HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 11 – KRIEG NICHT LIEB

In last week’s episode, the US decided to pull out its entire embassy out of Pakistan and so the rest of the embassy staff and ambassador heads home leaving Carrie behind to search for Quinn who is intent on finding and killing Haqqani by himself. The episode starts with Carrie talking with Assar Khan and it seems obvious that the friendship they once shared is now gone due to what recently transpired between their two countries. Assar Khasn tells Carrie that Quinn is wanted for burning down a bazaar and abducting a Pakistani ISI officer. He admits he is under pressure to hunt down Quinn but Carrie pleads to let her find him and get him out of Islamabad.

Carrie returns to the embassy to find everything packed up and gone, well, except for Carrie’s team that she needs to still find Quinn, which includes Max who helps her in getting back the systems needed to find him. Carrie tells the remaining team that they need to all go back safely home and that includes Peter Quinn who they need to stop before he kills himself looking for Haqqani. Max argues letting Quinn do his mission and they should all just support him but Carrie turns him down. Next, Quinn is shown entering a gated compound into an apartment of a German girl who seemed to be a rather close friend of his. The girl tells her that he is now on the wanted list but Quinn refuses to stand down and seeks her help instead on the phones he found on Haqqani’s men.

While Max heads off someplace to a hidden safe, Carrie catches him with some cash and a passport that are obviously intended for Quinn. Max is angry with Carrie for letting Fara die and now wants Carrie to commit to kill Haqqani as it would in some way avenge Fara’s death. But Carrie insists that she can’t do that...she can’t bear to lose anyone else. Carrie manages to track down Quinn (maybe Max squealed) and heads over to the unknown woman’s apartment where Quinn was currently taking a shower. The woman finds Carrie at her door but she reveals that she hasn’t heard from him in many months. Carrie leaves her contact number but she knows that he is there. The German girl found the information he was looking for and sets out to find the location of the phones.

He asks to borrow the German girl’s car and on his way there, he finds Carrie waiting for him. Carrie tries her best to dissuade Quinn telling him it was a suicide mission and that there was a shoot to kill order on his head. But Quinn refuses to heed Carrie and just return home as he knew it was Carrie who convinced him to go to Islamabad and then he saw the entire station almost wiped out. Quinn proceeds to disarm and fire at the two men Carrie had with her and even chokes Carrie to back off then leaves. Quinn proceeds to stakeout Haqqani’s location, studying how best to enter the place. He photographs the ground area and the returns to the German girl’s apartment.

Back at the embassy, Carrie receives an emergency call from her sister and when she calls her back she finds out that their father died last night, in his sleep. Carrie remains unable to show emotion, as always and hangs up on her sister and tells her she will just call back. Carrie goes to the control room and Max tells her he was sorry, at first Carrie tried to act cool and tells him to find out what he can on the German woman that Quinn visited then suddenly she breaks down and Max goes over to give her a hug. Quinn is next shown back at the German girl’s apartment, making a bomb. The German girl arrives home to tell Quinn that Carrie called probably to share the sad news about her dad but Quinn chose to believe that she just wants to dissuade him on his plans.

The next day, at the embassy, Carrie gets a call from Lockhart and he offered his condolences on her father’s death. He also asked about what more had been happening out there in Pakistan since he heard that the White House had been shopping for his replacement and so he was more or less out of the loop. But Carrie tells him she had not heard anything but will do so when she does. Then, Aayan’s girlfriend is shown and she receives photographs of Aayan’s death in her mailbox. It was apparently from Quinn who meets up with her in an empty hospital room. At first she refuses to believe that Aayan is dead but Quinn convinces her that they need to help each other in order to get the bad guy that killed Quinn, his uncle Haqqani.

Carrie visits Quinn’s German friend again and it’s clear that Carrie did her research this time and berates her for helping Quinn. The woman agrees to talk with Carrie and Carrie appeals to her to help stop Quinn as this clearly is a suicide mission. She tried to ask how he intends to kill Haqqani but the German girl lied and said she did not know. Then a knock on the door signalled the arrival of one of Carrie’s men who had done a sweep of the German girl’s car that revealed a glove clueing in Carrie on the fact that Quinn was making a bomb for a possible suicide mission. Quinn is shown next still making the bomb in an undisclosed place and placing it inside a steel tube. Then he gets up to leave and attaches a huge picture of a smiling Aayan to the steel tube.

