HOMELAND SEASON 4 EPISODE 4 – IRON IN THE FIRE

The episode starts with Carrie doing some research about the guy Quinn sent him on the video. She searches files of members of the Pakistani intelligence then Redmond walks in on her, sees the photo and tells her the guy’s name – Farhad Ghazi – a local hood for the ISI. Redmond leaves and tells Carrie she should be thankful he helped her as she would not be able to find his file on any database. Aayan, meantime, goes back to his girlfriend’s house to retrieve the bag he left with her for safekeeping but then he finds out that her girlfriend’s father found his bag and destroyed the vials it contained. What’s worse is that her father called the medical school and reported him for stealing meds from the medical school. The father soon arrived and angrily drove Aayan out of his house, calling him a drug dealer and may soon be expelled.

Carrie meets up with Saul who is on his way to the airport, and she informs him about Farhad Ghazi and how he orchestrated Sandy’s death. She asks Saul to connect with old ‘friends’ in Islamabad because she needs intel on Ghazi. Saul advises Carrie to inform Langley or the White House but she disagrees as they would never get the truth on Sandy’s death if that happens. Then, finally Quinn arrives back at the safehouse ...Yahoo! Quinn is back! Aayan also unexpectedly arrives at Carrie’s ‘office’ and so Fara goes out to meet him but he says he will only talk to Carrie. Aayan agreed to wait for ten minutes inside Fara’s office. We also find out that Redmond has apparently sent someone to tail Carrie but he doesn’t seem to be quite good as Carrie was able to elude him and was only able to follow her until Carrie left Saul at the hotel. He then asks him to find out where Carrie got the photo image of Ghazi.

Carrie returns to the office and immediately talks to Aayan albeit acknowledging Quinn’s presence in the other room. Aayan is intent on getting out of Pakistan that’s why he was desperate enough to contact Carrie. He asked Carrie for 80,000 rupees but won’t tell her why he needs it so he turns to leave. But Carrie shows him a photo of Ghazi and tells him that his life is in danger if Ghazi is the man who had been threatening him. Aayan breaks down crying and so Carrie comes over to console him and asks him what’s wrong. But he still won’t say anything so Carrie relents and gets the money from the petty cash. Carrie asks him to return to her as soon as he has finished what needs to be done and he leaves, unaware that Max and Fara are tailing him. Quinn asks Carrie how she intends to get Aayan to a new med school in London but she refused to dwell on that and instead fills him in on the threats to Aayan’s life. She mentions here the title of the episode saying that Aayan is an iron in the fire...he knows something he’s not saying.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani woman approaches a professor at Aayan’s med school, Professor Boyd. The woman tells Boyd that they should keep the ‘relationship’ he had with Sandy Bachman despite Sandy’s death...that he should continue providing information from the ambassador’s desk. But the professor insists that she may be mistaken and abruptly leaves. Saul, apparently stayed on to give in to Carrie’s request and talk with an old friend, a retired general of Pakistani military. Saul asks the general if he can facilitate a ‘talk’ between Saul and a member of the ISI. The general tried to deter Saul saying he is a private citizen now and should lead a quiet life. But Saul insists and even alludes to an old debt that Bunny seems to owe him and so he concedes.

Carrie and Quinn manage to set up a surveillance operation into Ghazi’s apartment but fail to tap into his phone. But they need to get within five feet near his phone in order to clone it and so when Ghazi slept, Quinn breaks into Ghazi’s apartment and taps into his phone. Then it suddenly rings and wakes up Ghazi so Quinn hides in the other room. It was a friend asking Ghazi to come out to party but he declines and returns to sleep so Quinn hastily escapes. Fara and Max were able to follow Aayan to the teaching hospital and they saw him give the money to a girl who seemed to be wearing a nursing uniform. They all wait until the girl returns. Professor Boyd is seen next on the phone talking with someone as he seems to want to get back to the US at once. He is confirmed to be the husband of US Ambassador Martha Boyd and has relayed to Martha his plans to get his old job back in the US. He also reasons out their son, Toby needs them – yeah, flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard! So he needs to leave within a week.

