HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 1 – THE DRONE QUEEN

The first episode starts off with a bang, and a big one at that since it’s a bombing that Carrie was in charge of, a drone strike somewhere in Pakistan. The scene starts with Carrie inside a car, being driven by embassy personnel then she asks to get off as she had not been out of the embassy in days. So she walks the rest of the way, in a dimly-lit street with an armed guard until she receives a phone call and immediately proceeds to their ‘office’. Inside, she learns that an intel from Sandy confirms the presence of a highly-value target and they have to make a decision whether or not to continue the bombing. At first, Carrie was a bit hesitant since she wanted to have confirmation from a second source (she felt uneasy relying on Sandy’s unnamed operator for the past four ‘hits’ they made) and also the fact that they do not have ground intel on the farmhouse and whoever was inside with the ‘target’. But Sandy assured her that they would never get a second sighting of this individual and so she had no choice but to approve the hit. So the bombs were dropped and as the explosion occurs and the huge monitor fades to black, a cake with some candles and the words ‘Drone queen” written in it is brought in by her staff and everyone sings to Carrie to celebrate her birthday.

Carrie goes home and celebrates with some champagne and a sleeping pill (I guess) then proceeds to video-chat with her sister who tells her that she just missed her baby girl as she is now taking a walk with Carrie’s dad at the park. It seems to be not the first time that Carrie was remiss in her schedule to video-chat with her daughter and Maggie was not at all pleased with her. After some time, she goes to bed, after putting on a mouthguard, a face mask and earplugs. Then, the next scene shows the aftermath of the explosion with people getting frantic and screaming as they search through the rubble looking for bodies and survivors.

Next shown was Saul (Oh good! He’s still part of Season 4!) but he doesn’t seem to be working with the CIA anymore but some private agency who is having some dealings with government generals. In one briefing, he took a turn and spoke his mind about the kind of decisions they had been doing for the past fourteen years. His boss takes him out in private and reprimands him by saying “It’s not your job anymore to have a say in the matter.” Back at the CIA, Carrie watches a newsfeed confirming that their intended target had indeed been killed however, so were 40 other guests at a wedding...oops! Terrible miscalculation and Carrie is not pleased at all!

Meanwhile at Islamabad, Pakistan rallies/pickets have been ongoing outside the US embassy. A meeting is happening between the US ambassador, Peter Quinn and Sandy (station chief at Islamabad) and the ambassador wants to know what she can tell the foreign minister about the strike. Sandy defends that the wedding was nothing but a PR claim/bullshit and that even the Pakistani government wants the guy dead. But the ambassador countered that they are not so supportive if civilians are involved. Sandy further justifies that the civilians died on their own volition since they knew Haqqani (their target) was a marked man.

Next, a young man (named Aayan) is shown being nursed back to health. He learns that the rest of his family died in the bombing and he gets up to find the bodies of his loved ones...truly a heart-wrenching scene. (The guy seems familiar and later on with Google I find out he was the same guy in Life of Pi) In Carrie’s office, she was also surveying the scene of the bombing and their camera chances upon Aayan who looks at the sky-camera angrily (as if he knows they are watching). Then, Carrie gets a call from Quinn and she tried to reassure him that the brouhaha would soon die down since they are ‘bullet-proof’.

Saul and Mira are still together but it seems their marriage is still a work in progress since even if Saul was already out of the CIA, he still manages to miss important dinners and was still apologizing to his wife for not making her a priority. Then, Saul shares what happened at his job today how he screwed up and he feels that it wasn’t working out. But Mira insists that he apologize to his boss and fix things up. Then, on a bus back to his university, Aayan is seen crying as he holds his broken phone and watches a video of the wedding. His roommate is surprised seeing him alive and he shares to him how he lose his entire family at the bombing.

At a bar, Carrie is approached by a soldier (1st Lt. Edgars) who berates her for approving the mission the other night in Pakistan. It seems he was in one of the planes who dropped the bomb and now feels some guilt over the lots of lives lost in the incident. Carrie denies knowledge that they knew that a wedding party was taking place. He called her a ‘fucking monster’ which made Carrie angry ordering him to get the fuck out of her face. Later on, Aayan’s roommate convinces him to do something, to disprove media reports denying that there wasn’t a wedding. He wants Aayan to release the video on the internet but Aayan is too overcome with grief to fight anymore. He calls them cowards and that he is dishonouring his family’s name by keeping the truth.

The next day, before Carrie fully awakens, she receives a call from Lockhart informing her about a video that had been uploaded on the internet two hours ago. It seemed authentic and so Lockhart wanted Carrie and Sandy to spin some damage control. So Carrie heads out to Islamabad to meet with Sandy and Quinn while Saul watches the said video online and tries to contact Carrie but fails. Aayan confronts his roommate about the video going viral and demands that he take it down. Quinn tells Sandy that Carrie is arriving soon but Sandy had to go out and meet someone outside so he tells Quinn to inform him when Carrie arrives. Sandy takes a circuitous route outside the embassy (probably to evade the protesters outside) to meet a mysterious person he was texting earlier

Quinn meets Carrie at the airport and she gets briefed by Quinn about what has been happening so far. They also discuss about Sandy and how his intel had been good until now but his sketchiness in his dealings had even his superiors and case officers worried. Then, they discuss Carrie’s job at Kabul – her cold-blooded/calculated killing with a designated hit list with the help of Sandy who supplies the coordinates of whom to hit. As they were talking, they see a picture of Sandy being flashed on the TV news. Sandy heads to an apartment where he seemed to have keys but they seem to be not working so he texts the person to ask if he changed the locks but got no answer???

Quinn calls Sandy who says he was at his residence but apparently he was not as security was just there to get him and so Quinn told him that his cover had been blown and they need to take him back to the embassy. Sandy tells them his location and when he sees some commotion outside the apartment he goes thru the back door and makes his break. He manages to make it out the street but gets caught in an ambush by a mob of locals. Quinn and Carrie arrive in time to save him but the mob manages to smash the car windows and get Sandy from the car. Carrie attempts to jump out to save him but Quinn insists there was nothing they can do and barely escape the madness.

Quinn and Carrie drive back to the embassy in silence and upon arriving, Carrie is all seriousness and wanted to head straight to the briefing with the ambassador but Quinn wanted to have a minute to compose himself after all that happened. Carrie and Quinn then get into an argument as she said they could have done more but Quinn disagrees and tells Carrie off. She demands that he get inside in five minutes and before the episode ends, Carrie is shown in a bathroom numbly wiping blood from her face. I guess this just shows that we now see a different Carrie – someone totally emotionally detached from what she is doing – after all it is the only way for her to keep sane and still be working for the agency that was responsible for killing the man she loved.