Homeland recap: season three, episode three – Tower of David

Brody in a hoodie … very Eminem. Photograph: Kent Smith/Showtime

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching the third series ofHomeland at UK broadcast pace. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode two – and if you've seen later episodes, please do not leave spoilers.

Catch up with Rebecca Nicholson's previous episode blogposts

"You are a naughty boy. A naughty, naughty boy"

Perhaps Homeland has been on the same stuff as Brody. That's the only reason that the reintroduction of a key character, along with some gang activity and people-smuggling, could make for such a boring hour of television. On top of the crawling pace, it felt like a different show entirely, again, as if the Dana's Creek (thanks to blog regular Ben McCrory) interlude last week had been a test run to see if they really needed to bother making Homeland like Homeland any more. I really wanted this season to get back to basics. The first episode suggested it might. After this week, I'm starting to lose hope.

Brody is in Venezuela, having been shot on the Colombian border. Dellum, a man who sounds like Kevin Spacey and reminds me of a Buffy villain, gets the bullets out of his belly and gives him a nice dose of heroin. I have no idea why he spends the episode imparting dubious world-weary wisdom; it's a horrible, hammy role.

There's a $10m reward on Brody's head, and it doesn't matter if he turns up dead or alive. It's not clear why (or really, if) El Nino is protecting him. El Nino knows Carrie Mathison. So does Brody. That's as much as we get. There's obviously something more to it: El Nino kills a man for stealing his possessions, and kills policemen, an imam and his wife for shopping Brody to the police after he escapes. He doesn't want the bounty, so what does he want? And who does he work for?

Meanwhile, Homeland has abandoned any sense that it respects the intelligence of its audience by hammering home the fact that there are PARALLELS between CARRIE and BRODY. She's medicated and imprisoned. He's medicated and imprisoned. They don't know who to trust. They're the same, do you see?

In hospital, Carrie is attempting to be more cooperative. Her consultation with Doctor Recap, who reminds us what Saul told the committee, is touch-and-go, but there's a sense that she's trying to get out of there. A lawyer pays her a visit – not Saul, as she expected – but she's cogent enough to suspect he's recruiting her as an asset. The only interesting aspect of Carrie's storyline right now is whether she's actually paranoid, or whether the CIA really is out to get her, or whether it's a mix of both.

As the show fades out on Carrie and Brody – the same, do you see? – they don't even bother to chuck in a cliffhanger. Come on, Homeland. You're making me miss Dana. You can do better than this.

Notes and observations

• Brody's hoodie and walk were very Eminem.

• Carrie asked her nurse for the name of her visitor, to no avail. If I were a crack CIA agent, my next question would be, "Did he have an increasingly wild beard, or did he look like Rupert Friend?" rather than abandoning the line of enquiry.

• "Where do you think you're going?" "Out." This is a replica of the conversation I had with my mother every single night in 1998.

• It was nice of Esme to learn English so quickly, rather than Brody bothering to learn any Spanish.

• More on bad bankers – El Nino explains that David funded the construction of the tower, then left when the economy collapsed, which is why it's now full of squatters.

• When Dellum said, "the world outside can be judgemental and cruel", I thought, being misunderstood is the least of Brody's troubles, what with being the world's most wanted terrorist and all.

Quote of the week

• "It's like the hole in Iraq" – Brody explains the very explicit parallel that has already been made in moving images