Carrie then gets a call from Max informing her that drone videos of Aayan’s death had been leaked to the internet. Max tracks the leak to the medical school that Aayan went to and Carrie realizes that this is all of Quinn’s doing, to flush Haqqani out because he can’t get inside. Then they see a flash message calling for support for Aayan thru a demonstration and Carrie immediately proceeds to the area as she knows that this protest was also orchestrated by Quinn for Aayan to get to Haqqani. Aasar Khan and Tasneem meanwhile make plans to move Haqqani to a safer area and keep watch on the demonstration. Tasneem calls Aasar Khan aside after the meeting with military personnel to hold him personally responsible if something bad happens to Haqqani.

At the demonstration, Aayan’s friends start swelling up the streets with protesters and Quinn is there holding his Aayan placard (with the bomb). He cuts through the crowd and throws his bomb underneath the grate outside Haqqani’s place. He covers the grate with Aayan’s image and then tells Kiran that she should already leave. Carrie meanwhile joins the crowd of protesters in search of Quinn not knowing that he just left. She sees Aasar Khan and hides behind a poster so he would not see her. Quinn then relocates to a safer place and watches Haqqani’s men as they make plans to move him out. Quinn sees Carrie and calls her to get out but Carrie knows that she must not let him set the bomb off for they’ll know it was Quinn and it would lead to his death.

Quinn sees Haqqani’s vehicle coming out of the compound but had no choice to let his plan go to waste. Carrie sees Haqqani come out the roof of the vehicle and she was overcome with rage seeing him waving there and so she moves to shoot him. But just as she was about to pull the trigger, Aasar Khan grabs her from behind and yanks her arm shouting at her not to shoot Haqqani not because he doesn’t want him dead but because of the man inside the van with Haqqani – Dar Adal, the CIA black ops director. OMG...WTF is he doing there???

*** photo credits from Showtime ***

NEW PAINT FOR THE HOUSE

It’s the second Christmas that we spent here at our new house at BP and I guess it is still not fully finished the way we wanted it ...[well, money problems have caused our plans to go awry]. But this time, I told the hubby that I wanted the house to look good in the pictures we shall be posting and so I told him to start painting the walls already. Before the long weekend holiday, the hubby and I shopped for some beige paint at the local hardware and he started painting the walls a nice beige hue...not so bright as to hurt the eyes but just the right cool tint that I wanted. Next we planned to paint the accents a dark mahogany brown so that the beige paint would truly pop out. At least even if we had not really done any major renovations this year, the house would look pleasing to the eye, at least in pictures.

HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 10 – 13 HOURS IN ISLAMABAD

I was excited to immediately watch this episode since I wanted to find out already if Carrie and Saul survived or if Haqqani succeeds in his attack on the embassy...and I am glad to see Carrie and Saul in the beginning badly bruised but very much alive. It seems Redmond got killed though as he was stabbed in the neck with a piece of glass. The ambassador, meanwhile, immediately tells Quinn her theory that the ISI intends to attack the embassy and the attack on Carrie and Saul was just a decoy to draw the marines out and leave the embassy unguarded. She tells Quinn they know about the underground tunnel which had him worried and so he orders an embassy lockdown and recalled the marines back to the embassy. But before they can manage to return to the embassy, the convoy is once again riddled with bullets from snipers positioned atop buildings and so they all take cover and try to return fire. Carrie decides to call Aasar Khan for help and as he was about to make the call, Tasneem stops him and makes him wait for ten minutes to make the call as she says it was time to make the American’s have a dose of their own medicine. It was then that Aasar Khan finally realized that Tasneem was in cahoots with Haqqani all along.

Quinn calls Lockhart who orders the embassy staff to destroy all documents and hard drives as there is an imminent threat to the embassy. As the embassy staff hurries to do as they’re told, Lockhart receives the embassy’s crown jewels – the list of all assets that Sandy had maintained in Pakistan all these years and proceeds to the embassy’s vault. But Haqqani and his men succeed in entering thru the tunnel and starts killing embassy staff and Lockhart barely escapes. Haqqani sees the safe empty and makes the remaining embassy members kneel in front of him to make them talk, including Max and Fara. He makes a beeline for Fara asking her where the list is and when she refuses to answer, he insults her for being a Muslim who kills other Muslims. Meanwhile, Quinn and another marine are in the basement and they overhear that Haqqani is proceeding to the vault where Lockhart and the ‘list’ is. The two start killing the rest of Haqqani’s men and proceed to the vault.

Meanwhile, back at Carrie’s convoy, the snipers have not let up so Carrie is given a gun be a marine to help them fight back but it seems she is not a good shot. Carrie is worried why the soldiers that Khan promised had still not yet arrived. Haqqani arrives at the vault and the embassy staffs (including Ambassador Martha and Lockhart) see him coming with a handful of embassy members in tow. Haqqani starts executing the hostages unless they open the door. Three more die and when they get to Fara who they take at knifepoint, Lockhart agrees to come out. Against the ambassador’s orders, Lockhart tries to save Fara but when he has givent he documents, Haqqani proceeds to kill her anyway. Quinn and the other marine start shooting the moment they see Fara fall. They manage to injure most of his men, including Haqqani himself but they were able to escape by setting off a bomb making it impossible for Quinn to follow. So Quinn returns to the vault and sees the other embassy members still in shock with a weeping Max holding Fara.

