“Hey Saul, great to see you!” is NOT what was said when this scene happened.
Credit: Kent Smith/Showtime
Hey, they changed the quotes around in the intro! That’s the first thing I notice about the second episode in the third season. And like I had hoped, they took out Crazy Carrie’s “I can’t! I WON’T!” and added Saul’s “Another f— up would be fatal.”
Unfortunately they did not include Dana Brody’s salutation to her brother of “Hey dingus.”
That said, Dana owns about half of this episode, and that half was pretty great. Morgan Saylor is reportedly going to attend college next year, but I hope that doesn’t mean we lose an actress of her caliber to the mathematics profession.
The other half of the episode is owned by Crazy Carrie, who kicks off the episode by rapping on Saul’s door and yelling at Mira.
But Carrie’s behavior does beg the question of whether or not being crazy is warranted when situations outside of your control are threatening to cripple your mental stability. She’s pissed that Saul “sold me down the river in front of the f—ing Senate select committee.” Yeah, that’s a good reason to be angry.
Then we see a woman in a scarf getting out of a cab and looking at the wreckage where the Langley building was before entering headquarters. She receives some strange looks for her garb, but we learn she has an ID.
It’s a new featured player, ladies and gentlemen! Introducing Nazanin Boniadi as Fara!
Saul and Quinn are talking about how their big “Wizard of Oz” character takedown operation from last week didn’t seem to yield much valuable information, but they have a new analyst starting soon, when speak-of-the-person-dressed-as-the-enemy-but-who-is-really-a-good-guy, Fara arrives. Saul and Quinn are noticeably irked by her traditional garb.
They spend a requisite five seconds of silence before she asks if something is wrong. After another few seconds of silence they get to briefing her. Quinn is resentful of how new she is.
“So how long have you worked here?” he asks.
“Since the first,” she responds.
“Of the year?”
“Of the month.”
“Eight days,” Quinn grimaces.
Saul complains to Dar Adal that Fara is just “a kid in a head scarf.” And Adal is all, “Bah, that complaint is nothing compared to the bad news I’ve got for you, big bad Berenson.”
I’m paraphrasing of course. But Dar Adal tells Saul that Carrie has called a reporter to tell “her side of the story.”
The funny thing is how they don’t mention what paper it is. When the paper broke the story last week that a CIA agent was sleeping with Brody, we saw Carrie looking at the story in disbelief and it was below the fold, so we didn’t see the title of the publication. Funny, you’d think that would be above-the-fold news. And when Saul encourages Dar Adal to call the editor to shut the story down he says, “We keep her away from these guys, she’ll just so someplace else.”
Regardless if the paper is real or all in a dream that Crazy Carrie had one day, for her to go to any paper is pretty legit crazy, if not just plain dumb. But of course, Dar has plans to stop her!
In the next scene Crazy Carrie is sitting in the generic newspaper’s office with reporter Nicole Hong. There’s a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who goes by that name, but this is clearly a Washington paper, right? Anyway, Crazy Carrie is shaking and doing all sorts of wide eyes as she insists she’s “under attack!” It’s really an awkward position for a reporter to be in, because she’s acting so cray cray that it’s hard to believe her. She’s going forward with her theory that Brody wasn’t responsible for the bombing at Langley. She calls it “the big lie!”
And then, of course, here come the cops to escort Carrie out. There are three of them and they have a psychiatric detention order. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time somebody I was interviewing at the paper was chatting along and three police showed up with a psychiatric detention order, I’d be a man who had 15 cents.
And just like those three interviewees that were forcibly removed on my watch, Crazy Carrie shouts out, “This is complete bulls—! You know that, right?”
Surrrre. Sure, yes, we know that.
But in this age of the anti-hero on TV, this is one of those well-documented instances where we’re not really rooting for the main character. Because at that point, I kind of think that Brody was the bomber, and he just made it look like he was set up. Call me crazy, but — wait, actually, don’t call me crazy. Let’s only call Carrie crazy right now. I’m just not totally sold that he’s innocent. It’s not that I’m like everybody else on the show and thinking he definitely did it, because, well, ya know, as a viewer we got to see some things that the characters didn’t.
Then we see Dana and her mom in a therapy session. Dana isn’t participating in the outside world because as her mom says, “Dana believes she is famous in a bad way.”
