If there's one thing this writer loves, it's a bottle episode. Generally employed by series producers as a budget-saving measure, episodes that take place largely in one location often end up striking gold in character terms.
Breaking Bad's 'Fly', Mad Men's 'The Suitcase', Doctor Who's 'Midnight', Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'Older and Far Away' - we could go on and on, naming classic episodes that centred on characters thrown into a room and forced to spend time together. Festering secrets emerge, long-buried tensions surface, and in almost every case actors are given a chance to shine thanks to the theatrical limits a bottle episode imposes. 'Q & A' wasn't a bottle episode in the strictest sense, featuring plenty of locations outside of the CIA interrogation room where its core storyline played out. But it's that room viewers will remember when they look back on this episode, and the shattering character moments that took place inside. Carrie (with a little help from bad cop Quinn) laid Brody bare, and it was as beautiful and painful an hour of drama as we've ever seen.
Quinn is right when he says that Carrie is too emotional, although at that point he's already planning to use that fact to the CIA's advantage. Her instability, her rashness and willingness to break rules is both her best and worst quality as an agent, and this episode demonstrated that better than any other.
Carrie was able to get through to Brody where nobody else could have, because she knows him like nobody else does - but the only reason she knows him that well is because she essentially has no regard for the rules of her profession. Her unprofessionalism makes her a great agent, but it's a delicate line to walk. It only takes one wrong move for 'genius maverick' to become 'dicey liability', and now that she and Brody are having a faux-affair, there's going to be ample opportunity for her to slip up again.
And given how heartbreaking and nuanced and tender the Carrie/Brody relationship became this week, we wouldn't blame her. What's most brilliant about that 17-minute interrogation sequence is that for much of it, you're genuinely not sure whether to believe a thing either of them is saying. Even once Brody finally starts telling the truth, you're expecting him to hold something back at every turn, but it's Carrie's side that really keeps you guessing. When she's recalling her war trauma, it feels transparently like a ploy to get Brody to open up, a sympathetic face that she'll switch off the minute she gets what she wants from him. But as the scene goes on - and both actors' lines become increasingly choked with tears - it's clear just how genuine their connection is. "We were playing each other," Brody protests at one point about their time at the cabin, and Carrie responds: "I wasn't. Not all of the time, anyway." Even when these two are manipulating each other, they're being more honest than they are with anybody else.
Danes and Lewis both gave absolutely shattering performances in this episode. It's clear just how moved Carrie is when she's articulating what Abu Nazir did to Brody; being systematically pulled apart piece by piece and put back together wrong, given a boy to love and lose, and so on. Almost as powerful was the moment as Saul walks in, when Carrie snatches her hand back from stroking Brody's head and swiftly wipes away a tear. So devastating.
But after several episodes where Danes has been the clear standout, this was Lewis's first real turn in the second season spotlight. When Carrie asked him "When was the last time you told the truth?", it highlighted just how little time Brody has spent doing anything but masquerading as something - the proud soldier, the loving husband and father, the devoted congressman.
This week, he was finally stripped bare and Lewis knocked every sequence out of the park; from Brody's agitation with Quinn to his gradual breaking with Carrie and finally his physical collapse - from relief, from emotion, from fear, from sheer exhaustion. On the evidence of this episode alone, Lewis could well be onto a Cranston-esque Emmy winning streak. Elsewhere, some other stuff happened, we suppose. In that tense moment when Dana drove off with Finn, their romance suddenly looked set to go in a very dark and very interesting direction that would also tie it back into Brody's plotline. Abu Nazir plotting to kill Walden's son (perhaps, say, by blowing up his car with Dana inside too) would have been fitting given all the references to Issa this episode. But instead of Finn and Dana getting blown up, we got this hit and run plotline which has nothing to do with anything else, and makes Dana look like a moron. When your date starts running red lights and breaking speed limits in residential area, try screaming, not laughing.
Other thoughts: - It's tough to remember there's anybody in this show besides Lewis and Danes, but Rupert Friend is really outstanding as Quinn: sharp, mercurial, genuinely scary. Carrie couldn't have asked for a better bad cop. - Saul's line "She's forgotten more about Brody and Nazir than we'll ever know" was a lovely piece of writing, but it also highlighted the slightly odd handling of the Issa reveal. Unless we're missing something, Brody came totally clean about him this week, which makes Carrie's last-minute memory of his name before her ECT a completely irrelevant cliffhanger. Frankly, so much has happened since the finale that it almost doesn't matter, but it's an odd way to resolve what was set up as a major plot point for this season. - Brody's son Chris got actual dialogue this week! Dialogue that wasn't about karate or Facebook and went on for more than a single sentence! He may yet break free of the dreaded Bobby Draper Syndrome. - The flu excuse Estes came up with really seemed pretty flimsy - surely he could have predicted that Jessica would go over to the hotel and check for herself whether Brody was really ill. - Once Upon A Time in America? As a first date movie? The kid's certainly got stamina. - Now the only question becomes whether Brody's reprogramming will stick. We're reminded that it took Abu Nazir years to take him apart and rebuild him, while Carrie and Quinn seemingly did it in a day - one breaking him down physically, the other emotionally - but in theory all they're doing is reverting him to the good man he really is, rather than turning a good man into a monster as Nazir was. We shall see... - As far as we could tell, the only detail Brody kept from the CIA is the fact that he killed the tailor in Gettysburg, who's still alive as far as they know. Anything else he lied about?

