Reviewed by Rich Jepson.

We’ve now reached the halfway point of the third season and I’m a little concerned about the fact that we’ve only seen Brody appear once so far. Unless the latter half of the season is going to focus more on him (which I guess it will) we’re going to be left with a very unbalanced season of the show.

Majid Javadi (Shaun Toub, Iron Man) was the main focus point in this episode and after last week’s set up I was impressed at how Carrie turned from captive to captor when she faced down the Iranian intelligence officer. But again we find that as soon as the episode gets going the action is delayed so that the final minutes are ripe with drama and excitement.

Delaying his movement to the CIA safe house was laid out early on, just like in last week’s episode where Carrie was delayed for the majority of it to go find Dana, or at least find someone to tell to find Dana. Knowing this was going to happen again felt a little stale as we were no doubt going to be subjected to more Dana-antics and events elsewhere.

With this being the case we found out that it’s pretty cheap to change your name in the US, only $41.14, and that Saul isn’t capable of getting angry even when his wife has been seeing another man. As well as this Dar Adal is clearly making a play for a No.2 position alongside the Senator at the CIA, I’ve contemplated this being the case as Adal doesn’t really have much else to do at the CIA right now.

For the Brodys I think it’s safe to say that their story has run out of whatever steam was left in it. Dana has gone now and well done Jess for not standing in the way of it. The only thing left I can see is if Jess and Mike restart their relationship properly and it follows some sort of curve that eventually links up with Carrie and/or Brody, but that would be stretching it.

Oh and Chris Brody still can’t be given a line to say even when his sister flees the nest, the kid is so bland they should have just cast a cardboard cutout instead or replaced him with a cat or something.

The revenge killing at the end felt very corny. Surely Saul would have checked that Javadi’s ex-wife was not only in a different state, but within a convenient 20 min detour of where Javadi’s house on the golf course was. The actual killing was cold blooded and calculated, although I can’t help think that if a character such as this was so hell bent on revenge – why did he wait this long to do it?

In the final moments we got a taste of Saul’s aggression as it was rightly placed in a punch to the face of Javadi. The history between these two has been hinted at, although I’m confused as to why it’s not been mentioned before. Also, what did Javadi mean about Saul “still risking others”? I get the impression we’re going to find out more about Saul’s past in the next few weeks.

8/10

Scene of the Episode: Knock, Knock – Although it’s fairly obvious to say that this was the best moment, it still felt a little out of place given the sequence of events.