Even The CIA Can't Keep Claire Danes Down: 'Homeland' Season 2

Claire Danes’ Carrie Mathison in Showtime’s riveting Emmy award-winning series, Homeland, returns for Season 2 a beaten woman. Arguably the most intriguing female government agent since Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling, Carrie underwent shock-therapy treatment at the end of Season 1 after her bipolar disorder is revealed and she lost her job at the CIA. Her condition was revealed when Carrie, in a manic frenzy, realized that a rescued American prisoner of war, Nicholas Brody, had turned terrorist and planned to assassinate the Vice President. Carrie foils the plot, but nobody believes her.

Now living a sedate life of gardening and teaching ESL classes, Carrie is called back into action when an informant with intel on a terrorist attack on the U.S. will talk only to Carrie. By now, Brody is a Congressman and a candidate for Vice President. 

At first, Carrie seems a changed woman, lacking focus and confidence. But as the mission progresses, we see glimmers of the old Carrie — like when she flees through a crowded Beirut marketplace after dispatching a bad guy with a knee to his groin, giving in to a suppressed smile. Her mojo is back... But not quite.

At a safe house in Beirut, Carrie suffers a panic attack when once again her superiors doubt her stability, leading her to doubt herself. She confides in her close friend and colleague Saul, "I have never felt so right about anything; and I was so wrong," about her conviction that Brody was a terrorist. 

When the Beirut mission takes a turn for the worst, Carrie throws caution to the wind in her trademark style, ignoring orders and putting her fellow operatives in danger as she takes astronomically high risks to salvage the operation. In a particularly tense scene, Carrie rifles through the apartment of a high-profile terrorist suspect looking for clues, while a highly anxious driver, along with Saul and the informant, wait in an escape car amid a gathering mob. 

Carrie comes away with a key piece of evidence that promises to not only salve her self-doubts, but possibly save the country from another attack, begging the question, "Does the end justify the means?"

Season 2 of Homeland premieres on Showtime September 28.

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