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“Homeland”: Are you a monster?

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Previously on “Homeland”: Everything we thought the entire season was going to be about took place in two episodes. Over the course of these past two episodes (4 and 5) — less than 120 minutes of television — Brody’s terrorist tendencies became known to the CIA, he was brought in, detained, turned and sent back out into the world, a troubled double agent. It’s as if “Homeland” jumped into the air, but instead of coming back down to Earth, landed — like Super Mario could — on some invisible platform in the sky and walked through a previously unseen door into a whole new world. Except that unlike a video game, all the intense, tempestuous, shocking developments involved two people sitting very, very still and talking, vulnerably to each other. Give or take a hand stabbing and a hit and run, last night’s episode was a restrained classical duet, so much more thrilling for being oh so quiet.

“Homeland’s” game changer

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

[Warning: Spoilers on last night’s episode ahead.]

“Homeland” has always been a thrilling show, but last night it outdid itself — not with anything as claustrophobic as least year’s suicide-vest bunker scene or the threat of violence, but by brazenly debunking any expectations about where and at what speed it's headed. At the beginning of the episode, the CIA was setting up a covert surveillance team on Brody, in hopes that he would lead them directly to his handlers and Abu Nazir’s new plot against America. This is a story line that most shows would devote at least a few episodes to. Not “Homeland,” which had spent much of last season surveilling Brody. By the end of the episode, Carrie — deciding, perhaps wrongly, that Brody had made her — went up to his hotel room and confronted him. “It reeks, you know, your bullshit,” she said. Letting loose her anger, she went in on high, beginning, “Do I want to be friends with a demented ex-soldier who hates America?” Surprised by her vitriol, Brody said, “I liked you, Carrie.” “I loved you,” she spat back. The agents stormed the room, threw a hood over his head, and took him away. Brody is now in custody and whatever I imagined this season would look like disappeared as well. Who knows what comes next? What a great feeling.

“Homeland”: The reckoning

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 05:59:00 +0000

There’s a reckoning on the horizon and we’re getting closer and closer to that moment where the full extent of Brody’s damage and duplicity will be revealed. It’s bittersweet to realize there may be no happily ever after for Brody. We have long known that Brody endured the unendurable. We have seen how he was tormented and how he is still tormented. The depths of his suffering have made us root for him, have made us want there to be some way for Brody to find a way back to himself but that possibility grows ever dimmer.

Saul turns up at David Estes' house to show him the video of Brody. Estes tries to grapple with this new complication. They decide to put a full surveillance team on Brody, to try and smoke out his handler. Saul suggests running the operation off campus, with outsiders and, of course, Carrie. Estes approves but is sending Saul “a guy” to run the operation. Estes can't believe Carrie "called it” — but of course we can. Time to exhale a sigh of relief as he states the obvious, a skill Estes has honed quite nicely since we’ve gotten to know him.

“Homeland”: State of co-dependence

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

“State of Independence” is the title of this, the third episode, and also the state that eludes both Brody and Carrie, and one each of them so eagerly seeks. Both Brody and Carrie yearn to be independent of their respective demons. And Brody wants to extricate himself from the implacable Abu Nazir. As for Carrie, she’d love to shake her reputation as a nutcase that is keeping her from her job at the CIA. That job, as we know, is her life, even though they use her like a one-night stand.

In the Beirut airport, Saul is taken to a back room, his diplomatic papers providing him no immunity from a search of his briefcase. They ask if he’s Jewish, a loaded question. Saul tells them he’s “American.” The soldiers rifle through his bag and locate the computer chip. The official pockets it, and I can’t help worrying that Saul’s proof Carrie isn’t crazy has just fallen into enemy hands — especially when he warns Saul, to “never come back to Lebanon.” But wave of relief! On the plane, Saul removes a chip hidden in the locking mechanism of his briefcase. Spies—they are so clever.

“Homeland”: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Brody

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:48:00 +0000

THE OPENING CREDITS of Showtime’s "Homeland" are a fever dream. The title appears in negative over a full-frame shot of a small, blonde girl sleeping as anxious music plays under audio of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 speech announcing an attack on facilities owned by Muammar Qaddafi. Cut to the girl sitting on the floor watching television as the radio newsman announces that the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 has crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland. The little girl practices a trill on her trumpet in her bedroom; she stands in a labyrinth wearing a dress and a lion mask. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush address the nation, emphasizing the words America, aggression, terrorism. The girl, now older and looking weary, opens her eyes. Panicked people run through the streets of New York City; a smoke plume rises in the distance over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Homeland”: In Carrie we (should) trust

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

We’re two episodes into the season, and already the major narrative threads for each of the main characters have revealed themselves: For Brody, they regard how long he can conceal the truth of his allegiance to Abu Nazir, and the depth of his mental damage. And, for Carrie, how long the CIA will leave her out in the cold because they believe her to be too mentally unstable. If tonight’s episode is any indication, the answer is, not long.

