#but i can probs book it now once i find a new instructor for this city

[shamblz]

passed my driving theory test at the grand Old age of 24 uwu

[hellyeahomeland]

“The English Teacher”: an HYH recap

This mindfuck of an episode picks up about a day or so after last week’s episode. Carrie is being held in a “subbasement” (a basement in the basement?) at Langley and has started to disassociate a bit. I would too! This reality is fucked!

Anyway, a nice lawyer man comes to retrieve her and does a bit of plot exposition:

Saul hired him to represent Carrie at the preliminary hearing.

Saul arranged for Carrie’s release and also paid the bond.

Saul is letting Carrie stay at his house!

Basically Saul is being the coolest he’s been re: Carrie in like seven years.

There was a car bomb at the Afghan/Pakistani border that killed a whole special ops crew and injured one CIA officer named Jenna Bragg, who was sent back to the US out of an abundance of caution. Oh, and Jenna was called to testify against Carrie at the hearing.

Don’t fucking talk to anyone until the hearing, especially not a specific person who’s meant to testify against you, capiche?

In the West Wing, things are messy as hell. Evil Spawn John Zabel is arguing that Pakistan was behind the suicide bomb and that’s yet another reason to invade. Saul argues it was just Haqqani; after all Pakistan lost some guys too. Zabel is all, “IT’S THEIR FUCKING COUNTRY” and says Linus should resign. Mandy starts swearing at Hugh Saul starts swearing at Zabel, he’s really fucking mad. Linus envisions new ways to get swallowed whole. Maybe dinosaurs will come back from extinction? It’s just a massive screaming match—actually very entertaining—and Saul’s big solution is “backchannel talks,” and Zabel’s brain nearly short circuits at the suggestion of diplomacy instead of military invasion. Hayes just looks like he’d rather be literally any fucking place doing any fucking thing except this.

Carrie is settling into Saul’s very lovely DC home when Saul arrives, worn and weary from his no good very bad day. Although it can’t possibly have been worse than Carrie’s, which is saying something. Carrie makes her first move, pokes around a bit about the Russian asset. Saul flatly denies it, then pours himself a drink (same). He eyes a bookcase full of old, leather-bound red books and then—

It’s 1986 in East Berlin. A young Saul, played by BEN SAVAGE (that’s right, it’s CORY MATTHEWS), who does bear a striking resemblance to Mandy Patinkin, walks into a bookstore and picks up one of those same, old red books from the display. He heads into the back of the store and then a young woman enters and cocks a pistol in his direction. He brings his hands up in surrender.

The next day at Walter Reed Hospital, Carrie defies all good legal advice and pays a visit to Jenna, who’s being discharged.

Jenna: OH MY FUCKING GOD, LOSE MY NUMBER. Carrie: Ok I know you’re furious with me, just know you join a very large and enthusiastic club on that front. But please listen to me. Jenna: Furious? Dude, that special ops crew is all dead. That’s on you. Carrie: It’s horrible, I know. But a suicide bomber did that. Not me, and not you. Jenna: You’re delusional. Carrie: You join another very large and enthusiastic club in that position, but just hear me out! You have nothing to do for the next two minutes while you wait for your Uber. Jenna: Not if I speed walk! Carrie: I found the black box. Do you even care what was on it? Probs not, but I’ll just keep talking. The president’s helicopter was not shot down! It was mechanical failure. Jenna: Hm… that is interesting. So where is it now? Carrie: That hot Russian guy stole it from me. Jenna: OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU ARE A MESS. Carrie: I just need a few days to get it back. I know you’re supposed to testify and I truly don’t give two fucks what you say to them, but if you could just wait a week that would be awesome. Jenna: Well, what’s your plan? Carrie: They offered me a trade. But I can’t really say much more than that. Jenna: What is with you spies and your secrets? Carrie: Ok fine. Saul has an asset high up in the Kremlin. I need to find out who it is. Jenna:  Good fucking luck getting onto a Langley computer. Not that you’d know how to use it. Carrie: [loaded silence] Jenna: OH MY GOD. I’m tattling to Saul.

And Jenna does book it straight to Saul’s office but has to wait a bit because Saul’s on the phone with Tasneem, who is in New York City at the UN and remains maximum pissed. From the time her plane took off to when it landed the US moved more troops right along their border. Saul says some things about how everyone in the US is crazy and it’s  all very ~prescient~ but he thinks if they can just take out Jalal, Hayes and Zabel might back down. Tasneem once again claims they have no idea where he is. Saul asks for a target, any plausible coordinates. Tasneem agrees.

