My colleague Mike Hogan wrote about last night's 'Homeland' here and I recommend his weekly review, but I couldn't resist adding a few comments about the Showtime drama's outstanding Sunday episode.

If you're not watching 'Homeland,' you really need to catch up on this gripping drama (which I reviewed here). I already thought 'Homeland' was the best new show of the year, but Sunday's hour was in a different league from what came before it.

As I said in last week's Talking TV podcast, I was a little alarmed by a development in last week's episode -- I thought what happened between CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and former prisoner of war Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) might have been the kind of mistake that would force this promising show down cliched or unsatisfying paths.

I couldn't have been more wrong, and Sunday's episode proved that 'Homeland' knows exactly what it's doing. Within the context of a complex tale about the challenges of combating terrorism, 'Homeland' has proven it knows how to tell a rich, emotionally nuanced tale about the dangers of connection and the price of loneliness.