. She's terrified of parts of the job; he's seen everything. It's a moderately fun teacher-student thing. Or is it just another possible romance?! Deep down, Homeland is totally a rom-com you guys.

– Not a big shocker here, but Aayan was indeed stealing the medication for his ailing uncle. It would be wild if he was playing Carrie this entire time wouldn't it?