Homeland - S3E3 - Tower of David
Previously, on Homeland: “Uh… Oh… Ah”
“There’s too much Dana!”, you said. “We want Brody back!”, you said. Welp, Brody is what you got in this week’s episode of Homeland. That and we are getting all kinds of warning signs of the kind of shit that can go down in Venezuela, in case any of you were making vacation plans.
The episode opens with some scary looking, automatic weapon toting, get illegal shit done guys in Caita La Mar. A man pulls up in his jeep to deliver a bloodied, bald, and battered Brody to the leader of the pack, a man called El Nino. Brody’s eyes are rolling back in his head even farther than mine when I think about Carrie, and he is bleeding out. El Nino seems to confirm his identity, and then they race off with him in the back of their truck.
El Nino and his crew drive Brody to a Caracas slum through shantytown gates. Brody manages enough strength to pull the potato sack off his face and onlookers are wondering who went and shot a perfectly good-looking White boy. As Brody is looking up from the truck he sees he is being driven into the underground garage of what the locals call The Tower of David; more on that later.
Dr. Feelgood
Here we meet the lanky, and kinda creepy Dr. Graham (Erik Todd Dellums) who is called upon to patch Brody up in a dark, filthy room. Brody is in shock from the loss of blood, but Graham is able to remove the bullet and repair the bleeds with the assistance of a young boy and El Nino’s beautiful daughter Esme; that and heroin, freshly cooked from on a dirty spoon, heroin. Perhaps Brody should have stayed in Canada…I hear they have much better health care.
With Brody recovering under fresh gauze on his H-train, El Nino and Graham hash out some of the details. El Nino assumes that Graham knows who Brody is, but Graham plays, “I didn’t see shit.” However, he would like to inquire why an American fugitive, with a $10 million dollar bounty on his head, dead or alive is being saved by the likes of El Nino. Not to be judgy, but El Nino does have a giant neck tattoo, and no one can trust a dude with an automatic weapon and a giant neck tattoo.
El Nino just says that maybe someone did him a favor once. We can only assume he means Carrie.
Nurse Esme
Brody wakes twice; the first time Esme quickly tops him off like he’s Eric Clapton in a recording studio. Before he nods off he sees someone going through his wallet and removing his watch. The second time he wakes, it’s daylight and Brody has been moved to a concrete patio. As he tries to get out of bed, Esme is there to administer more brown sugar, but he refuses. In the distance he hears prayer calls coming from a local mosque within sight.
El Nino enters the room and explains that he is in Caracas. We learn that it was a group of Columbians that shot him, and that he has a large bounty on his head. The only place he’ll be safe is with El Nino in the tower. Brody wants to know what happened to his passport so he can travel, but El Nino just tells him to rest for now. Esme brings him a fresh set of clothes, and when Brody asks why all the fuss El Nino tells him that he knows Carrie Mathison. Brody’s ears instantly perk up like a Doberman, but that’s all the information we’re getting for now.
Esme is glued to Brody’s side caring for him, even shaving his head. She leaves the 5 o’clock ginger shadow though, thank heavens, because with that gone our squinty eyed former Congressman would look even more like a six foot tall painful erection.
Clearly trying to get stronger, Brody begins taking walks with Esme through the tower slum against Dr. Graham’s request for rest only, landing him bleeding once again and back in front of Graham. More smack is offered, by the good doctor this time, but he again refuses and works through the pain.
The Tower of David
Since Brody managed to stumble half way across the slum, Graham wants to know what he thought of it. Graham relays that they call it the Tower of David, but also refers to it as an “abbess beyond healing”; I’m guessing even with tons of skag. Graham explains its not named for King David, but David Brillembourg, a corrupt banker and investor that died before the tower was completed. Economic collapse soon after meant construction stopped and then came the squatters.
When Brody pries into why Graham is there if he hates it, Graham denies any such thing telling Brody he is there because that is the place that accepts him, not unlike Brody in his current predicament. Of course he does this while stroking the hand of the young child assistant Paco just to make sure we aren’t supposed to totally find him truly likable just yet.
