Episode 12 | Aired Dec 16, 2012
Carrie's fateful choice about Brody sets the stage for season 3, and whether you'll want to keep watching the show
By Adam B. Vary @EW.com
Did he do it?
That is the question Homeland has left us with at the end of its revolutionary and controversial second season, the question its writers hope will fuel countless debates that will carry us until next fall. On the one hand, we have Nicholas Brody's word to Carrie that he had nothing to do with the car bombing that killed over 200 souls at C.I.A. headquarters, including David Estes and the rest of Vice President Walden's family. On the other hand, we have the fact that Brody's car was used for that bombing — and, more to the point, that practically every single thing we know about the man other than his love for Carrie screams "ARE YOU NUTS?! OF COURSE HE DID IT!"
Then again, this question may be moot. If you scroll down to the comments below, I guarantee there will be plenty of people who have declared themselves done with this show. I suspect for many it will be for two simple reasons: Carrie believed Brody, and Brody didn't die. I've made no secret of my own belief that the best path for Homeland was to do what they'd originally planned for the end of season 1, namely kill Nicholas Brody off, and let Carrie and Saul move on. You can read my argument here, but apparently, the folks at Homeland did not choose to heed my sage advice. Instead, they crafted one of its best directed and acted episodes ever, a masterwork of cinematic scale and deeply felt intimacy. As my colleague Ken Tucker has been contending of late, all of it was designed to make as strong a case as possible that Carrie and Brody's impossible love for each other is the true core of this show, and that letting their love die along with Brody would silence Homeland's beating heart.
They've almost convinced me. For one thing, I'm not nearly certain that Brody did it. And for another, I enjoyed Brody and Carrie's early scenes together so much, I finally understood why the writers feel so strongly that they need to keep Brody alive.
And yet, when Carrie and Brody finally parted ways in the woods along the Canadian border, a very big part of me still wanted Carrie to go all Buffy season 2 on Brody and kill the man she loved knowing he was maybe-possibly-could-be-well-nigh good again. (Of course, Homeland can't avail itself of a metaphysical hell dimension that spits out a naked Brody a few months later after 100 years worth of torment. It's not that implausible.)
At least, that's how I feel right now. It could be how you feel too. Let's work through the episode together, and see if we still feel the same way on the other side. Rather than split off each plot strand individually, though, I'm going to more-or-less take on the episode as we saw it, if for no other reason than its 65-minute runtime is already neatly apportioned into three discrete acts. Starting with...
ACT 1: RETURN TO THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
After a brisk title card that abandoned the show's usual jazz freakout opening credits (something I believe last season's finale did too), and a nervy recap of the last few episodes, we opened in the forested idyll surrounding Carrie's family cabin. "Ah, it's all coming back to me," Brody said as they stepped inside, reflecting on the last time he and Carrie stole away to the woods for some private nookie and unexpected interrogation. Except this time, everything was different. "There's no secrets now," Carrie said with not a small amount of trepidation. Not so strangely, they were both even more nervous with everything out in the open — and consider this the obligatory nod to the fact that everything very well may not have been in the open, if Brody was still secretly working with Nazir, etc.
Actually, in a way, life hadn't changed for Brody. He was still under covert surveillance, this time by Peter Quinn, parked in an empty cabin across the lake, taking in the couple's oblivious domestic bliss with a growing-if-silent sense of unease — especially with David Estes' obsession with seeing it done. "She's unbelievable," Estes told Quinn after learning Brody was with Carrie. "You never made a bad move in your romantic life?" asked Quinn, not realizing Estes' answer to that question is "Yes: Carrie Mathison."
As Jessica began to pack up her soon-to-be-ex-husband's clothes, Carrie and Brody began to voyage furtively into the new territory of their relationship. He juggled potatoes, she fake laughed, he declared "I'm funny," she replied, "Now I know." But then he found the pistol Carrie'd kept during their first time at the cabin, and their cutesy banter turned a bit acrid. "A souvenir from my last visit," Brody said, casually aiming the gun in a way that unnerved me. "How sweet," Carrie said with a sour smile before she disarmed the gun, as symbolic an end to their old, contentious life as Homeland really gets.
Carrie disarmed things further by taking Brody on a walk around the grounds, and revealing a wound she had shown no one else: Her mother had abandoned their father when Carrie left for college — and hadn't been heard from since. Carrie understood why her mom had ended her marriage — her father's bipolar disorder was impossible to deal with — but the fact that her mother also abandoned her was something Carrie could never comprehend. "Thanks for telling me," Brody said softly, happy to be privy to Carrie's private pain after she'd been privy to so much of his. "You're the first one," Carrie said, looking up at him with an open loving face.