There's always been a problem with the premise that Carrie - a fanatically committed CIA operative - would fall so passionately in love with a man she's always believed to be a traitor, especially because her levels of compassion for what Brody suffered in captivity have seemed inconsistent at best. Thanks to Danes and Lewis's electrifying chemistry, this is one arc where emotional logic has managed to override actual logic, and you buy their connection despite everything.
But now that we've enjoyed seeing Carrie strong and capable and vindicated this season, seeing her collapse weeping into Brody's arms was a bitter pill to swallow. The possibility of his betrayal seemed to absolutely demolish her, to an extent that makes Saul's concern about her getting too involved easy to understand. That said, there was something ever so slightly off about that final scene; in contrast to Brody's devastating breakdown last week. This didn't feel fully earned.
Still, it's been easy to forget in all the breakneck action of the last two episodes just how emotionally fragile Carrie really is. This is a woman who tried to commit suicide less than a month ago and has presumably had no time to process the emotional aftermath of that, having kept it totally to herself. She thought being brought back into the CIA would heal her, but all it's done is act as a distracting plaster over a gaping wound. Carrie and Brody's relationship has always been based around the fact that they're as broken as each other, and so it's fitting that their roles from last week were reversed here, with Brody comforting an emotionally exhausted Carrie. And then there's Brody, who remains terribly ambiguous despite the fact that, in theory, his cards are all on the table. Did he somehow pass information to Roya during that moment of silence, or not? Was he telling the truth when he said he'd never seen the Hezbollah man before, or not? Was he lying to Carrie at the end, or not?
We predicted in last week's recap that his lie of omission about the tailor had to come into play, and sure enough it did - but of course he still hasn't admitted either to that killing or to Tom Walker's murder. But beyond those definite lies, it's tough to know whether Carrie's "He's all we've got" or Quinn's "Don't trust him" is closer to the mark. The way Brody's face was filmed in the final shot, almost entirely in shadow as he comforted Carrie, was ambiguous to say the least.
Elsewhere, there seems to be a slight case of Dexter syndrome emerging - i.e. there's one central story that's clearly the most interesting and developed, surrounded by one or two others that don't work half as well, but need to be included for logistical reasons. Danes and Lewis can't be in every single scene, just as Michael C Hall can't be in every scene of Dexter, so the writers are forced to contrive B-plots based around supporting characters who aren't really interesting enough to sustain them. And so we get Dana and Finn's seemingly endless telenovela, and we get Mike and Lauder's clunky investigation of Brody. Both are dragging characters down, but since we never cared all that much about Mike to begin with, it's not that offensive to find him being written as a weirdly douchey version of his former self. That being said, the idea that the single missing bullet would somehow lead him to the conclusion that Brody killed Walker was the kind of logical leap we wish Homeland would stop making. Obviously Mike has ulterior motives, but wanting your former best friend to be a traitor so that you can go back to banging his wife and playing faux-dad to his kids isn't a hugely sympathetic motivation. In summary: Mike sucks.
Dana, though, used to be a rare example of a well-written teenage character being used skillfully, and now thanks to Finn she's increasingly a whiny and dim-witted mess. As touchingly as Morgan Saylor played the scene in the hospital, this is a scenario we've seen so many times before (Nip/Tuck did almost exactly the same episode in its first season) that it's hard to feel invested. And having given the Dana/Finn storyline five episodes of time to make itself relevant, we're now pretty comfortable with saying that it's a writing misstep, regardless of whether it's going to (eventually, finally) tie in with Brody's story further down the line.
But to give writer Chip Johannessen credit where it's due, he delivered yet another of the second season's now-patented 'OMG' moments with the shop front shootout, even if it was obvious from the start that Rupert Friend wasn't going to get offed that easily. Nothing could live up to last week's powerhouse two-hander, but if you can ignore the flimsy B-plots this was a compelling enough hour, and pivoting yet again on Carrie and Brody's strange, magnetic anti-love story. Other thoughts: -  Do the CIA not employ lip readers for situations like the one that arose with Roya's meeting? They seemed to have a decent enough angle on the guy's face. - Max literally dozed off in the middle of a stakeout. In broad daylight. This show definitely isn't afraid to make the CIA look like clowns on occasion, and after last week's smoothly-handled interrogation, it was definitely ineptitude's turn to shine here.