The title of this episode is called “Beirut Is Back,” but it could have just as easily be called, “Carrie Is Back” because we see her on top of her game, lucid, sharp and ready to get the job done. We’re in Beirut as the morning call to prayer sounds throughout the city. In a mosque, women pray, and among them, Fatima Ali, Carrie’s CIA asset, who is the first wife of Hezbolla district commander Abbas Ali. Outside of the mosque, Carrie is there to greet Fatima who wants to know if the $5 million reward for Abu Nazir is still on offer — there are bills to pay, you know. She also has other requests: passage to the United States, which is always an interesting prospect, this idea of the United States as a promised land, even in this day and age. Carrie assures her safety, so Ali gives up the goods: Nazir is meeting her husband the next day in Beirut. The CIA can kill them both, Ali says blithely. Marriage is complicated.

“Homeland”: Pledging allegiance

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 04:01:00 +0000

The last we saw of Carrie in season one, she was rewinding memories in her mind of the time she spent with Brody, desperately trying to recall the name “Issa” before pulses of electricity were applied to her temples — an attempt for Carrie to lighten her burden. Our final image of her as the season finale wrapped: Carrie’s body, convulsing from the ECT. We are left with the exquisite torment of knowing she isn’t crazy at all, that the dangers she foretold are real not imagined, that she loves a man who seemingly doesn’t love her back, and that she is alone with all these burdens.

The second season opens with Carrie convalescing at home, under the care of her shrink sister Maggie, living with her father, and teaching ESL classes to Middle Eastern students to keep busy. She is desperately trying to suppress the pangs of yearning for her former life — the one she loved even though it drove her mad, even though she was betrayed. But she is still recovering from her breakdown, vulnerable: It won’t take much to lure her back in. And indeed she will be tempted.

“Homeland’s” Damian Lewis: Brody will spin out of control

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000

"Homeland," Showtime's heart-stopping psychological thriller, finally returns tonight, picking up six months after last year's high-stress finale. (Remember: Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody flipping the switch on a faulty suicide vest in an enclosed bunker?)

On the occasion of the premiere, I spoke with Damian Lewis, the newly minted Emmy winner who plays Brody. The British actor spoke about what's to come in season two, Brody's predicament and the Brody-Carrie dynamic.

At the end of last season, Brody told Abu Nazir he didn't want to commit violence on his behalf. How committed do you think Brody is to that?

Clearly some form of parting of the ways with Abu Nazir has gone on. In season two, it feels like Brody’s an ex-con. He wants a second chance at life. He is given a second chance at life through the love of his daughter, the daughter who was able to pierce that trancelike bubble he was in, this cocoon he was in. And Brody wants to achieve his political means — political aims — with nonviolent means. That is a parting of the ways from Abu Nazir. That wasn’t the initial mission statement. What’s going on now is Brody is still trying to convince Abu Nazir that there is another way, and that Brody does not want to be caught up in the killing of innocent civilians. It’s a little unclear at this point what he has in mind for Vice President Walden. But I think it’s intended that we believe he is not going to do anything violent toward him. He just needs to insinuate himself, somehow, into American policy and subvert politically from within. And that will cause tension with Abu Nazir down the line.

“Homeland’s” Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody: A deranged love story

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Showtime’s glorious thriller “Homeland” is full-body television: It sets pulses to racing, stomachs to churning, minds to strategizing. Its first season was a visceral 12-episode ascent to an apex of anxiety, the finale leaving its two star-crossed protagonists not so much hanging from a cliff, as smashed at the bottom of a canyon, a beat after their hold had given way. Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) had just failed to set off the bomb in his suicide vest and kill the vice president, while Carrie Mathison, the manic genius CIA agent, played with incandescent focus by Claire Danes, elected to have her short-term memory — and knowledge of Brody’s treachery — wiped out by electroconvulsive therapy.

Season 2, which premieres on Sunday night, picks up six months after the aforementioned events, the action having slowed — temporarily. A fragile, disgraced, medicated Carrie, officially bounced from the CIA, is languidly recuperating, avoiding the spycraft that is her calling. Brody, now a congressman, is being considered as a vice-presidential candidate, while secretly trying to aid the terrorist Abu Nazir without committing violence himself. Carrie is soon called to Beirut for one last job — and you know how those tend to go. The series' thriller engine turns on, turns over and begins to purr. By the end of the first episode, as Carrie gets her groove back, I was fist-pumping. By the end of the second episode, I was doing whatever fist-pumping with every single nerve ending in one’s body is called.