Mandy Patinkin: I couldn't get over Homeland plot twist

(UPI) -- Mandy Patinkin was as stunned as the rest of us when he first read the major plot twist that shocked Homeland fans at the end of Sunday's episode, "Game On."

"When I read what happened... I couldn't get over the creativity of the writing team," Patinkin, who plays tough-love CIA director Saul Berenson in the Showtime hit series. "I mean, I read that... I couldn't believe what they'd done."

Spoilers from the first four episodes of Homeland's third season follow.

For many Homeland fans, the relationship between Saul the troubled sometimes-CIA officer played by Claire Danes is at the heart of the show. So up until the moment at the end of episode four, when Carrie revealed she and Saul had been working together all along, watching him seemingly throw his protégé under a bus was particularly difficult to watch.

But seeing the pair come together, as Carrie breaks down in tears while Saul gives her a fatherly hug, was well worth the wait.

Even Patinkin said it was that relationship that drew him to the script in the first place.

"I felt a great deal for someone struggling with bipolar issues in the midst of trying to maneuver the world toward peace," he said, of Danes's character. "I could see immediately the potential for it, but as I became more involved with it, the nerve it touched for me was the lost art of listening that I feel we suffer from everywhere in our country and our Congress, the world at large."

"I think it asks us on a family level -- both the family of Saul, the Brody family, Saul and Carrie, the FBI, the people of the United States of America, the people of the world -- to try to learn to listen to each other again."