While it was in some respects the nearest thing we've had to a filler episode this season, 'The Clearing' was a much more emotionally cohesive hour than last week's, and resolved a couple of elements that felt off in that episode.
Dana and Finn's hit-and run-plotline finally tied in with the parts of the show we actually care about (only took them six weeks), while Carrie and Brody's power dynamic shifted yet again, and a loose end from last season - Saul's naïve young terrorist charge Aileen - was reintroduced to very moving effect. It's become hard to root for Brody at times, but there were two revealing moments this week that showed a level of self-awareness and remorse we haven't seen from him before. His conversation with fellow veteran Rex Henning showed just how much self-disgust he's harbouring, and just how hard it is for him to stomach being called a war hero. And in the car with Jess, his description of Tom Walker was plainly a veiled confession about his own broken psyche: "He just went through too many things, and he couldn't get right again."
That being said, we're not sure why Brody is acting so entitled about his double agent gig. He's not doing the CIA a favour by working for them - the only other option he had involved a prison sentence and potentially an electric chair. It makes sense that he's frustrated and feels trapped and exploited by the situation, but his constant tetchiness is getting slightly old.
But Carrie and Brody's relationship continues to fascinate in its unhealthy, manipulative, magnetic way. Her going to see him in the woods wasn't a sweeping romantic gesture, but a ploy in response to Quinn's instructions: give Brody some empowerment, make him feel in control of something. And Brody knew right from the get-go that he was being played, and mostly he didn't care. There was something odd about the way the scene plays out - he's blissful and passionate with Carrie one moment, and practically shooting fireballs out of his eyes at her the next - and yet it works for this relationship, which is so simultaneously honest and deceptive, so painfully truthful and so fraught with distrust.
The setting, too, was beautiful and recalled the brief respite Carrie and Brody found in each other last season, during their cabin getaway in 'The Weekend'. There's just something about these two and the great outdoors, apparently.
Carrie's scene with Mike was interesting not only because it allowed Carrie to be badass and competent again, but also because they both essentially want the same thing. If this were a sitcom, the pair of them would team up to destroy the Brodys' marriage, but a hilarious series of mishaps would result in the Brodys becoming closer than ever, and then Carrie and Mike would bicker for half a season about whose fault it was that their plan failed before ultimately getting together themselves. On balance, it's good that Homeland isn't a sitcom.
Elsewhere, poor Saul took a leaf out of Carrie's book, allowing his emotional investment in an asset to cloud his judgement. The asset in this case was Aileen, who managed to look even thinner and more sickly than she already did before - solitary confinement in a maximum security prison will do that to you, we hear.
She was always a profoundly sad character, clearly very young and very confused and never genuinely committed to Al Qaeda, and it was refreshing to see a nuanced look at the realities of how the US justice system deals with terrorists - the show hasn't seemed so interested in the topical resonance of its subject matter since the middle of season one. And though Aileen's suicide reeked slightly of plot contrivance (the guard removed every single object from the cell but happened to leave Saul's spare glasses?), Mandy Patinkin sold the hell out of that emotional climax. If this doesn't earn him an Emmy nomination next year, we'll have no choice but to assume a grander anti-Patinkin conspiracy.
Now, was it just us or did anybody else keep expecting something terrible to happen to Finn? The way he kept saying vaguely ambiguous things like "Let me pick my moment", along with Timothée Chalamet's twitchy, unbalanced energy really gave us the impression that he was going to blow his brains out in the middle of the fundraiser. Something just isn't right with the kid.
Speaking of reading ominous things into seemingly benign moments, Walden and his wife seem altogether scarier this week than we ever realised. When Walden said that Jess "needs to not talk at all", it really sounded like Cynthia was seconds away from replying, "She needs to be... dealt with." Maybe we were just feeling on edge this week. In summary, the Waldens are basically a very, very creepy family.
Final thoughts:
- Brody's bond with Henning was compelling for several reasons, not least because he's the only character in the entire show who calls Brody by his first name! It will never stop being weird to us that even his wife doesn't call him Nick. - Are Carrie and Quinn going to have a thing? It's been telegraphed from day one, and him casually stripping in front of her was an unambiguously charged moment, complete with his patented chivalry and charm: "Like you've never seen a dick before." That said, it's hard to imagine Carrie having eyes for anyone but Brody for the forseeable future. - Saul bringing Aileen bread, cheese and wine was maybe the sweetest thing we've ever seen on this show. What a prince. - Roya says that "things are going to move very quickly now", but there's still been nothing in the way of actual development regarding the terrorist plot, and there are only five episodes to go. After the breathlessly-paced first five instalments, things now don't really seem to be moving very quickly at all. - Morgan Saylor's emo mannerisms - lip-biting, monotone mumbling, zero eye contact - are getting out of control. She's done really good work on the show in the past, but maybe as a consequence of the problematic writing for her this season, she's becoming less and less convincing. Cut your hair, pull your shoulders back and enunciate, woman. - Brody wordlessly putting that aggressively tactless guest in her place with the sight of his scars was another standout character moment for him. There's so much untapped rage constantly simmering just beneath the surface with him. - "Cease and f**king desist." Love you, Carrie. You still suck, Mike.