The backup finally arrives to take Carrie and Saul back to the embassy. Upon arrival, they see the flag that Haqqani placed in front and knew at once that the embassy had been infiltrated. Four hours later, the ambassador and Lockhart sit and watch news of the embassy attack that left around 40 Americans dead. A call comes in from the White House and they are ordered to evacuate the embassy. Max and Carrie sit next to the bodies and Max chastises Carrie for always being mean to Fara but Carrie defends that she was just training her to be strong. In the end, she relents and agreed that she wished she had treated Fara better. Lockhart arrives to tell Carrie about the order from the White House to take U.S. presence out of Pakistan and end diplomatic relations. Lockhart tells Carrie that they're being evacuated the next morning but Carrie insists that she needs to stay behind to make sure all of their assets are safe. Lockhart admits that it was his fault for giving over the list but Carrie semi-consoles him by saying she's unsure of what she would have done too. Meanwhile the ambassador visits Dennis in his cell and she tells him that they’re returning to the US tomorrow. She also informs him that he will be charged with treason while her fate remains unclear. Dennis says he was sorry as everything was his fault for giving information to the enemy. Dennis asks for her belt in order to kill himself but at first Martha refuses to agree helping to kill him. Dennis it is the only way to save Martha’s career and spare their son, Toby from the embarrassment of knowing his father was a traitor. The ambassador relents but instead of giving her own belt, she gets Dennis’ belt from the locker and tossed it toward him before leaving.

Quinn asks Saul where he thinks Haqqani may be heading but Saul is unsure of where he was held hostage. Quinn is frustrated as Saul can’t seem to remember anything and he breaks down crying. Carrie intervenes to tell Quinn to give Saul a break as they are being pulled out of Pakistan. But Quinn doesn’t want to give up and just walk away so he decided to search the dead bodies of Haqqani’s men for clues. Carrie talks to Saul and he feels guilty for those who died but Carrie believes that Haqqani had planned this from the start that’s why he killed Sandy, even way before Saul arrived.

Carrie makes a heartbreaking call to Fara’s father to tell him of his daughter’s death. While everyone is still in a state of shock over what happened, Quinn leaves the embassy after retrieving a cellphone from one of Haqqani’s men. He knows he is being followed so he circles around and confronts the guys following him and forced them to take him to Haqqani. Upon arrival, he knocks the guy out and gets a second cellphone from him. The next day, everyone is being evacuated from the embassy and Carrie informs Lockhart that Quinn is missing. She insists on staying behind for five days to find Quinn and Lockhart reluctantly allows her. The ambassador learns that Dennis didn’t kill himself and approaches her husband with the look of total disgust for knowing he was such a coward. Carrie ushers Saul into the car and says she’s staying to find Quinn. He wishes her luck and tells her to be careful. As the cars pull away, fear and uncertainty overtakes her...I just wish she finds Quinn.

*** photo credits from Showtime ***

HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 9 – THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON

After last week's dramatic and chair-gripping episode that almost killed Saul, we see a more submissive CIA giving in to Haqqani's demands for a prison trade. Five imprisoned commanders of Haqqani's team are being given over in exchange for Saul and Carrie believes that this is just a bonus since Haqqani had something else planned. But, Lockhart highly doubts the veracity of Carrie’s theories as well as Aasar Khan's claims that Dennis Boyd is the embassy leak. Redmond invites Dennis to his office and talks to him about Sandy – how he passed on illegal information and how the information was traced back to Martha's computer. He asks Dennis gently to come clean with it, but Dennis refuses to take the bait. I guess he knew their evidence is weak so he doesn’t admit to it but Carrie is determined to take things to the next level and make Dennis sweat.

Saul is shown badly bruised after a pretty bad beating from his escape attempt. Then a young woman comes in to clean Saul up and take him somewhere in the back of a van. Meanwhile, the prisoners too are being readied for the prison exchange. Carrie ‘invites’ Dennis once again for another ‘interrogation’ and this time she does not go all soft on him but demands from him the ISI counterpart who ran him and Sandy. Carrie also told him that she almost died when he switched her meds but it seems Dennis doesn’t care about what he had done. Carrie decided to lock him in the interrogation room overnight. Saul is then dragged into a room equipped with bright lights and a camera, then while he is bound and gagged, Haqqani makes a video message about his plans when he's reunited with his once-imprisoned comrades. He talks about "taking back" Kabul and his men all cheer behind him.

