'Homeland' Recap: "Imminent Risk"
Cameron Lee 20′ / Emertainment Monthly Contributor
Spoiler Alert: This recap contains spoilers for 6×07 of “Homeland”
Dar (F. Murray Abraham) is a character that has lurked in the shadows in most seasons and is an uncomfortable presence whenever he’s on screen. This week’s episode not only provided us with revealing Dar’s part in the unwinding conspiracy, but it started to finally put the pieces together regarding the season’s plot.
Carrie (Claire Danes) had a season-low episode this week. Carrie goes to pick up Frannie from school but child services tells her that they have picked up Frannie. The women in charge tell Carrie that they have determined that Frannie is at risk for further harm after the incident with Quinn. Carrie is quite upset about this, but thankfully her case will be presented to a judge in only a day. The next day Carrie and her lawyer partner, Reda, go to court to argue for Frannie’s return to Carrie. Child services defame Carrie with her mental health record including her bipolar disorder, which is evidence from their interview with Frannie that they couldn’t have possibly procured honorably. They also slandered her with the fact that she kept a loaded gun with her when Frannie was sleeping. The judge puts Frannie in a foster home and Carrie is crushed.
Carrie goes home and slumps down on a wall to cry (Claire Danes continues to have the best cry face on TV) and she starts drinking–a Carrie tradition dating back to season 1. She drunkenly calls the President-Elect (Elizabeth Marvel) and asks if she could help her out. She tells Carrie that her request is unethical and asks if she has been drinking. We then cut to the social worker who took Frannie away to reveal that Dar had told her all the information needed to win the case. He also hired the social worker to purposefully take Frannie away. Earlier in the season, Dar stood outside Frannie’s school when Carrie came to pick her up, a clear indication that he was planning something when he told her “You have a nice daughter.”
Javadi (Shaun Toub) arrives in New York to report his findings to Saul (Mandy Patinkin). Javadi gets kidnapped by three Iranian men who accuse him of being a traitor. They torture him by ripping out his fingernails, but he gets saved by a former military friend named Amir (Alain Washnevsky) who shoots his captors and rescues him. Javadi meets up with Saul and tells him that Nafisi was actually working for Mossad and that Saul’s whole trip was just a ruse. Saul asks Javadi to meet with the President-Elect to confirm that there is no parallel nuclear program which he agrees to. Javadi goes up to Amir who was listening to the whole conversation and shoots him in the head. Javadi asks Saul for help burying the body.
Dar at this point seems like this season’s puppet master. It seems like an oddly specific plan Dar is enacting all to undermine a incoming president. It could be revealed that there is another player in this plot that we don’t know about yet. But for now, Dar appears to be this season’s antagonist. Which should make Carrie’s and everyone else’s life a living hell but also provide us with a very compelling character to root against.