Another season has bitten the quivering bottom lip. We’re now condemned to spend 12 months worth of Sunday evenings without laying eyes on the ugliest cryer in the history of images captured on a Canon 5D camera. Sorry Clare Danes, but this CANNOT be news to you!
But she cried in tonight’s season finale and with good reason. Quinn is dead….or is he??? Well, for all intents and purposes, let’s say he was shot to death while trying to save Carry and President Elect Keane in a completely implausible scene. He drove the special “armored” car out of the garage of the hotel that served as her transition team’s HQ.
But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.
If you remember from last week, Carrie figured out a squad of mercenary Delta Force members were sent to the hotel under the guise of protecting Keane but really, all they wanted was to whack Quinn. The trained assassin was set up in a fake website, entitled Toxic Soldier. The site contains posts stating he wants to 86 Keane, which sets up everything in motion for killing Quinn. He and Carrie rush to the hotel. He stays in the crowd to sniff out some of his former Delta Force brethren, while Carrie heads inside.
Just as she’s trying to explain this “delta farce’ to Saul, Keane and her staff, they’re told there’s a credible bomb threat in a lower floor, so they evacuate, but Dar calls Carrie as several decoy cars exit the building, he tells her that Keane’s life is in danger.
“”No shit!, screams a very angry Carrie pissed as hell at Dar who spent the entire season using daughter Frannie and Family Services to control her.
Dar tells her to think about it : a bomb makes no sense. The building is swept constantly by Secret Service. The goal, he says, is to get Keane’s vehicle out on the street., making her a sitting duck. Carrie concludes that Dar is a prick, but a prick who in this case, is telling the truth, so she throws herself in front of Keane’s car just as the two decoy cars which just left the parking garage, blow up.
Carrie, Keane and one Secret Service agent run amuck through a now abandoned hotel running from two DF guys. Carrie and Keane separate from the agent who ends up on the wrong side of a government issued M4 carbine. They hide in an elevator and of course, Quinn finds them and guides them down to the President Elect’s SUV in the garage. Quinn tells Carrie to cover Keane, he takes the wheel and exits the parking garage. He stops the vehicle briefly—to the left are two bombed out, burning cars; to the right, a street lined with DF soldiers, with guns aimed at him and closing in. He makes a career decision, and goes for it, stepping on the gas, heading right into the incoming gunfire and gets shot up all to hell. He dies behind the wheel a few blocks away, surrounded by bystanders documenting the whole thing with their smart phones. So, irony of ironies, the man who clsimed he could kill so readily because he had no heart, died after being shot in the heart.
Fade to black and it’s six weeks later.
Keane is president, having taken the oath of office behind closed doors, under massive security. This doesn’t sit well with Brett O’Keefe, the Alex Jones type and it’s freaking out a lot of top brass in the CIA, NSA, FBI….hell, maybe even NASA, ASCAP, SAG, and every acronym known to man. Keep in mind the new president has no idea how deep the Get Keane conspiracy goes. So, at her request, Carrie meets with representatives from several security organizations, partly to feel them out for culpability and partly to assure them that the rumors of a mass round up by Keanian Brown shirts ain’t gonna happen.
But It already has happened to Dar. Keane said she’d put his ass in jail.
Campaign promise #1: √
During a prison visit with Saul, Dar says what he did–his attempt to discredit Keane was unforgivable, but not wrong. He insists something isn’t right with the new president, she’s unfit for office, she’s odd and decidedly un-American. Saul shows no reaction.
In the meantime, Carrie is in the Oval Office, and Keane offers her a Senior Advisory position. She’s flattered and tentatively accepts, insisting she must clear it with her daughter. Then, something odd happens: Keane hands Carrie a file on the Baltic States, but insists she reads the top secret report immefistely the Oval Office. Why is it strange, you ask? Well, for starters, Carrie hadn’t officially accepted the job yet and there was a creepy vibe about Keane. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Turns out, she used Carrie for reasons that aren’t that clear to me. Everyone who met with Carrie earlier is now being “detained”with handcuffs, a perp walk and camera crews taping the whole thing. This includes Saul. Yes Saul!!! Carrie is livid and heads to the Oval Office and demands to see Keane, but she’s not only forbidden to see the President, she’s forcibly removed from the West Wing. She’s screaming at Keane through a closed door. And sitting at her desk motionless….and emotionless is Keane, ignoring Carrie’s screams, even as the Dolby effect kicks in as Ms Mania is dragged down the hall. On a Keane’s face is that same creepy expression. Maybe Dar is correct. As we say in Texas, ‘the girl ain’t right’.
Is Peter Quinn dead? I doubt it. They made a big deal about not making a big deal about his death. In the epilogue, he was only mentioned once resgarding his memorial service and that means no coffin, no body and probably no death. We only saw him dump over, blood dripping from his lips but Mein Gott, how many times have we seen that happen to this impervious beast of a man? And when Keane asked if he was dead, Carrie said yes, but in a rather squirrelly way, I’d bet he’s in hiding since he was the target of a hit. I’ll bet a bottle of my favorite intoxicant, he’ll be back for season 7 and certainly season 8 when every cast member gets offed. How else can Homeland end?
Great ending to season 6. The show was compelling and intriguing, didn’t want it to end…BUT…was it just me or did the lines often blur between who was the focus of the conspiracy; was it Keane, Quinn or both? Dar started the Keane campaign, but he’s always made it clear he cared deeply for Quinn. So, how did Quinn get mixed up in this and who did the mixing? And why? Who escalated it? Who made it go “deep state”? What did I miss?
Guess, I’ll have wait one agonizing Homelandless year to find out the answers to those questions and so many others.
And one final note: When Carrie is back in New York apartment waiting for a social worker home visit, a very drunk Max (her former CIA colleague and cyber wunderkind), shows up on her front door. He says something garbled about how horrible it is ‘what they’re doing’ but she dismisses him to the downstairs bedroom where Quinn stayed. She tells him to be quiet, she wants the home inspection to go well, because she really, really, really wants her daughter to come home. The inspection goes great, the social worker leaves, confident that a new court date can be arranged.
Carrie then heads downstairs to deal with Max. He’s passed out on the bed, but she looks around the room, Quinn’s clothes are on the floor where he left them months earlier. Tidy up much, Carrie?? And does that mean Quinn never changed clothes??? Uh….eeeew!
In the middle of stuffing all his belongings in a garbage bag, she hears an audible creak in the floor above her. She notices it, but does nothing about it. Really???? An ex-CIA spy who’s just been through hell and back, trained to suspect everyone and trust no one hears someone in her apartment and does nothing???
And lastly, Carrie finds a book in drawer among Quinn’s effects. In it, is an envelope filled with photos of Carrie and Frannie and of Quinn’s child. She starts crying. Some might think it’s because she misses Quinn or that she realized via the photos that he really cared for her, for Frannie, for his son. He was a hard man unlike any other but like most others, had/has the capacity for love. I think Carrie cried because it touched her and made her realize just how much she misses her own daughter. And perhsps she misses normalcy…whatever that means to her.
Quinn? Carrie knows he’s okay, somewhere safe, recuperating from bullet wounds and a stroke and that means learning to talk again and walk again….this go round, unlike Ratso Rizzo (that reference is for classic movie buffs and/or those of a certain age).