As the first season  of Homeland hit its final stretch, Carrie unraveled into mania and  Claire Danes got to play every painful beat of her emotional breakdown. It was a  big, showy, physical performance, but impeccably judged and more than likely  earned Danes her Emmy. Now it's Lewis's turn in the spotlight, as Brody begins  to fall apart under unthinkable pressure.
The image of Brody hunched in a  foetal curl at the end of a darkened corridor was a potent one, because in that  moment he literally feels the walls closing in around him - Carrie and the CIA's  demands on one side, Roya and Abu Nazir's on another, the moral disappointment  of Jess and Dana on yet another. In the earlier kitchen scene with Jess, he  looked set to blow a gasket, and you can't blame him.

And even once his salvation arrived,  in the temporary form of Carrie and another twisted romantic getaway, he  continued to waver between unstable and catatonic. Lewis is phenomenal yet  again, portraying Brody as a shattered, empty shell of a man who's just too  exhausted to care what happens to him at this point.
He's far from  emotionless, though, and there's an incredibly tender moment in the motel room  when he calls Carrie crazy, and smiles at her with nothing but open warmth.  Brody's feelings for Carrie have always been pretty ambiguous, in contrast to  hers for him, but this week was the first solid indication that he really might  love her too. But he's probably right to say that it isn't going to be enough to  save him.
And then they had really, really great sex and the entire CIA  task force heard it. Awkward. What was most remarkable about this (besides,  well, everything) was the fact that Carrie knew that she had taken Brody to a  place where Saul could track them, and so had at least an inkling that they  might be overheard by Saul, Quinn et al. We've gotta give the girl props, though - she did not let it hold her back. Yowza.
In fact, between Aileen's  untimely end and the events of this episode, poor Saul is not having a good time  with surrogate daughters. The exquisite agony of his telling Quinn, "You have  got to give Carrie a chance," as her moans of ecstasy are transmitted loudly in  the background was bad enough, but he also got knocked back later by Carrie  telling him that she isn't his daughter, even though that's plainly how he sees  her.

But however uncomfortable that moment  was, it was nothing to the sheer sweaty-palmed tension of the last ten minutes,  with Brody being led to a darkened clearing by a frighteningly impassive Roya,  Carrie terrified that he's about to be killed, and the CIA desperately trying to  get a visual handle on what's going on without blowing their cover. Genuinely  blood pressure-raising in a way that the show hasn't been since around episode  four.
With Brody and Abu Nazir reunited, we'll get to see whether  Carrie's reprogramming will hold up or whether Nazir will be able to twist Brody  back into the deadly weapon he'd become. And if Brody does resist, there's  nothing to stop Nazir forcing him into submission by threatening his family.
While our hearts sank slightly when the episode began with Dana  wandering over to Mike's place, Brody's family really held their own for once  tonight in terms of emotional weight. As irritated as we've been by both  characters lately, Dana and Mike's scenes together really did make sense - he  was a father to her for almost as long as Brody, and it was a sign of maturity  that she was able to acknowledge how hard Brody's return must have been for  Mike.
Dana's been so absolutely on Brody's side in the past that it's  refreshing to see those dynamics shifting slightly, and her relationship with  Jess in particular has really benefited this season. It was becoming one-note at  a certain point with Dana being nothing but bratty to her mum, but it's been  allowed to evolve into a much more convincing dynamic and their final scene  tonight was really sweet, and really satisfying.
For that matter, the  scene where Dana goes to see the daughter was pretty devastating and effective,  so we're wondering if our whole problem with the hit and run storyline has been  Finn.

