5x11 Our Man in Damascus

8.5/10. There was what seemed to be a recurring theme in this episode, and it was an interesting one - whether a personal cost is worth the greater good.

It started with Allison, asked to weigh the lives of all those individuals who would be hurt or killed by a terrorist attack in Berlin, with her own personal freedom and financial security. She obviously chooses the latter, but it's an interesting position to put the character in. It's arguable whether she had crossed the moral event horizon so far. Sure, she'd played the CIA for suckers to the Russians after being caught in a similar position, but there's a certain "it's all in the game" quality to the double-crosses among spooks. And yet there's something about shooting an innocent person, one who believes she's been framed, in order to save her own skin and ensure a terrorist plot goes forward that feels unforgivable.

Allison has been one of the most interesting and compelling additions to the show this season, and much of that is due to the actress, who tells so much of the character's story with her expressions, and who has the perfect "I'm faking, not acting" tone when she talks to Saul after the attack.

Mandy Patinkin as Saul is another actor who brings his A-game every episode. In his story, the question is whether the possibility of preventing a terrorist attack justifies harassing an innocent person who may know something about it. When that man commits suicide, the fact that Ingrid (who is also great) just keeps rolling, and Saul has to stop to process and tap out for a moment is a quiet commentary on that idea. Saul is an old hand. He's been through this sort of thing before, but the bodies keep piling up, and even he can't help but feel like he's had enough when his hard-nosed (if softer than the Germans') interrogation leads a man to take his own life.

And then there's he and Carrie risking Quinn's life in the hopes that it will prevent the same attack. Again, there's the same issue of balancing a single life to potentially save dozens, if not hundreds more. It's heartbreaking to see Carrie clearly conflicted, using her genuine feelings for Quinn to try to bring him back to consciousness, but then aghast at herself when he provides nothing useful and seems worse for wear. The fact that they're playing in the space between Carrie the spy devoted to stopping terror at any cost, and Carrie the human being who feels a connection to this poor man who's spent most of the season in some state of being near death's door is interesting moral territory.

Even Laura Sutton, likely my least favorite recurring character this season, has an intriguing storyline where she puts her own safety and security and job on the line for what she believes is the greater good. When she threatens to release the hacked documents until she's given access to the man being held by German Intelligence, it seems far nobler than her general browbeating of the intelligence apparatus to Carrie or During or whomever, not just because it's for one man, but because she sees it as for every man, as her standing up for common citizens everywhere, and every time that a government decides it can suspend people's rights because of an imminent threat. It may seem misguided, at least to me (who knows how many lives will be lost if those documents are released -- though Lockhart handing over documents to terrorists didn't seem to have too much collateral damage last season), but there's at least something that feels self-sacrificing about it.

And then there's Qassim, who starts to question whether the larger goal of driving the West out of his homeland is worth the smaller, but still very significant loss of life -- from the woman in a hijab to a father and daughter -- that the attack would inflict. Again, there's a personal cost to these innocent people that Qassim cannot shake, even in the face of his larger goals, goals that seem all the more hollow when Professor Aziz is an atheist who is disdainful of the country that took him in.

Of course, in the background of all this high-fallutin' thematic material, there is the veritable ticking time bomb of an impending terrorist attack that gives the episode a sense of urgency through it all. We see Carrie at her best once more, running down leads and talking her way through corrupt Hezbollah leaders, good Samaritan doctors, and even strangers on the subway to try to save the day. There's an excitement, a build to all of this that feels very earned and well-realized after the progression of the season as a whole. Let's see if Homeland can close it out at as high a level as the show has been able to maintain so far.