Quinn and Carrie get to talk while on a stakeout for Ghazi – about Quinn wanting to leave the agency – how he got seriously affected when he killed that kid in Caracas...but he’s there now, for Carrie. Carrie insists that he should look at the bigger picture, he may have killed some but only to save the greater good. She needs someone to help her, not someone to pull her back. Carrie leaves then to go back to the embassy. Fara and Max see the girl re-emerge from the hospital with an orange bag in her hand, full of meds which she gives to Aayan and they soon part ways. Fara and Max follow Aayan again. Back at the embassy, Carrie asks Redmond to call off the dogs tailing her but Redmond insists it is for her protection so she won’t end up like Sandy. Redmond tells her about the tunnel that they use so they easily could go back and forth to the embassy, hidden from the public view.

Saul meets with a member of the ISI and he starts asking about Sandy’s death. The man appears quite cold and even frisks Saul and refuses to give out any information. Saul questions him about the ISI operative on the ground that day, in the crowd...Saul wanted to know who gave the order to kill just Sandy and not the two other operatives with him. The ISI guy refused to budge saying he agreed to just a chat not an interrogation and leaves Saul feeling frustrated. Carrie returns to the Ghazi stakeout and tells them what transpired with Saul so she feels something ‘big’ may happen anytime today. Carrie takes Quinn aside to thank him for coming despite what she realized about him last night. Fara and Max get stuck in traffic so Fara sets out to follow Aayan on foot. Soon, she sees him giving the bag of meds to Haissam Haqqani – the target of the drone strike – but he is alive!

Back at the stakeout, they see Ghazi get a call telling him his laundry is ready and they see him packing up his things to leave hastily and they seem unable to trace the caller. Carrie says they need to grab him now but Quinn disagrees as they are not yet ready and the situation was dangerous. Then, Fara calls to tell them about seeing Haqqani alive. Carrie is flabbergasted and only believes when she sees the video. She tells Fara to get back to the office immediately and they soon realize that Sandy’s death was staged to save Haqqani and make it seem that he was dead, when he was not at the wedding they bombed at all...the big issue now is why?

Professor Boyd had started packing up his office but the Pakistani woman who visited him earlier was in his office with two other thugs and they refuse to let Boyd leave by blackmailing him. She tells him that if he leaves, the FBI would receive a package implicating him in all the documents he stole from his wife – making him liable for treason and his wife an unwitting accomplice. Terrified, Boyd agrees to conduct more treasonous acts with the assurance that he will be allowed home once it’s done. Fara is left in the office to wait for Aayan so that when he arrives she shall take the boy to Carrie at the safehouse. Fara wants assurance from Carrie that they would make good on their promise to Aayan for safe passage to London but Carrie disagrees since that was before they knew he was aiding a known jihadist. Carrie tells her that they plan to hide behind Aayan who will lead them back to his uncle.

Fara soon arrive in the middle of the night with Aayan at Carrie’s safehouse but Aayan thinks they leave for London at once. Carrie tells him they need to stay for three days while they get his passport and other documents ready. Carrie makes up the couch for Aayan to sleep in and proceeds to flirt with him – ugh! (she’s too old for him!) The flirting seem to work and Aayan tells her he was kicked out of med school ...he asks how it would affect his chances of entering a London medical school and it seems Carrie doesn’t have an answer for him so she just proceeds to make out with Aayan to make him stop asking questions....I just can’t believe Carrie! How could you do ANYTHING just to get what you want?!?! Sexually manipulating a boy???How could you??? One thing is emerging though, the reason why they seem bent on exposing the link between Sandy and the professor is to make Lockhart accountable...so that he would get the boot and Saul would be able to return as CIA Director – yippee!