Carrie then gets a call from Saul's wife, Mira asking Carrie not to let Saul die, to bring him home safe and Carrie advised her not to worry as she would be running the exchange. Before she left, Carrie shows Dennis the video of Sandy being beaten, to make him break. Dennis looks tired but insists that he can't say what he doesn't know. Carrie threatened to torture or even kill him if he continues to refuse to talk when suddenly the ambassador enters, questions the fact that Carrie is questioning her husband and tells her that she is ‘finished’. Inside the ambassador's office, Martha and Dennis discuss what happened. Martha is fuming at Carrie and asks Dennis what it was about and he admitted being accused of spying but denied it. Then, she leaves Dennis and surprisingly enters a room with Carrie and Lockhart, sits down and very calmly tells them that Dennis didn't say anything. It seems she'd been working with them the whole time and the whole explosion in the interrogation room was part of their plan...way to go Martha! At least you have seen thru Dennis and do not condone his antics anymore.

Carrie leaves for the exchange with Saul and insist on Quinn staying on at the embassy since she feels that "there's something else going on." Clearly, Carrie’s sixth sense is tingling. She wants Quinn as her extra ‘eye up above’ in case they decide to kill Saul. Dennis tries to leave the ambassador’s house and was prevented by the embassy guards. Martha arrives and asks that she be presented with his bag and sees clothes, passport and money, obviously jumping ship. Martha asks him to stop lying and commands that he be locked up. Carrie and Redmond meet with the ISI to discuss the exchange with Saul, and Tasneem asks where Lockhart was. Mid-briefing, Carrie feigns a call from Lockhart but instead calls Aasar Khan from across the room. Carrie asks Aasar Khan what's going to happen during the exchange and it seems he wasn’t in on the planning, only Tasneem. Saul boards a van with a young boy with a bomb vest and the van heads to the exchange.

The exchange begins with Redmond and Carrie running everything on the embassy's side while in the ISI corner, Tasneem has taken the reigns. Quinn reports to Carrie that everything is clear. The ISI verifies the prisoners and Saul is then removed from the van to be shown to Carrie and Redmond. Carrie insists that the van leave before they start walking the prisoners toward the ISI members. The van drives away but leaves the boy and Carrie flips out when she sees the vest and stops the prisoners from leaving. But Saul, exasperated and exhausted, just sits down and refuses to move. He wants to die so that the Taliban doesn't reclaim the prisoners so Carrie offers to approach Saul to talk sense into him. Carrie and Saul share an emotional moment and eventually, Saul relents and they walk off together. The prisoners are released to ISI and the exchange is complete.

The ambassador goes to visit Dennis and tells him that the prisoner swap for Saul was successful. Then she rhetorically asked Dennis how their marriage fully deteriorated and it infuriates Martha most that even now, when everything is past the point of being up in flames, Dennis can still not take responsibility for his actions. Meanwhile, Redmond, Carrie and Saul sit silently in the car and gets a call from Mira but as he was about to get the phone, there's a massive explosion. Their convoy had been hit and several seconds later, there is another explosion. Lockhart deploys all the Marines to the explosion site and one Marine goes down to the cell to tell Martha what has happened. As she goes to leave, Dennis asks if all the Marines have been deployed and, FINALLY, reveals to her that Tasneem is his ISI connection and that he told her about the hidden passageway under the embassy. Before the credits roll, Haqqani and his fully armed men is seen breaking into the passageway underneath the embassy as his full-fledged attack on the embassy is about to begin.

*** photo credits from Showtime ***

HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 8 – HALFWAY TO A DONUT

The episode starts with Carrie waking up in an unfamiliar bedroom, the morning after her breakdown. She stands to explore her surroundings still a bit groggy and confused, and then she's greeted by Aasar Khan who asks her how she is. Aasar Khan reveals that his men took her from police custody and that she spoke of Brody the night before. Carrie is still extremely weak and so Aasar Khan tucks her back into the bed, shivering.

The embassy still has no idea where Carrie is but at the moment they're concentrating on Saul. Lockhart, the ambassador, and other U.S. officials attend a meeting with the Pakistani foreign minister, Aasar Khan, Tasneem and the rest of the Pakistani delegation. Before both parties sit down with one another, Tasneem berates Aasar Khan for his interference with Carrie and that he foiled her plans to have Carrie shipped out of Islamabad because of her breakdown. But Aasar Khan indicates that he didn't know their operation and that he took her into his care to protect relations with the Americans. Hmm ... so I guess Aasar Khan, is not in cahoots with Tasneem but is he truly a good guy ?