That night, in front of a roaring fire, Brody and Carrie nervously joked about hiring Brody to be her live-in cabin boy, until Carrie bravely suggested they talk about it "for real." They discussed Brody's post-Congress plans — maybe a builder, maybe a teacher, but definitely "a good person again." They both marveled at the second chance Brody'd been given, but that was fleeting; they had to confront whether Carrie would get a clean slate too, by leaving the CIA to be with Brody. There was a lovely moment when Brody tried to be the Understanding Guy by finishing what he thought was Carrie's thought about how much she loved her job, but instead Carrie said pointedly, "You interrupted me." It was the kind of awkward, relationship-y exchange that never gets to happen in Homeland's merciless universe — which made me relish it all the more.
Carrie pressed on. "The thing is, Brody, I also love..."
"Careful," he warned.
"...being with you," she finished, zigging just enough to keep her declaration from freaking them both out. She looked so vulnerable, so young, in that flickering firelight, that it took my breath away. And that was before Carrie told Brody that he should be scared of the ugliness of her illness in the same way she is scared of the ugliness of his past actions. Though she never evoked it by name, it was the first time we got a sense of how Carrie felt about Brody sacrificing Walden's life for hers, and I was relieved to hear that it frightened her. For his part, Brody wasn't expecting that; I think he'd taken real comfort in thinking Carrie wasn't bothered by his past. Instead, her love for him was even greater: It was in spite of his past. "Maybe all this will end in tears," he realized. "Or," Carrie said with barely a whisper, "we might make it?"
Watching it all unfold, I wasn't sure if Carrie's darting eyes meant that she still planned on putting a bullet in his brain by the end of the episode. And in hindsight, I know one could also read into Brody's gentle efforts that night and the next morning to give Carrie an out — make the decision entirely hers, and his reaction entirely understanding — before the bombing. But I think the relationship is the real deal. It may be Homeland's own fault that it's conditioned its audience to always suspect a hidden agenda in every exchange, but I'm willing to give myself over to the idea that Carrie and Brody feel this constant pull between them because they can only be honest with each other.
I'm not the only one to notice the disarming purity of their attraction. With Carrie out getting morning croissants, Peter Quinn had a clean shot at Brody as he undertook his morning prayers in the beatific waterside sunlight. But Quinn didn't take it. (It's a measure of Homeland's anything-can-happen storytelling this season that I kinda bought in to this obvious fake-out.) Instead, he waited ominously that night in Estes' bedroom. Walden was dead. Brody was resigning. With no ability to reach higher office, he wasn't a threat to the nation anymore (or so Quinn thought). "Are you suddenly an analyst?" Estes asked with disdain. "No," Quinn said. "I'm a guy who kills bad guys." That said, Quinn had never seen a better intelligence officer than Carrie Mathison. "Killing Brody would kill her," he said evenly. "So the only reason to kill Brody now is for you, to cover your a--. And the collateral damage would be to wreck a woman you already wrecked once before. And I ain't doin' that." To make his point clear, Quinn stood, brandishing a pistol with a silencer. "Nothing happens to Brody, or you'll find me back in this bedroom one night, right back in that chair. 'Cause I'm a guy that kills bad guys." The wave of fear and shame overtaking Estes' face was the one — and, it turns out, the only — real moment of insight into the man's soul we got all season, and bless his unexpectedly chiseled arms, David Harewood made the most of it.
But this scene was also clearly directed at those know-it-all viewers (ahem) who are just as certain as Estes that Brody should die. Listen folks, the writers seemed to be saying, whether you like it or not, Carrie's given her heart to Brody. If we permanently take him out of the picture, we're all going to be in for a lot more episodes of Claire Danes' ugly cry face. Do you really want that to happen? No. Of course you don't. So stop blogging and tweeting about it and let us tell our story. To which I respond: You bring back Peter Quinn and Dar Adal as series regulars next year, and you just may have yourself a deal. Emphasis on may.
ACT 2: PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND
With Carrie still trying to make up her mind, all Brody could do was begin to recalibrate his relationships with his family. He rang up Jessica to clear a time for him to pick up his suit for Walden's memorial — turns out, Chris is "not eating" much in the wake of the divorce, which shouldn't be all that shocking for a character who barely exists — and then wandered into the watering hole where he knew he'd find Mike Faber.
Over some cheap bottles of Rolling Rock, Brody told Mike that he and Jessica were splitting up, and gave him permission to "keep taking care" of his family like he had been before Brody was discovered in Iraq. "Because I can't right now." Again, at the time, this sounded like a confession that Brody's still too f---ed up to manage a family, but in hindsight, it almost sounded like a man putting his affairs in order before exploding a bomb at CIA headquarters. Homeland, there you go again, making me paranoid. At least Mike Faber has the decency to remain the nicest himbo on TV, grumbling earnestly that "this isn't the way it was supposed to go" even though he had just slept with Jessica days earlier. Whatta guy.
