My So-Called ‘Homeland’
The histrionic finale of this incoherent season just confirmed our suspicions: Carrie is Angela, Brody is Jordan. If only everyone would just grow up
[WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND] My feed was alive with the sound of gasping, fa-la-la-la. Homeland’s season-three finale was weighted down with so much melodrama, I half-expected Carrie to break into an aria. I mean, at this point, why not? Thank God we’re on cry-atus until next fall — I don’t think I could take much more of Claire Danes’s crumpled weepy face, and I say this as a fan of hers. Though if I want to remain a fan, I have to quit this show.
Because what I’m not a fan of: hate-watching TV shows. As a working mother, I don’t have time for it. But I am, by nature, an optimist, so this season, I stuck with Homeland, even as I cringed through those first few weepy episodes. Where was the crazy, reckless Carrie, whose breakdowns emboldened her, and gave her the hubris her sane male counterparts naturally assume? And whose manic obsessiveness lent her the ability to recognize patterns and see what others couldn’t? “Cassandra-complex” Carrie — now that’s my girl.
Halfway through season two, the writers appeared to have derailed Homeland’s international-spy-thriller story line and reignited a sparkless love story between Carrie, the CIA operative, and her charge, Nicholas Brody, the U.S. Marine-turned-Al Qaeda-sleeper-cell senator. Yeah, that guy who killed the vice-president (okay, no one cried over that one). And was believed to have obliterated 200 people at Langley. And most definitely a handful of people in between. Brody, the sniper slash terrorist slash then-prospective-senator slash whatever he was — that guy — was supposed to have been killed off in the first season. Truth be told, we would have been sad to see Damian Lewis go as early as season one, seeing as he was the most compelling character on the series. But by the end of the season two, we were ready to bid him adieu, as the writers had planned. And yet, the producers capitulated to the demands of the network and ruined the story. So there he was, “the cockroach,” anguishing in exile in Caracas, fake-seeking asylum in Iran so he could betray his fellow Muslims on behalf of the CIA, who would in turn sell him out and literally hang him out to dry. (No offense to the brilliant Lewis, but even he acknowledged it was time to go, as he hinted loudly in an interview with Stephen Rodrick in Men’s Journal.)
And, Carrie. Oh, Carrie. Man O Manischewitz Guberman was she ever unbearable this season, with a man-crazy madness that rendered her whiny, adolescent, and just plain pathetic. In the first few episodes, we watched her pining for Saul, beckoning him to get her out of the bin he committed her to. She was all cryface all the time. I was beckoning to my wife to get me out of the bin that she committed me to — Homeland — because I was ready to bail. And then came the denouement that was meant to save the day: Saul and Carrie were in cahoots (yes, I said “cahoots”) this whole time. He only pretended to sell her out and have her committed. Ah, that’s the ticket. No, it doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll roll with it. I was that eager to make my relationship with Homeland work. Because, what else was I doing with my Sunday nights? I had to hook up with something: My grief over losing Breaking Bad was unbearable!
But as with every fraught relationship built on memories and transference, ours was destined to fall apart. Because no sooner was I rededicating myself to Homeland, then another weird plot point revealed itself: Carrie’s pregnancy. From her tryst with Brody four very eventful months earlier.
An incredibly illogical timeline? Yes. It. Is.
There is a lot to pick apart about Homeland — and so many of us have already swooped in like vultures. Each episode was like an all-you-can-eat buffet of flaws and incoherence and just plain “wha’happeneds”. But the “romantic saga” alone, especially as depicted in the finale, is entrée aplenty. Never have I listened to more inane dialogue or sensed less of a frisson between two people having a clandestine love affair than I have Brody and Carrie. So much is on the line: Brody is in Iran, having just risked his life to fulfill a mission for the CIA to kill General Akbari. Carrie swoops in and whisks him off to a safe house. And then we delve into My So-Called Life territory. Angela, I mean, Carrie asks him, as if he’s been ignoring her in the hallways, and not, you know, fearing for his life as an enemy of the state: “Do you want to tell me what’s going on with you?”
Someone might want to remind Alex Gansa that Claire Danes is no longer playing the adolescent angst queen, that she’s now an accomplished operative in her thirties named Carrie Mathison, one who might ask questions more appropriate to a man she knows has a mark on his head. The man whose life she’s protecting, and whose baby she’s carrying. Egads!
So she tells Jordan Catalano, I mean, Nick Brody, that she’s pregnant from their li’l shag four months earlier, and underlines it with a line that is supposed to yank the tears right out of our ducts and his.
“I happen to believe that one of the reasons I was put on this Earth was so that our paths would cross,” she confesses. “And yeah, I know how crazy that sounds.” (It should make our hearts thump, right? Pfft.)
“I don’t think that sounds crazy at all,” he says. “I think it sounds like the only sane fucking thing left to hold on to.” (Meh.)
Despite the fact that we have two great actors exchanging these lines, even they can’t make them ring true. Or even ding the camp bell.
“Well, okay then,” Carrie responds, and when they both smile, you know shit’s gonna go down. Why? Because she assures him Saul’s got his back. And we’ve seen how well that’s worked all season. And so even Señor Cucaracha, the man who has endured gunfire, drugs, and could probably walk away unscathed from a nuclear explosion, knows the gig is up. This time, Brody’s ready to skedaddle (as is Damian Lewis). The executioners spool him up on a crane in the public square, the people cheer as he dangles by his neck, while Carrie bangs herself against the fence like a wild monkey in protest. Because she feels feelings.
And yet, four months later, we see Carrie back in the States, practically get into bed (not literally) with her new CIA boss, Lockhart, who gives her a new plum mission in Istanbul. She’s ready to give up her kid for adoption for this. Oh, and because she’s scared of being a crap mom (but really, she wants to go to Istanbul and baby’s gonna cramp her style). Carrie asks — but does not plead with — Lockhart to honor her true love as an American hero by giving him a star at a ceremony. He outright refuses. Does she throw one of her famous shit fits? Does she get all Erin Brokovich slash Norma Rae on his ass? Hellz no. She goes to the ceremony, lurks around afterward, whips out a Sharpee, and draws that damn star on the wall herself. That’s all Brody gets, a star drawn on with permanent marker by Carrie, who will move on. With marker that will be scoured off. Now that’s love. Huh. Brody, ya died in vain, you did. And that’s your so-called girlfriend. You lost your family for this? And we lost three years’ worth of Sunday nights. And none of us can get them back.
Onward, TV-watching soldiers.