The delegation and the embassy sit down to discuss Saul's 'kidnapping' but this time Haqqani's men have put Saul on camera. Saul tells them not to give in to any of the demands as well as some not so nice words which made Haqqani's men pull Saul out of the camera’s view. Haqqani makes his own demands and mentions names of prisoners he wants released in exchange for Saul. Saul is taken back to his cell and manages to procure some rusty nails secretly along the way. The delegation alleges that they're shocked by Haqqani's demands, Lockhart is fuming, and the ambassador remains calm and pragmatic, suggesting they all meet again the following morning with a plan of action.

Carrie wakes up again, still at Aasar Khan's, and goes to the bathroom to freshen up and take her meds. When suddenly she realizes that her meds taste different and makes the connection that they've been tampered with. When Aasar Khan arrived, she asked if he knew about the switch but he insists that he doesn't know. So Carrie leaves and goes straight to the doctor at the embassy. She meets with Quinn and tells him her theory of a possible security breach. Lockhart and Quinn also brief Carrie on Haqqani's demands for Saul. Carrie is flabbergasted at the list of the names Haqqani's asking for - all Haqqani's closest associates! Lockhart and Carrie resolve that they need to find a different way to get Saul so Lockhart leaves to tell the ambassador about the breach. After Lockhart leaves, Carrie tells Quinn the true details of her "kidnapping".

Lockhart meets with the ambassador to discuss the breach with Carrie then as he was leaving, Dennis the traitor arrives. The ambassador confides in him about the breach and also tells him to try to stay inside so he can stay safe. Meanwhile, in his cell, Saul uses his stolen nails to attempt to pick the locks on his handcuffs. After much struggling, he succeeds. Then he fakes his own suicide-by-hanging and takes out the guard who tries to cut him down, and escapes. While escaping, Saul also managed to grab a cellphone and he calls the embassy. They locate him via GPS and direct him toward the nearest CIA asset where they can extract him -- a location 20 miles on foot from where he currently is. He requests to speak to Carrie alone and Saul makes her promise that if he gets recaptured, she must do everything she can so that Haqqani's demands do not get met. Saul forces her to promise that she will kill him if they can't extract him. Carrie tells Quinn what Saul told her and Lockhart tells Carrie that he and the ambassador will stall the Pakistani delegation while Saul gets to safety. Dennis approaches Tasneem to tell her that they know about the pills and she calms him down and gave him another task to do...all this time Aasar Khan look on as they talk quietly.

A very dirty and exhausted Saul finally arrives at the extraction point at the same time that Carrie suddenly realizes why the Pakistani delegation is quite calm despite knowing Saul's escape. Carrie realizes that the reason is because they know where Saul is headed so she leaves the meeting and goes to the control room, finding another way to get Saul safe. She finds the CIA forces waiting at the outskirts of town to see if they can extract Saul but the Taliban had them surrounded. So Carrie contacts the CIA asset to inform Saul that he needs to head to a new extraction point. Saul then leaves and with Carrie on the phone giving him directions of where to go to find safety. But the Taliban forces were just too many for Carrie to be able to get to Saul and Saul realizes that so he stops at a courtyard and puts a gun to his head. Carrie talks him out of killing himself by lying to him and saying that she's going to direct him to a safe zone. Instead, Carrie directs Saul directly into the arms of the Taliban and the last we see of Saul is him getting taken away, while screaming invectives at Carrie.

A dejected Lockhart goes back to the Pakistani delegation and tells them that they will meet Haqqani's demands. The delegation silently leaves and Tasneem tries hard to hide the smile on her face. Carrie feels terrible for lying to Saul, but she knew it was the only thing left to do to keep Saul alive. Quinn reminds her that she hasn't slept in two days and suggests she do so. But before she could sleep, Aasar Khan calls and they meet in the middle of the night to discuss Carrie's pill situation -- Aasar Khan reiterates that he had absolutely no idea that anything was being done to thwart her. Carrie struggles to accept this as fact but ultimately realizes that he's being truthful and tells him so. Aasar Khan then informed her that it was Dennis that swapped her pills but still left out Tasneem's complicity in the entire operation.

*** Photo grabbed from Showtime ***

HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 7 – REDUX

The episode starts with Tasneem having some mystery drugs manufactured at a pharmacy. Lockhart arrives in Islamabad to handle the Saul situation and meets with Quinn and Redmond immediately after he arrives. Redmond and Quinn brief him on Carrie's behaviour during the Haqqani operation. But Quinn, unsurprisingly, defends Carrie's outburst despite Lockhart's assumption that she's become uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Meantime, Carrie was monitoring at the 2nd base with Fara and Max looking into what drugs Aayan got from that nurse a few episodes back in an attempt to find any clue that will lead them to Saul. Carrie feels guilty about Aayan's untimely death and she spoke aloud what she felt Fara was thinking. But Fara did not want to argue and just conceded they were all responsible for Aayan's death. Quinn, goes to her apartment to track her down on behalf of Lockhart but she's not there. She tells him she'll meet with him soon and as he leaves Carrie's apartment, Dennis was there to swap out several of Carrie's pills for the mystery pills that were given to Tasneem.

