Homeland season 7 episode 2 review: Saul’s promotion; Carrie’s hacker problem

Homeland season 7 episode 2 was almost a tale of two different storylines — one was pretty interesting and effective, whereas the other was too implausible to altogether buy into.

Let’s start by getting the tough part of the hour out of the way — what was with the whole storyline with Carrie and the hacker? We understand the part of it to a certain extent of Carrie beating the guy up at the end, but the road to get there was a little bit strange and the internet striptease was completely unbelievable. For one, the story made the assumption that this hacker had never been seduced or seen any sort of nudity before in his life. To go along with that, wouldn’t this hacker just record Carrie stripping and use that against her? This whole strategy just didn’t make any sense.

The part of Carrie’s story that was particularly great was seeing her in therapy, where we started to get the realization that even though she’s taking lithium to help control some of her behavior issues, it may have a certain expiration date on how long it works. None of the her new therapists advice did a whole lot when it comes to convincing her to not continue to chase the mystery woman she found last week. She is right seemingly with some of her thinking in terms of a larger conspiracy, but we’re at a point right now in the story where it really doesn’t matter all that much if nobody believes her — also, she doesn’t have the funds to carry any mission out even if she wanted to.

What made Saul’s story the stronger of the two was simply a matter of focus: It was pretty easy to comprehend what was going on with it. He got his promotion and release from prison, and his new orders seem to be pretty clear: Take down O’Keefe, who is a general nuisance to everyone and needs to be contained in some shape or form. While O’Keefe is continuing his rogue broadcasts on the run, Saul managed to track down one of his cohorts and is planning to get some sort of face-to-face meeting. This is one that is probably not going to go altogether well for either Saul or O’Keefe, though that’s not the sort of impression Saul wants to pass along.

Related – Want to preview what lies ahead on Homeland season 7 episode 3?

CarterMatt Verdict

Homeland season 7 episode 2 did a good job, save for the hacker story, of really building up momentum of where Carrie and Saul are as we continue to push forward. They started off this batch of episodes really on the bottom, but the expression “the cream rises to the top” should give you a reasonable amount of hope.

What did you think about Homeland season 7 episode 2 overall? Share some of your thoughts on that subject right away in the comments!

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