How would Jessica Brody not know the word infamous?
The interplay between mother and daughter in this scene is great. When Dana complains that Jessica remodeled the bathroom where she slit her wrists, Jessica comes back with something that you really hardly ever consider with attempted suicide.
“I didn’t remodel it,” she says. “The blood wouldn’t come out of the grout so I had to replace everything, which I did myself with a book.”
The look of sadness on Dana’s face says volumes, which go a little something like: “Are you sh—ting me? I try to end my life and then I complain that my mom wanted to remove any reminders of it, but then she complains how she did it herself with a Time Life book or something?”
In the rehabilitation hospital, she shares a smile with her rehab boyfriend and they mouth “I miss you” to each other.
We then see Crazy Carrie under psychiatric evaluation. She calls her doctor a CIA shill and tells him the reasons why she went off her meds.
“Singing helps, go figure [long crazy breath] and I meditate [long crazy sigh] to stay calm.”
Oh boy, you are not helping your case, Crazy Carrie. She blames her meds for failing to see the signs of what led to the Langley explosion.
Fara calls Saul into the room where she’s been investigating laptops. Nothing originates in Iran, she reports. He’s pissed about her not finding anything, but he’s also still pissed about her scarf, calling it “one big f— you to the people who would have been your co-workers, except they perished in a blast right out there.”
Maybe that’s the “Uh… Oo… Aw…” of the episode’s title? No, there’s no “Aw…” in what he said. Maybe just “Uh,” and “Oof!”
He then tells her to find something or keep her mouth shut. But Fara has a plan! Bring in people from the bank and ask them about wire transfers.
Then Dana is back in the bathroom, at the scene of the crime. She looks at herself in the mirror and then starts a bath. We see fear register on her mom’s face, and fear registers on most viewers’ faces as well. Don’t do it, Dana! You’re not crazy!
Then we see somebody who is crazy. Crazy Carrie is hugging her knees in a psychiatric hospital, looking really nuts. Quinn has come to visit her.
He’s really seeming like a good guy this season. He seems legitimately concerned about her. He’s also letting on that he knows some things that she doesn’t, that people have been targeted, and if she’s not careful, the agency may just wipe her out!
Carrie takes it as a threat and yells “Leave me alone!” doing her best Regan from “The Exorcist” impersonation, minus the projectile vomiting.
In the Brody house, the tub is full, but there’s no Dana in there. Mrs. Brody is freaking out. Dana is outside of the institution where her boyfriend has been committed.“Crazy boy, crazy boy, wherefore art thou?”
But we don’t see what she has texted him, so we’re going to pretend that’s what she has said.
I don’t think we’ve found out the name of Sam Underwood’s character up to this point. Spoiler alert: I can tell you the character’s name, because I’ve finished watching the episode! His name is Leo.
And Leo almost has the distinction of uttering the three words that make up this episode’s title! He says “Aw…” when he’s frustratingly trying to figure out how he can get Dana into the building so they can get it on.
And then they get it on, and it’s a pretty moving romantic scene, but then when we realize it’s teenagers, it feels kinda weird to be moved by it. By the way “moved” is in no way a euphemism.
The morning after is sweet as the two lovers embrace in a pile of laundry.
“We’re not defective,” says Dana. “It’s everything out there.”
“Then I’d rather say in here with all the other crazies,” says Leo.
Dana then takes a selfie of the two. “Aw…” But the other two words of the title line still aren’t uttered.
Then security catches them. “Yowch!”
Jessica Brody is pissed when she picks up her daughter. She tells Dana that Leo is no good for her because he’s unstable.
“Dana, he’s not what you need right now,” she says.
“Maybe he’s exactly what I do need,” she shoots back.
Woah!
Then Dana says that the people in the institution “just yak and yak and yak until the people who are paying for it feel better.”
When her mom huffily says, “I really don’t understand,” she fires back with a “Yeah, that’s right.”
This whole exchange could be “Woah… uh… Dayum!” Not quite the title line, but close.
Back at the house, Dana leads her mom to the bathroom and says her suicide wasn’t a cry for help.
“I wanted to kill myself. I wanted it all to be over and I wanted to die because I could not stand it anymore!”