Back at the CIA station, Lockhart met with the members of the team and expressed his displeasure with the recent series of events that has fallen on the Islamabad station. Carrie arrives late further infuriating Lockhart but she somewhat redeems herself when she indicates that she has a lead on Haqqani, they just need confirmation on what the medicine was and what disease Haqqani is grappling with. She also stresses that the rest of the station will be working 24/7 to find Saul. Lockhart seems slightly contented to hear this and they proceed to the meeting with the Pakistani delegation. Haqqani is obviously enjoying his time outside and he says so during the car ride with Saul. Saul tells him that he is of no intel value but Haqqani makes it abundantly clear that he's not planning on getting rid of Saul as he is the shield Haqqani needs to be able to go out in public unharmed.

Back at the embassy, the ambassador, Lockhart, Carrie, and other embassy officials meet with the Pakistani delegation -- a group that includes Tasneem and Aasar Khan, the ISI guy who met with Saul. From the start, the ambassador lays out that the United States simply wants Saul back and wants to know how he got to be taken in the first place. Lockhart disbelieves the Pakistani minister and says that he knows they were all a part of the plan to take Saul. The minister gets angry and urges him to stop but Lockhart takes it a step further and tells the delegation that he will pull the federal aid given to Pakistan if they don't release Saul. The Pakistani delegation leaves in a huff after this and the ambassador is not happy with Lockhart, saying that threats will not help in this situation and that Lockhart doesn't have the ability to pull the funding. But Lockhart says that he indeed has the president's permission.

Carrie runs after the delegation as they leave, calling Aasar Khan and berating him about Saul. She's intent on proving that the delegation cannot be trusted and that the ISI had something to do with Saul's disappearance. She convinces Aasar Khan to let her see the security footage from the airport that would implicate Farhad Ghazi in the kidnapping and they agree to meet at the airport a half hour later. She goes back to her apartment to take her 'pills' and freshen up before going to the airport with Quinn. Dennis meanwhile heads into his wife's office at the embassy and finds her drafting a resignation letter. She's obviously infuriated by Lockhart's ability to undermine her foreign relationships and hates that Lockhart is using the federal aid package as leverage. Dennis calmly convinces her to not give up on her life's work and this made Martha wonder a bit as she thought Dennis wanted them to leave Pakistan.

Quinn and Carrie head to the airport to meet with Aasar Khan and it's clear that Carrie's medication is not working at all. She's talking fast and her eyes are way shiftier than normal. Quinn expresses concern but Carrie says she's fine and they continue to the airport to watch the footage from the evening of Saul's disappearance. They find out that the cameras on the terminal that Saul was in were down that night...well HOW CONVENIENT! Carrie thinks that Aasar Khan is hiding information and footage but her 'new meds' just made her seem out of control and paranoid.

Haqqani drives through the streets of Islamabad and gets a hero's welcome as he continues using Saul as shield. The embassy monitors his movement and they are not at all pleased at all with the fanfare and almost-hero worship. Haqqani heads to his compound, with Saul in tow, and greets his family for the first time in ages. As the entire station watches, they try to work on how they are going to rescue Saul. Carrie suggests an absurd rescue mission and everyone is looking at her like she's got nine heads because her mania is out in full force. She retreats to her room to regain control and she is shown overwhelmed with dizziness, confusion, and complete inability to handle what's happening in her brain.

At Haqqani's compound, a huge welcome feast is happening and Saul is sitting at his right hand, like an old friend. The two discuss the Pakistani-American relationship and their discussion heats up as Saul dares to talk to him on radical Islam, 9/11, and cultural confusion. Then, Carrie wakes up from a nap, still disoriented, with a call from Max. It seems they have tracked down the nurse and will be conducting an operation for her. Carrie takes her pills again, but she's still nowhere near normal when she leaves her apartment. Every sound, person, color, and movement is intensified in her world at present yet she leaves for the hospital and finds Kiran almost immediately after entering. Carrie verbally assaults Kiran, physically assaults a nurse who she believes is Quinn, vomits in the street, shoots two civilians, and gets arrested by Pakistani police. I guess Carrie has indeed been fucked up by the meds given her.

