‘Homeland’ season 5, episode 9 reaction: Are the writers playing with death?

It has become a trend of television in the year 2015: If you are a popular character, your show will do everything that it can in order to ensure that you are dead, only to make it clear down the road that you are not. “Game of Thrones” is still toying with us when it comes to Jon Snow (we think he’s likely alive), and “The Walking Dead” did a pretty horrendous job for a while there making us believe as though we actually were going to be losing Glenn.

So did “Homeland” do the same thing on Sunday night with Peter Quinn? We hesitate to say that it is an identical situation, but it’s close. Rupert Friend’s character was captured and in great peril, as the terrorist group exposed him to some deadly gas. From there, it seemed in theory like we were watching his death scene, and it was brutal and pretty darn graphic. This had to be one of the least-fun days that Friend has ever had on virtually any set.

Here’s where the show probably differs from the cases of Glenn and Jon Snow: At the end of the episode, we saw Bibi inject Quinn with something, and our guess is that it will be enough to bring him back. It’s almost the equivalent of what we saw on “The Leftovers” earlier this season with Kevin Garvey, a situation that had some things in common with these stories as well.

Ultimately, we think more so than the near-kill, the measure of a show is what they do with this story from here. If “Homeland” uses this near-death as a turning point for the Quinn character and it motivates Carrie and him to new heights, it’s worthwhile. If this was mere exploitation for the sake of shock value, then it’s a total miss and one of the worst things the show has ever done. They have to pay this off, and they cannot wait.

Luckily (judging by one of the previews we’ve already seen for the next episode), they have to plays to.

If you do want to get some more TV news on everything we cover at CarterMatt, be sure to sign up over here for our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Showtime.)