***photo grabbed from Showtime***

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 5 EPISODE 4 – SLABTOWN

This episode is all about Beth – what happened to her ever since she was taken by whoever it was riding in a car with a cross. The episode begins with flashbacks of Daryl and Beth together up to the final night where she was taken by some unknown people. Then it fades to Daryl’s voice who was asked if Beth was dead and he answered – she’s just gone. Now we find out that Beth was indeed taken by some people and is now waking up and a clock is shown ticking (5:20) maybe a reference to Season 5 Episode 4? She bangs on her door which was locked and when she hears someone coming in, she uses her IV needle as a weapon. A female cop (Officer Dawn) who runs the place and a doctor (Dr. Stevens) walk in and inform her that she is at a hospital near Atlanta – the Grady Memorial Hospital. They tell her they saved her as she was surrounded by walkers near the side of the road. Beth asked about Daryl but Dawn said that she was alone, had a fractured wrist and if they had not come to save her. She’d be one of them right now, so she owes them (or so she says...how’s that for expecting gratitude)

Then, Dr. Edwards takes Beth on a tour of the hospital and explains to her that they pull the plug on a patient if they do not show signs of improvement after a few days, to save valuable resources. She starts repaying her ‘debt’ to the group that saved her by working as a nurse, pretty much like a prison but without guarantee of a parole. Later on she helps take care of the dead and learns that the dead are pushed down an elevator shaft because they never go out, only when they need to. Beth even hears the sound of some of the walkers in the basement (they call them rotters, by the way) At the hospital canteen, where Beth went down to get food for the doctor, she meets the cop (Gorman) who apparently saved her. Beth just remembered that she was fighting a walker at the time then everything went black. (I think, maybe the creepy cop hit her on the head as he seemed a bit slimy to me) Before she left, Gorman said that it’s courtesy to show some appreciation (for saving her, I guess) since everything cost something, right? (I just wonder why all these people think that Beth owes them anything for saving her at all!)

Beth sees another orderly who she learns is Noah, the janitor-slash-errand boy of Officer Dawn. Beth brings the doc his food and while listening to a record he tells her that he feels bored. Beth countered that if he feels safe enough to be bored then he is lucky. He is also lucky enough to get to eat guinea pigs for lunch. When asked if Beth had eaten, she says that she would rather not eat as the more she gets the more she owes (and she doesn’t want that if she intends to leave). He lets Beth taste the guinea pig and she takes just one bite. Then, a new guy is wheeled in, someone who fell from a building and Dawn wants the doc to save him. But the doc says they are just wasting resources and when the patient seemed impossible to save due to his internal bleeding, she slaps Beth (but why?) Beth later on finds out that she had always been hot-tempered and takes it out on others (herself now included). The doc also advised her to change her clothes/scrubs as Dawn wants things to be always clean and neat. As she was dressing, she finds a green lollipop tucked in her blouse, apparently from the friendly orderly Noah.

Then, she sees another ‘nurse/orderly’ (named Joan) wheeled in and her arm amputated because she was bitten while trying to escape. Joan admits to Beth in not so many words that she was being sexually abused by Dawn’s police officers (in particular Gorman, the sleazeball eyeing Beth). Afterwards, Beth talked to Noah and she asked him why Joan tried to escape when she could work off her debt and just leave afterwards. But Noah says, it doesn’t really work that way. He realizes that Dawn could have saved his Father but since he was bigger and could fight back, she did not and instead opted to save skinny weak Noah...or so she thought since Noah is confident that he could escape this place and go back to his mother in Richmond, Virginia. Dawn later talks to Beth and explains that she does what she does (turn a blind eye to everything else) to keep her officers happy, since if they are happy, they work harder to keep everyone safe. She gives them food, clothes, security, shelter...but nothing is for free. Everyone has to make sacrifices for it will all be worth it when they are rescued. But Beth believes otherwise, that no one is ever coming to rescue them.

Next scene shows Beth searching for her lollipop and she soon finds it out it had been stolen by Gorman who starts eating it then forces it into her mouth (ewwww!) Then the doc comes in and tells Gorman to leave Beth alone. Gorman insists that Beth should have been his...and the doc countered that nobody is Gorman’s, not even Joan. The doc even threatened him in case he gets sick and Gorman said he’ll get treated by somebody else – not just you. Dawn called him just then and he left but without leaving a sleazy wink for Beth...creepy guy really. Beth asked the Doc why he stays and the doc explains his stand by showing him the walkers/rotters in the basement and tells her a story about how they started in the hospital, how a guy named Hanson used to run things then he made bad calls and Dawn was in charge. They learned to make compromises and he reasons that even though things are bad with Dawn, it is much better than being outside (at the mercy of the walkers/rotters) but Beth refused to believe so and asks if he calls this living...