The ambassador confronts Lockhart about what he said to the delegation that morning. She told him he just wasted four years of diplomatic relations she painstakingly built and tried her best to reconcile with the foreign minister. She shared that they may have "positive news" for them the following morning at 7am. Lockhart insists that he be there for the meeting and the ambassador counters that if he comes, they're playing it her way. Haqqani continues to keep Saul prisoner and told him his plan to use Saul in a trade with the United States. Saul insists that the United States won't go for it, but Haqqani has done his research and assures him that they will have to. Carrie is being held in a jail cell with bugs, wet floors, dirt, and fear. Several men come in to the cell, take Carrie, and put her into a car. They drive her to an undisclosed location, which ends up being a pretty swanky house and leave her there. A man approaches to find her and she instantly attacks before she stops and realizes that man she's attacking is BRODY. For a while there I really thought Brody was alive but it seems to be Carrie's hallucinations were in overdrive when it was actually Aasar Khan who saved her...it just wasn't clear what his intentions were.

*** photo grabbed from Showtime ***

KITCHEN MISADVENTURE SERIES – Chicken mami

It’s the day after Christmas and expectedly there were a lot of leftovers and most of us had decided that we have already gorged ourselves full for the past two days and so for our dinner tonight we just decided to have something light for our dinner – chicken mami. The vegetables were leftover from the chopsuey we had for noche buena and so we just bought chicken bones and pressure cooked it with a whole lot of water for our stock. Then, when the soup is ready and the veggies have all been cut up/ julienned, we served ourselves with whatever veggie or condiments that you want inside your bowl – it’s your choice really – there’s shredded chicken, cabbage, carrots, fried garlic, spring onions, etc. Then top with the steaming stock, let the hot soup cook the veggies a bit and dig in!

P.S. By the way, the pics I used for this article were the ones from the chicken mami that we replicated at our own home in Bulacan (sometime Jan 2015) since I was unable to take pics anymore when the mami was cooked hehehe...

CHRISTMAS 2014

Merry Christmas everyone! Had another fun time spending Christmas with the entire brood...it was noisy, crazy, but still so much fun! Here are the pics to prove how much we all enjoyed the night away!

HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 6 – FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN

The movie starts with another 'ewwww' moment showing Carrie n Aayan lazing about in their bed clothes like old lovers. Carrie helps Aayan how to answer in case he is interrogated about his new identity. She gives him his new passport and some money and make plans to leave tonight for London. But Aayan insists that he needs to get some of his things from school before they catch the flight. Carrie wants him to just leave it all but Aayan says that it's all he has left so she relents. Carrie returns to base to form a team for an operation for Aayan but Quinn is hesitant and still disgusted with Carrie's methods so Carrie walks off and goes to seek Redmond's help.

Aayan goes to his old dorm at the medical school to get his limited possessions and he chanced upon his girlfriend, Kiran, demanding to know where he's going. Aayan refuses to answer while he haphazardly throws things into a bag. Kiran is heartbroken when finally Aayan admits leaving for London and asks Aayan to take her with him. But Aayan refuses and when she learns that the "journalist" helping him is a woman she asks just knows he has feelings for Carrie. He leaves the dorm but on his way out he saw some guy looking like an ISI operative stationed directly outside the exit. So he heads back and uses a different exit but the guy still follows him back to the safe house.

Dennis Boyd goes to the embassy under the guise of delivering a "thank you" bottle of booze to Redmond for that night at the bar. Quinn takes Dennis to Redmond's office to drop off the bottle and Quinn seems a bit suspicious when he starts asking about Carrie then he gets distracted by another embassy worker who briefed him that Ghazi, the guy Saul was following was not on the plane to Johannesburg so he told the guy to contact Saul when he touches down at DC.

Carrie returns to the safehouse and we see the same man that followed Aayan at the medical college just outside their apartment hideaway. When Carrie learned what happened to Aayan she started freaking out over everything, particularly the fact that Aayan told Kiran where he's going. Aayan tries to cool Carrie down and insists that his uncle, Haqqani, will help him with safe passage to England. So Carrie gives him the passport and money when suddenly intruders break into the apartment. They attack Carrie and chase Aayan out onto the street. But when Carrie gets thrown into a car and her mauling is followed by casual conversation with the attackers we realize that they're not attackers but rather fellow embassy members and the whole thing was staged. It seems Carrie has convinced Aayan that she's been kidnapped by the ISI and he is now officially on his own so he can now lead them straight to their real target - his uncle.