It’s a goosebump-inducing performance from Morgan Saylor, and makes us feel like she definitely deserved to be our cover star for the weekend edition of Metro this past week. She says that now she doesn’t want to kill herself, and the reason why is the hot dude in the mental institution.
“Dad was crazy,” she goes on to tell her mom. “He was a psycho who did nothing but lie from the minute he set foot in this house and he ruined our lives. It’s the truth, but I am OK now.”
Her mom cries, and you probably did too if you care enough about this show to read this extensive recap.
Meanwhile Crazy Carrie’s dad and sister are getting ready to go to Carrie’s hearing when Saul arrives. Saul encourages Carrie’s family members to convince Carrie to stay inside the psych ward so CIA people don’t try to kill her.
Quinn arrives at Carrie’s hearing to be a character witness. The doctor tells her that she has a good chance of being released to her family. Her sister brings her medication, but then Carrie gets pissed.
Is her freakout part of the plan to stay inside? Doesn’t seem so, but with her action, there’s no way she’s going to be released. She tries to escape and then calls the whole thing a “f—ing sham.”
It’s almost like when Carrie is Crazy Carrie we don’t actually get any real character development. Sure, Claire Danes does a convincing crazy, but these forays into insanity are really just a detour from her growth. That’s probably how people who are actually going crazy feel about it.
We then see Fara and Saul interrogating the bankers who she believes had something to do with funding the attack on Langley. Quinn arrives. The bank members are being all legalese and saying “I wouldn’t know what this refers to” upon looking at the documents.
The bankers’ lawyer asks where they got the information and Fara steps into the spotlight.
“Your client is funding attacks by terrorists on this country and your question is ‘How did you find out?’”
That could be a good “Uh… Oo… Aw…” right there.
But the team are super uncooperative, especially after Fara really lays into them.
“With all respect, ma’am,” says the main banker, “in this country, that’s not the way we ask for help.”
More like “Uh… Oops!”
Quinn gives them a Super Icy Quinn Stare™ (from henceforth known as SIQS) as the bankers get up and leave.
Later in Saul’s office, Quinn asks if the bankers provided any info. Saul says they did not, but he did receive quite a few calls from congressmen, telling him to catch terrorists instead of bothering their lobbyists.
Quinn reports that he went to Carrie’s hearing and saw her being hauled off. He tells Saul he’d never bail on him, but he says, “I want you to know that what’s going on here is not OK with me.”
Yeah, Quinn! Right? He is a good guy, right?
He gives Saul the SIQS, and tells him, “When this is over, I’m out.”
Dayum.
Saul gives his, “hey, c’mon” smile and says, “We’ll see when we get there.”
Quinn continues the SIQS and says “I’m telling you now.”
Yeah, Quinn!
We then see the banker from the meeting at a fancy restaurant. He appears to be stepping outside to take a phone call.
Quinn confronts him. When the guy tells him he doesn’t remember meeting him earlier in the day, Quinn says, “That’s understandable. You were pretty busy lying your ass off.”
Yeah, Quinn!
Quinn continues to hardball the banker, telling him that he knows he lost a colleague within the past week. (He knows because he went to Venezuela to make the guy “lose” said colleague.)
The guy asks Quinn who he is, and Quinn says, “It’s aggravating isn’t it? When someone won’t answer your questions.”
He then gives the guy the SIQS and tells him to watch his step.
Yeah, Quinn! That should have been the name of this episode, shouldn’t it have?
Then we see Fara piecing together a theory with a sudden unexpected bit of help from the bankers (read: Quinn’s threat). But the important information is that it appears some of the funding was coming not just from within Iran, but from within Iran’s government! That and about $45 million in the transactions just disappeared. Saul says that’s the key to finding out.
We then see Dana looking at family photos in the garage and when she puts away the box of pictures she comes across her father’s prayer rug, where she busted him being all “Allahu akbar.” (Click on the link if you will, but pay no attention to the title of the video that this link goes to!) She lays the rug out and cautiously kneels on it, as if to see if any weird terrorism urges will overtake her. Then she just puts her head down.
As the episode wraps up Crazy Carrie is strapped down and injected with meds. In the next scene she is catatonic and clearly feeling the result of the injection, as Saul approaches with his trademark concerned look.
He says he’s sorry.
And she in a very slow druggy drawl, says, “F— you, Saul.”
“Uh… Oo… Aw…” indeed!
Grade: B+