So, questions! How is Brody's absence  going to be explained to Walden? And how about Jess and the kids? How did Nazir  get back into the US? Will he try to turn Brody, or just blackmail him into  being a triple agent? Will Carrie go on a kamikaze mission to recover her  beloved? Will Saul shave his beard in a symbolic gesture of grief? Is Virgil the  mole? Will Chris Brody ever have a purpose? Share your answers  below…

Final thoughts: - Okay, we've been rough on  Mike lately so we'll throw him a bone - those scrambled eggs and bacon looked  delicious. Bet Brody doesn't cook breakfast too often. - Carrie's ultimate  walk of shame into Langley the morning after. Geeesh. - While it's  understandable that Carrie's grossed out by the realisation that everybody heard  her sex noises, her calling them "perverts" is a bit rich. It wasn't that long  ago that she was casually noshing on Chinese food while watching Brody have sex  with his wife. - Poor Chris continues to be physically unable to talk about  anything besides sports. Is anyone keeping track of his endless slate of  extracurricular activities, by the way? - After a couple of weeks off, Estes  is back to full-on douche mode. Not that he was entirely wrong about Carrie  taking Brody off the grid, but come on! You already disbelieved her once and  look how that turned out, dude. - There was a lot of uncomfortable comedy  wrung out of the surveillance this episode - not just the Carrie/Brody sex, but  the scene where Carrie and Virgil became increasingly impatient with Brody and  Jess's domestic spat. - Now that Jess knows that Brody was lying to her  about Carrie, surely their marriage can't be long for this world - not with Mike  and his eggs waiting reliably in the wings.

The second season  of Homeland has been forced to operate without the central tension that  propelled the first - i.e. was Brody turned? - since we learned around this time  last year that the answer was yes. But one of the many smart things about the  twisty-turny 'Two Hats' was that it allowed us, once again, to ask the question.
As the episode picks up, Brody has spent 12 hours with Abu Nazir that we  don't get to see, and as a result we spend the entire hour desperately searching  for clues in Damian Lewis's guarded, dimly manic gaze. Were those 12 hours enough for  Abu Nazir to flip Brody back to his side? (Carrie did it in fewer, after all) If  not, then why does he seem so certain that Brody can be trusted? Can we believe  anything that Brody says? It's an episode packed with layers upon layers of  intrigue and paranoia, and made even more tense by the introduction of a threat  much closer to home.

Brody's been wearing two hats since Q &A,  but surprisingly (or perhaps not), the episode got its literal title from Peter  Quinn, whose ambiguous motives and weirdly off-the-map origins were finally  explained tonight. He's not an analyst, but a black-ops guy who is very much  working for the CIA, but very much not in the way that Carrie and her team  think. His job is to kill terrorists, and as the episode's final jaw-dropping  moments confirm, that means Nicholas Brody.
So Estes gets his crowning  douche moment of the series, with the revelation that he intends to have Brody  iced the minute he ceases to be a useful asset. There is no deal. Now, we know  that Brody's unstable and in theory unreliable, but at this point there's no  clear indication he's doing anything but cooperating with the CIA (although...  we'll get onto that in a moment). Taking him out seems like plain and simple  murder, and while this is an intriguing new shade of grey to bring into the  final trio of episodes, it's not going to be easy to root for Quinn going  forward. We'd say the same about Estes, but really, has anybody ever been  rooting for Estes?
Brody is an intriguingly unreliable narrator, and so  when he was recounting his experience to Carrie and the team, talking about the  car battery and the threatened torture, it was fascinating just trying to work  out whether the visual flashbacks we saw were meant to be the objective truth,  or the version of the truth he was telling, or maybe even the truth as he  remembered it, in his traumatised and sleep-deprived state.
But later,  we saw Brody intentionally leave out a detail of the story - where he prayed to  Allah alongside Abu Nazir - and we saw it play out, which seems to indicate that  we were seeing the reality of what happened, rather than an enactment of Brody's  story.