At Langley, Estes also mended fences, releasing Saul from his corporate furniture prison cell after three days of confinement, with the details of his polygraph death sentence redacted to boot — yet another clean slate. Earlier in the episode, it was bracing to realize that Saul had been confined like this, and that no one at the CIA seemed to think it all that out of the ordinary. But it did allow for the best line of the night, spoken as Estes entered: "Well, if it isn't Javert." (Having seen the upcoming feature film of Les Misérables, let me just say that I would have been most pleased to experience what Mandy Patinkin and his formidable beard would have made of that particular role.)
Back at the Brody home, Brody absorbed the reality of his packed up life, and began changing for the funeral, when his professional lurker daughter sauntered into the bedroom. In her enervating mumble, she demanded honest answers about that fateful day when she'd caught him putting on his bomb vest and Carrie later came by talking crazy about how he was going to kill a lot of people. "She isn't crazy, is she," Dana said. "So you were gonna do those things."
"But I didn't," Brody said, without flinching. And even though a part of Dana knew it to be true, she was overwhelmed by her father's backdoor confession. "It is like you just don't know anyone," Dana said, backing away before her father could have the satisfaction of convincing her that he had changed. But he must have made some kind of impression, since later, Dana would cite this conversation — and her father's levelheaded demeanor during it — as proof that Brody was not responsible for the bombing, since he was nothing like the sweaty spaz he'd been at the end of season 1. I'm inclined to agree, though I did also note that he never even entertained the notion of inviting his daughter to the funeral of her friend's father; maybe it was because he knew it was gonna go boom?
For all his hullabaloo over Estes' plan to assassinate Brody, meanwhile, Saul was fairly well convinced that Brody hadn't changed, that he knew exactly who Brody was. And he made no bones over making his point of view clear to Carrie as he left to oversee Abu Nazir's burial at sea. ("Seems to be the method of choice these days.") He was angling to use his newfound capital with Estes to make Carrie a station chief, the youngest in the history of the agency, and he had run out of patience for Carrie's inability to understand how much Brody's actions had sealed his fate. "It's complicated," Carrie stammered. "No, it's crystal clear," Saul said patronizingly. "You cannot be with him." Unlike Brody, who'd been so understanding, Saul backed Carrie into a corner, incredulous that she would choose a man who wore a suicide vest over him and the agency. "You're throwing your life away," he said, the paternal subtext quickly becoming text. "Or maybe I'm just not giving it away," Carrie said, throwing Saul's own romantic unhappiness back at him. Saul's face twisted into a disgusted sneer. "You're the smartest and the dumbest f---in' person I've ever known." And with that, Saul was off to a Naval ship to watch Abu Nazir's bullet-riddled body be prepared for a simple Muslim burial and dumped into the Atlantic.
If Carrie had been on the fence before, that seemed to push her over the edge. At Walden's funeral, she couldn't take her eyes off of Brody as he walked a Xanax'd-up Cynthia Walden to her seat. (Me? I just kept thinking, "This feels weird. Brody killed her husband. And now he's shaking Finn's hand? Weird weird weird.") At Estes invocation of the CIA drone program, Carrie clocked Brody's bubbling ire and shot him a "You wanna get outta here" look that Brody gladly reciprocated. (Let me just pause here and say that Homeland's decision to incorporate Osama bin Laden's death into the show makes for an uneasy marriage with our current reality. I suppose Walden was always meant to be a sinister hybrid of Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden, but since Homeland barely refers to the president, and never by name, I can only conclude that Barack Obama is president in this show's reality too. Again: Weird weird weird.)
Brody followed Carrie up into what I think was Saul's office, where she declared herself for him with a massive smile, and fell into his arms. "What made you change your mind?" Brody asked. "You did," Carrie said. And then Damian Lewis had maybe the biggest acting challenge of the entire episode. His face turned suddenly somber, almost guilty. His head turned to the window for a brief second. Carrie asked him what was wrong, why the sad look. "Nothing," Brody whispered. "Not sad. The opposite."
There are two ways to interpret this exchange, and Lewis had the unenviable task of playing both of them at the same time. One, faced with the reality of Carrie's choice, Brody felt suddenly guilty for taking Carrie away from the only life she's known, undeserving of the ardor of such a formidable woman — which really does make perfect sense. After all Carrie's been through because of him, to have her choose him anyway would be incredibly humbling.
But then there's the second explanation: Brody does have real feelings for Carrie, but he always expected her to choose the job over him, which made the fact that his car was about to explode a lot more difficult. This also makes sense, to a point. Sure, I'd feel guilty too if I was a terrorist who had been part of Abu Nazir's ingenious plan to lure the CIA into a false sense of security by taking part in a massive charade that resulted in the arrest of Nazir's U.S. network, the fake capture of my sorta CIA girlfriend, and the death of Nazir himself — and then that sorta CIA girlfriend announced she was choosing to spend her life with me riiiiiight as that plan was about to hit its climax. But Brody wasn't the one who suggested they leave the funeral; Carrie was. And the show made an explicit point of showing Brody park his car in Lot C, so at the very least, Brody would need an accomplice with access to the CIA parking lot to move his car.
