Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Black Doves; Bosch; Citadel; Criminal Minds; Dark Matter; Dexter: Original Sin; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Way Home; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Homeland 8.11: Kill Saul

My title for the review of Homeland 8.11 - the penultimate episode in the series - almost sounds like something out of combination of Homeland and Killing Eve, which I'll also be watching later tonight, and reviewing here even later tonight or tomorrow. But it's not. It's pretty much the last thing Yevgeny says to Carrie - even if it isn't, it burns out anything he says after - as she receives her marching orders about what she needs to do get back the black (red) box, for the purpose of stopping a nuclear war.

Pretty high stakes. But I don't think Carrie will do it. In fact, I think there's no way she'll do it. So here are some possible ways out of this, for Carrie (because I don't think the series will end with a nuclear war):

Saul kills himself, as a way doing what Yevgeny wants, but getting Carrie off the hook. Nah, I don't think this will happen, either. Saul won't do this, if only to protect his asset, not to mention that I don't think he's the suicidal type, for any reason, however noble.
Yevgeny backs down. Don't think this will happen, either. He's shown himself to be ruthless, almost beyond belief.
Saul figures out what's going on. He and the asset, with Carrie's help, figure out how to get the fight recorder back, despite Yevgeny's opposition. This seems to me to be the most likely. But I'm an incurable optimist.

We'll just have to wait and see what happens next week. In the meantime, I really like Saul cursing his head off at the UN - hats off to Mandy Patinkin for a standout performance tonight - and young Saul put in a pretty fine performance (the character and the actor, whose name I'd mention here but there's no one identified as "Young Saul" in the credits - thanks Showtime - I have seen it suggested that maybe Patinkin was de-aged ala The Irishman - but a little research done by my wife reveals that Ben Savage played this part). Anyway, what I was saying? Yeah, that Saul was outstanding tonight, in his older and younger selves. (My wife did some more research and discovered that Savage played a young Jason Gideon in Criminal Minds back around 2014 - the older character was played by Patinkin.)

Ok, enough about Savage. See you here after next week's series finale.