Enter Jenna. She is very prepared to expose just how big of a crazy person Carrie is when Saul is like, “hold up, little lady, it’s all true.” He’s taking this “back up Carrie at all costs” thing to a whole new level. He says that, no matter her mistakes, Carrie never loses sight of the bigger picture. Everything she does is in service of that. The tribunal will attempt to get Jenna to contribute to whatever bullshit charges they come up with, but Jenna needs to do like Carrie: decide what matters. Decide what kind of person she is.

Later, Carrie is at the arraignment, and the judge starts listing off charges. It’s pretty bad. Treason, accessory to murder, etc. She starts to have a tiny panic attack in the courtroom and thankfully holds her vomit for the restroom. There, she’s approached by a prim-looking woman named Charlotte Benson, “a friend of Yevgeny’s.” (Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize her from last season with Ivan.) Carrie’s like, “fuck that guy and fuck you too” but Charlotte is unfazed, hands her her card, and says they have resources. All you have to do is call.

In the simultaneously most and least surprising event of the season, at the tribunal, Jenna decides what type of person she is and it’s the type with a mind of her own. She gets about four seconds into the thing before she bolts. 

At the White House, Zabel reveals that—whadya know!—the Pakistanis did know where Jalal was. At least, they said they do. They just provided coordinates and everyone’s in the situation room waiting to pull the trigger. Saul hurries down and watches as they bomb the entire compound. “Fuck yeah!” Hayes exclaims as everyone applauds, definitely 100% sure they just killed Jalal. Saul makes a beeline for the exit and tells Linus he’s going to New York.

Later, Jenna is waiting for Carrie at Saul’s with a folder full of information. It’s about the exfiltration that Carrie mentioned that went south. The man attended a KGB language school but he spooked and Saul had to get him out quickly. Minefields and shit. He’s been in Pennsylvania in Witness Protection ever since. So he can’t be Saul’s asset but maybe he knows who is.

Jenna: You sure you want to betray Saul? Carrie: I’m 100% sure I want to do the opposite of that, but I have no choice.  Jenna: You’re right, I guess. But I’m done with all this shit. Carrie: “Done”? Never heard of it.   Jenna: I’m through with this, the CIA, all of it. Carrie: Wait, so you finally used your brain and that’s the decision you came to? You don’t have the thrill of having figured something out? You don’t feel a physical and emotional high? Jenna: Uh no?? I feel sick to my stomach about the special ops team. That comes down on me. And whoever this asset is will be tortured too. That’s my big picture. I’ve tried to see it your way, but I can’t. I just don’t believe it anymore. Carrie: Believe what? Jenna/Quinn’s ghost: That anything justifies the damage we do.

Carrie ruminates on that for about 2.4 seconds before she’s on to the next thing, which is a road trip to Pennsylvania. She arrives in her librarian cosplay, hair in a ponytail, eyeglasses, the whole shebang. She’s at the house of Saul’s old asset, the one who’s in Witness Protection. She introduces herself as Heather Frith (great fake name) and says she works as an archiver for the CIA’s Chief Historian, which is a job just fake-sounding enough to probably be real. She wants details about what happened with his exfiltration, details that aren’t in the file. He is suspicious at first, but she calls his bluff, and he takes her out to his garage to relive the story.

He describes Saul then as something of a hero. He had everything in the exfiltration down like clockwork. When one of the mines exploded, he literally carried him over the border. Carrie asks what happened to the rest of the cadets in his class, and he says they were all killed for failing to prevent his defection. She spots a woman in an old photograph then. He didn’t know her name, she just went by Comrade Instructor. She was their English teacher. Then Carrie eyes an old red book. He explains it was their method for arranging a meeting. You move the book from the right to the left side of the display window. “Very Saul. He liked the old ways. Things hidden in plain sight.”

…Which makes for a nice segue to New York City. Saul’s at UN headquarters, where Pakistan has requested a vote against the US for being general dicks and warmongers. Saul then pulls a Quinn in “Q&A” (or maybe a Carrie in “Tin Man Is Down”) and makes a huge scene at the meeting, screaming at the Russian delegation about the flight recorder. An older blonde woman translates for the delegation as he shouts. Resident hottie Scott Ryan escorts Saul out and the Russians have a powwow within earshot of said woman. What was all that about a flight recorder? One of them says Yevgeny Gromov is running an operation and leaves it at that. Cue that woman later in a rare bookstore. She eyes another of those old red leather-bound editions.