End of the Line
More time passes and Brody is now strong enough to be running laps through the concrete tower. He hears the prayer calls again from the local mosque and has a small moment of peace before he is summoned back to El Nino. They have the man that claims he stole Brody’s passport and information and they give him his day in court by throwing him off the tower on what sounded like a very hard thing. Brody tries to protest, but El Nino reminds him no one can know who and where he is.
Shaken back in his room, Brody gathers the only things he has, a passport and the shirt on his back and tries to leave the confines of the tower’s yard. Guards with guns stop him, and El Nino once again approaches to remind him he’s stuck there, and it’s the end of the line. Brody wants to know if Carrie knows where he is, and El Nino says that she doesn’t want to know, so get back to your goddamn concrete hideout!
She’s Back…To Taking Her Lithium
We cut back to Carrie’s first appearance of the episode and she’s going over her recent acclimation back to lithium with her doctor. She’s gotten off her meds so many times that getting back on them is a breeze for her, she just wants the doctor to tell Saul that she’s better now. He doges whether he’s even in contact with anyone at the CIA, but Carrie is convinced they’re still monitoring her.
Of course, Carrie says she’s much better in one breath, then goes completely looney tunes the next. She couldn’t just accept the praise for her beautiful popsicle stick house in craft therapy, nooooo! She has to take a bathroom break and smash her face into the mirror until she bleeds her own blood. Who wants to take bets she was designing the popsicle stick house of her dreams, where her and Brody would live happily ever after?
Busted by Nurse Abby, who promises to keep quiet about the episode, she tends to Carrie’s wound and lets it leak that someone, a man has come by to check on her. Carrie makes her promise to tell her if he comes by again, certain that it’s Saul.
Escape Plan
Back in Caracas, Esme has agreed to help Brody escape to the mosque. They weave their way through the tower grounds and into the streets while Brody rocks what’s sure to be this Fall’s latest trend, the sleeveless hoodie. Brody explains to Esme he is a Muslim, and that as long as they can get into the mosque, the Imam won’t turn him in. Esme asks to come with him, obviously crushing on his fly outfit, but that’s not going to happen. Brody is granted entrance into the mosque by the Imam and is probably super safe now.
Or not. Brody is granted a warm shower only to be cold cocked (heh heh) by some sort of mosque security and dragged naked in front of the Imam. He tells Brody he isn’t a Muslim, but a terrorist. The guards open the door to haul Brody off, but El Nino’s men are waiting guns raised and they kill everyone but Brody. They hand him back his clothes with a look like, “Motherfucker, why won’t you listen?”
The Visitor
Carrie has been nose to the window of the Psych Ward’s parking lot hoping to catch when her visitor will arrive. When one finally does, Nurse Abby sneaks her to see him but it isn’t Saul, it’s a lawyer named Paul Franklin. It seems one of the partners at Franklin’s law firm sent him because he wants to speak with Carrie about getting her out of there. Which sounds like a fantastic offer, but Carrie thinks she’s being bartered for as a pawn in a much larger game she wants no part of.
Back in the Hole
After rescuing him once again, El Nino has had enough of Brody’s shit. No more concrete patio, no more laps through the building and definitely no more hanging out with Esme. Brody has a new home and it’s a locked cell that nobody can save him from. But here’s the good news: Graham and Paco make a visit and they leave a Cell Warming Gift of a Junk Bag Lil’ Johnny Heroin Kit just for Brody! Brody insists he can’t take another form of prison like in Iraq, but Graham tells him:
“Everywhere you go, other people die, but you always mange to survive. I’ve noticed that. You’re like a cockroach, still alive after the last nuclear bombs go off.”
They leave him to his cell, and a defeated Brody picks up the tubing, ties off his arm, and says fuck it. Brody, Party of One!
In the final moments, we see both Carrie in her psych ward on lithium, and Brody in his cell on heroin, united in their drugged out funks. Things were so much sexier last season. Drugs are bad, Mmmm-kay?