If that's the case, though, would  Nazir really have found it so easy to keep trusting Brody? Admittedly the excuse  he gave about being afraid for his family was a good call and probably would  have played as convincing (since it's not in any way a lie), but nonetheless,  Nazir's talk about how he trusts in Brody because Allah trusts in Brody seemed  awfully confident. Then again, he had just made what Carrie called "a clear  threat" to Brody's family, so maybe his confidence came solely from the fact  that he knew Brody would do anything to keep them safe.
What with all the  intrigue surrounding Brody and Quinn, this was a comparatively Carrie-light  episode, but it was refreshing to see her keeping it together so well under the  circumstances. After last week ended with her screaming "They're gone. They're  just GONE," this would have been a prime opportunity for some hysterical tears,  but instead she was quiet and relatively composed and clearly going through  hell, but keeping it all in. A nice change for Claire Danes's  performance.
Meanwhile, on the home front, we have a confession to make.  We were wrong about Mike. He lost us big time earlier in the season, with his  dull-witted solo investigation and his being led around by an organ other than  his brain, but he completely won us over this week with two key scenes.
First off, he told off Dana, and in doing so finally gave her the  authority and sense of security she's been desperately needing. Her mini-tantrum  about being moved from the house was supremely annoying and we were yelling  inwardly for her to shut up and stop being such a brat. But instead, Mike was  all "Get your s**t together, this is happening, and you don't speak to me like  that," and it was awesome. Because as irritating as Dana can be, all the poor  girl really seems to be looking for is some stability, and a sense that the  adults in her life have things under control.

Secondly, we're all for bros before  hoes, and so a big part of our warming to Mike this week was his acknowledging  that Brody was once his best friend, and even semi-defending him to Dana. Brody  really needs a bro. Can we get that on a T-shirt? It feels like a slogan that  could catch on.
Brody really could use a friend, though (and not the  kind of "best friend" who's concealing a handgun in his jacket, Quinn). Sad  though it is to admit, the satellite phone call felt more like an intrusion than  anything; the Brodys are more of a family unit without him, and it really  showed. Although, did Dana really have to refuse to even speak to him? After how  much of last season she spent favouring him over Jess, it's hard not to roll  your eyes slightly at the complete surly 180 she's done.
But on balance,  we were just fine with Jess slipping into the guest bedroom with Mike. This  season's been distinctly sexually tame compared to the first, but between Carrie  and Brody's shenanigans last week and this scene, they're certainly making up  for lost time. Hell, Jess's negligee alone was more erotic than 80% of what's  been happening this season.
We're sure viewers aren't going to be  complaining, but would you really wear that to bed with your two teenage  children, even if you were planning on slipping into the guest bedroom later on  in the night? Dana has been through enough without having to wake up to an  eyeful of her mum's cleavage, surely.

Final  thoughts: - The anger in Saul's voice as he watched Carrie and Brody  sharing another tender moment was really telling. "This f**ker needs watching  like a hawk." He's plainly sick of watching Carrie get yanked around  emotionally, although it really did seem like Brody was being genuine with her  this week. - We don't want Brody dead, but it would almost be worth it to  see how Carrie reacted to Estes when she found out. We're thinking she would  straight-up claw his eyes out. Both sockets. - So Quinn's only book is a  copy of Great Expectations. Is he just brushing up on the original  before seeing the new movie, or is there a deeper significance to the Dickens? - It was  sweet to see a bit of bonding between the Brody children this week, but really,  could they be more hilariously at odds? Dana's all smart-mouthed and surly and  knows way too much for her own good while Chris, bless him, is the human  equivalent of a big, happy idiotic Labrador. "This place is sick! There's TVs in  every room! Big screens!" Aww, all the better to watch sports on. - Carrie  and Brody meeting back at the place where they first "met", in the rain, made  the romantic in us swoon just a little bit. DON'T JUDGE US. - How did  anybody in the CIA genuinely think that was going to be Nazir in the car? Why  would he risk being out in the open like that? That really felt like a contrived  moment of tension-building, presumably designed to distract from the real "OMG"  moment with Quinn in the limo. - The welcome resurgence of nudity this week  did make us realise just how much less of Damian Lewis we've seen this season.  We're not convinced that this is a good thing. At all.