We flashback again to 1986. That woman in the bookstore is the woman holding Saul at gunpoint. She is the English teacher at the language school. She is disgusted at what happened to her students—put up against a wall and shot—and wants to take the place of Saul’s asset. Saul feigns ignorance and says she must be confusing him with someone else.

The next five minutes are a masterpiece. Back at Saul’s house in present day, Carrie finally takes an interest in his unique collection of old red books. She flips through them and notes that each has a date on the inside front cover. 11.14.2009. 3.14.95. 3.5.1987. She lines them up in the living room, by year, next to significant events in the ongoing Russian/American intelligence battle. Chernobyl cover-up in 1986. Gorbachev coup in 1989. Aldrich Ames in 1993. Robert Hanssen in 2000. Crimea in 2014. Active measures in the 2016 election. 

In his NY hotel room, Saul has a book delivery for one Professor Rabinow. Send it right up.

Carrie surveys her makeshift timeline. She picks up the next book, Vanity Fair. The subtitle on the inside reads “A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO,” in case the audience had any doubts. She picks up another and notices the Russian spelling of “Moscow” on the inside back cover. She begins flipping through others in the timeline looking for the same tag. No, no, no, yes. She smiles that same knowing, exhilarated smile. It really is like a high. She whittles the Moscow books down to just eight now.

Saul gets his package, which is—whoulda thunk?!—an old red book, and takes it into the bathroom. Carrie examines one of the books, flipping through the pages. She checks the back cover—maybe something hidden in the lining?—but no luck.

Saul flips this new book upside down, brings the covers up in a ‘V’ to expose a space on the spine. In his living room, Carrie does the same thing. There it is: an opening, just small enough for a message. Carrie exhales, eyes wide, at the discovery. Delicately Saul retrieves a small piece of paper and holds it up to the light. He reads: “THE PRICE HAS ALREADY BEEN ASKED. IT’S YEVGENY GROMOV’S PLAY.”

A middle-aged Ben Savage playing a young Saul Berenson walks through the streets of Berlin late at night before he’s accosted by some Soviets requesting his papers. They think he’s CIA. He gets a few punches in (yes, Saul!) before running down a dead-end alley. All of a sudden he hears gunshots, braces for injury. But it’s the men who’ve been shot, and by the English teacher Anna. “Do you trust me now?” she says.

In present day, Saul stands silently in his hotel room, contemplating this new knowledge. Carrie’s lied to him about Yevgeny, that much he knows. But what else has she kept from him?

Carrie also has new knowledge, and she’s taking it straight to Yevgeny. Charlotte Benson drives her to a huge, empty mansion to speak with him.

Charlotte: Empty for two years. Owners are asking too much. Carrie: Hey, just like our show!

Charlotte leads her to a room and computer where Yevgeny is waiting on a video conference. Carrie is not at all pleased to see her Russian boyfriend.

She says that the asset exists. Yevgeny is the opposite of enthusiastic. Saul probably recruited her in East Berlin in 1986. She knows how they communicate. “How?” Yevgeny asks. “That’s not how this works,” Carrie replies, trying to maintain the upper hand for as long as possible. Yevgeny asks for a name. Carrie doesn’t have it but can get it if he provides some KGB records. She needs some stuff from the language school, but Yevgeny explains it’s all lost, burned by the “freedom lovers” after the Berlin Wall came down. They’ve gone down this road before, did Carrie really think she was the first to figure out that connection?

Carrie gets frustrated and nearly walks out of the meeting when Yevgeny reminds her of the stakes at play: America and Pakistan on the literal brink of full-scale war.

Yevgeny: Besides, you haven’t done everything you can. Carrie: Meaning what? Yevgeny: Take out Saul. That will neutralize the asset. Carrie: Saul has a legacy plan. If he goes, he has a plan to pass the asset onto someone else. Yevgeny: Yes, exactly. And that someone else is … Carrie: [mind blown] Yevgeny: …you. Carrie: You… you played me. You knew it would come to this. How long have you been planning this? Do you derive extra special pleasure from fucking with me?  Yevgeny: I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but like you said, you tried everything.

He tells her to do it—to kill Saul. Her eyes fill with tears as she shuts the computer and walks out. The lights go black behind her.