Then, the doc asked Beth to administer some meds to another guy (clozapine) before she calls it a day but inside the room with Noah, the guy suddenly had seizures and dies. Noah takes the blame for it saying he must have unplugged the ventilator and subsequently got beaten up by Dawn. Beth explains to the Doc that she did as he asked and learned that the doc said clozepam not clozapine. Later on as Beth was cleaning Trevitt’s room, Dawn came in and told her she knew Noah was lying to cover up for her. But Dawn still had to beat Noah because he choose to sacrifice himself for her...and Dawn thinks such sacrifice is not a worthy cause at all. She thinks Beth is nothing but part of the system inside the hospital and outside she would either be dead or somebody’s burden.

After the beating, Beth and Noah decide to escape thru the elevator shaft but first Beth has to find the key to the elevators inside Dawn’s office. While Noah kept an eye for Dawn, Beth snuck into her office to find the key but in the process she also found Joan who apparently committed suicide (by opening up her amputated wound and bleeding to death). Then, she also found Trevitt’s ID and learned why the Doc deliberately gave her the wrong meds. But before she can hastily escape from Dawn’s room, Gorman steps in and catches her. He proceeds to sexually assault her and Beth bides just enough time to make Joan turn then bashes Gorman in the head and when he fell Joan did her thing and rip up his throat. Beth then casually walks outside and tells Dawn that Joan was looking for her and she saw Gorman and Joan head to her office. Noah and Beth then make their escape and go down the elevator shaft using blankets as a rope. As Noah was coming down, he almost got close to a walker and ended up falling down the elevator shaft and into the dead bodies, injuring his foot in the process.

The walkers get riled by the noise they were making and so Beth pulls out the gun she got from Gorman and started shooting. They make it out to the parking lot and start to run, in the background we see many black cars with crosses as more walkers come out and Beth starts shooting them all in the head (I guess her shooting skills improved due to Daryl’s tutelage). Noah limps behind her but Beth gets swarmed not just by walkers but by Dawn’s cops and as she is cuffed, Noah gets through the fence and she smiles meaning she is in a way glad that he escaped. Beth gets dragged back into the hospital and gets chastised by Dawn. Beth says Gorman got what he deserved since he attacks the girls they take in and she just lets him. She shouts to her that no one is coming to save them and that everything they do is for nothing! Dawn slaps Beth again and as the Doc was stitching her up Beth confronted the doc with the knowledge that he deliberately let her use the wrong meds to ‘accidentally’ kill Trevitt since he is a doctor too and he wants to continue being indispensable to Dawn...he had no choice, or so he says (so much for being a kind doc huh...I guess he too has his own agendas to protect). Beth takes a pair of scissors and was about to kill the doctor when a new patient was wheeled in and she sees that it is Carol.

The episode ends here and it just brought in more questions than it answered. For one thing, the hanging question in last week’s episode remains – who was with Daryl in the woods. At least we know for sure that it may not have been Beth or Carol since they are still both in the hospital...maybe Daryl and Carol made it to Grady hospital and Carol was ‘rescued’ (like the way they rescued Beth) then Daryl somehow met up with Noah who was limping out so I guess it must be Noah that he took back to the church to be treated. Or maybe Morgan? Arrrgh! I don’t think these questions may be answered soon since the next episode’s preview showed the story of Sgt. Abraham Ford and Glenn as they move towards Washington...I think they are getting back to the storyline of Season 4 where each episode shows the story of the different characters. I just hope the gang gets reunited soon as the story is just much more exciting when they are all on the road battling walkers together. In fact, this episode is not at all as exciting as the last three ones that started Season 5...oh well, at least we got to know what happened to Beth. And at least now we know she has Carol with her so she would have a better chance at breaking out of this hospital/prison with her help...go crush them CAROL!

P.S. I just wonder though what the term ‘Slabtown’ in the title refers to...also, I don’t think this episode is taken at all from the comic book as I don’t recall any character getting trapped/imprisoned inside a hospital filled with freaks...

(photo grabbed from the AMC)