Fara, Max, Redmond, Carrie, and the "attackers" all convene at the embassy to discuss the operation with Aayan. Fara asks Carrie what's going on and Carrie takes the opportunity to berate Fara for failing in her mission to get information out of Aayan. Both Fara and Quinn seem to be unhappy about her behavior with Aayan so she defends her actions by saying that what she did saved their country. She then makes Fara go back to the safehouse. to clean out any remnants that might implicate either of them. All the while, Dennis has been secretly looking on from a secluded corner and followed Fara without her knowing.

The team now settle in to watch Aayan on cameras situated at the bus terminal and they watch him get on a bus to Goza, the first leg of his journey to London. Then they encounter a glitch mid-trip when the bus stops so that papers can be checked. Aayan panics as the men harass him on his identity, but ends up getting out of a potentially fatal situation by offering them the only money he has on him. Carrie tries to hide the smile on her face knowing she has taught Aayan well. The journey continues.

Back in Islamabad, Fara cleans the apartment and is unaware that Dennis has been lurking around. After creepily looking through a few windows, he disappears and Fara is unaware that he stole something from Aayan's bag. Back at the embassy, Quinn gets an inkling that Saul is missing as he can't be located at D.C. but he refuses to consider yet the possibility that he may be kidnapped since he asked the guy to try asking Langley first to contact the wife ...oh please Quinn! Do something to save Saul.

Carrie and the group continue their monitoring of Aayan via video feeds from a drone. In his last stop, Aayan calls his uncle on a pay phone and the two arrange a meeting place. After hanging up, Aayan calls Carrie and tells her he loves her and that he can't wait to see her again. Carrie replies that she loves him too knowing that her entire team is listening in...well, she has to encourage the boy to go on, right? . Afterwards, Carrie asks Redmond what everyone thinks after hearing the phone call and Redmond essentially says he's pleased with her for getting the appropriate intel to get to Haqqani. But in the same breath, he tells her without telling her that he doesn't particularly agree with how she went about it...

Dennis meets with Tasneem, right outside Carrie and Aayan's lovenest, to show her the photos he took at Carrie's apartment, evidence that Carrie is bipolar. Dennis informs her that the apartment building they're across from was a CIA safe-house then he gives Tasneem a bag of Aayan's personal stuff that he got from the safehouse. Tasneem seems pleased with everything Dennis gave her and quickly leaves to report her find. Meanwhile, Quinn sees a message on his desk that Saul never boarded his plane...that means he never left Islamabad as he planned. Alarm bells suddenly started ringing in his head and he goes off looking for Carrie.

After Aayan has crossed mountains and streams, he settles in to wait (like a happy child) on a white slab of marble under the sun until armed men arrive to take him. They walk towards three cars, one of which opens up to reveal Haqqani. At that moment, Quinn enters the monitoring room to inform them about Saul missing. Carrie and the rest of the embassy watch as what should be a quick bombing operation of their target suddenly turns sour when Haqqani pulls the kidnapped and bound Saul from the car. Haqqani then tells Aayan that his friend is a member of the CIA, a daughter-figure to the man (Saul) who stands in front of him. He also tells Aayan that there is a drone overhead watching their every move. Aayan is reeling from the information and, before he even has time to process, Haqqani thanks him for all the medicine he gave that saved his life then just SHOOTS HIM IN THE HEAD. Oh NO!

Everyone was shocked by the appearance of Saul and the death of Aayan, but they all remain relatively composed... except for Carrie who insists that they continue the attack and take out Haqqani, even if that means they also take out Saul. It isn't until Quinn shakes her and says to her face "Are you out of your mind? That's Saul down there...Saul!" Haqqani leaves the scene in a car, with Saul, and disappears. Aayan's body is left lifeless in the middle of the desert as Carrie desperately cries and throws a tantrum inside her office. I’m sad about Aayan's death but moreso that all their efforts to get Haqqani were nullified because of Saul's capture...which made Aayan's death all the more in vain. But it seems Carrie feels no guilt or emotion at all...not for Aayan who she sent to his own slaughter nor for Saul who was like a father to her.

*** photos grabbed from Showtime ***

A NEW FAD – KOREAN ICE CREAM

This afternoon, when we finished our shopping for the Christmas Noche Buena and as we waited for our ride to pick us up, my daughter and I chanced upon this new kiosk serving Korean ice cream...they said when it was first introduced the lines were just humongous but I guess that’s just how it is with fads, you need to create much hype to create much interest and make the people curious enough to wait in line...pretty much like what happened with Krispy Kreme when it was introduced or the cronuts. But in time, the public will soon get to distinguish the hype from those that truly taste good and this is what happened to the Korean Ice cream. Well, the ice cream itself was not spectacular, just the regular plain vanilla and chocolate that can be usually be bought in dispensable soft serves sprouting all around in malls. What was unusual was the cone that the ice cream comes in, as it was shaped like a J and had ice cream on both ends – just cool!