In any event, at that very moment, Brody saw his car parked at the entrance, and said to Carrie, "Somebody moved my car." All Carrie had time to say was "Oh f---," and then...
ACT 3: KABOOM
The entire sequence leading up to the explosion was a masterful example of building suspense and paying it off — especially since I hadn't the first clue what was about to happen until seconds before it did. By cross-cutting between Abu Nazir's funeral and Carrie and Brody's clandestine excursion away from the funeral, I knew something awful was about to happen — I just wasn't sure what it was, and I sure didn't expect it to be quite as awful as it turned out to be.
The subsequent 25 minutes, on the other hand, kept goading us on with the expectation that at any moment, Carrie was going to come to her senses and kill Brody herself — only to have her let him go instead. If you're a romantic at heart, this was likely satisfying. But if you were turned on to Homeland first and foremost because it's a crackling spy thriller, then this was the worst kind of tease. And then there are folks like me, died-in-wool romantics who love them a great crackling spy thriller. Which is to say, I found Homeland's final act of the season simultaneously frustrating and fabulous.
When Carrie came to, she scrambled for a gun one of Saul's cabinets, and leveled it at Brody's head. With the kettledrums pounding away on the soundtrack like the adrenaline coursing through Carrie's veins, the shock of the explosion had finally allowed Saul's parting words to her to click in. "Why would I do this?!" Brody protested. "You can't change I can't see into your f---ing soul, Brody," Carrie snarled. It wasn't until I re-watched this scene later that I caught Brody's pleading, whispered response, "Yes you can." (UPDATE: Apparently, watching it two times wasn't enough; thanks to eagle-eared Twitter peep @Irishgirlnc for pointing out what Carrie actually said instead of what my sleep-deprived brain thought it heard. To be sure, it is quite a different sentiment, as is Brody's response.)
In pretty short order, though, Brody turned things around in the worst scene of the episode by far. First, Brody gave Carrie every opportunity to kill him. Then he pointed out that this was exactly the sort of thing Nazir would do — mass casualties on a major target — by spouting a clump of clumsy exposition that neither made Brody sound credible nor made all that much sense. (I don't have time to get into all the different things that had to fall into place that Nazir had zero control over in order for his scheme to have worked, so I'll just point out one that the writers themselves seem to have ignored too: that no one would even think to look into why Brody was the only person with the vice president when he died.) Then Brody flashed a "You believe me, riiiiight?" smile that rang so incredibly false to me, I couldn't believe it was intentional. (Lewis is a fantastic actor, but whenever he's got to speak a lot of lines while under duress, he gets an unfortunate case of the crazy eyes.)
A little tender stroking of her face, and Carrie was back on Team Brody — or, at least seemingly so, until it was clear her certainty was no act. With her magic invisible Chevy, Carrie was able sneak Brody out of the blast site undetected. She immediately activated her "insurance policy," collecting her "go" bag from a storage locker for a quick escape into Canada and then out into international waters, switching cars at some point along the line, and then driving Brody to a fake ID guy who apparently will do anything Carrie tells him to even after Brody's suicide confession video hits the cable news.
This was a choice twist, resurrecting the artifact that had damned Brody at the beginning of the season, and outing him as a terrorist to the entire nation. It also makes for a strong case as Brody as simply a patsy — some payback from Al Qaeda for turning double agent — but I don't think it's 100 percent convincing on its own. Brody may have intended to die in the blast, or the release of the video was all part of his cover with Carrie.
What the video did provide, however, was the one and only time Chris Brody has made any tangible impact as a character on the show. Watching his sunny face crumple at the confirmation that his father was a terrorist drove home just how devastating this moment really was for Brody — even if he could contact his family without the entire law enforcement establishment crashing down on his head, would they even want to speak with him? As the sight of the news vans gathering in front of their house drove home, Brody had well and truly ruined his family's life, dooming them to months if not years of bearing the stain of his sins. Let's just hope for everyone's sake they bear them mostly off camera next year.
With his family severed from him, likely for good, there was just one more person left for Brody to leave behind: Carrie. He knew before she told him that she wouldn't be coming with him — she had been ready to share a life with him, but not give it up entirely. "It can still happen, one day," Carrie said, her words sounding hollow. "I'm going to clear your name, Brody." I can understand the attraction of setting up season 3 to be the inverse of season 1 — the whole world believing Brody is a terrorist, with Carrie the only one who's certain he's innocent. But no, Carrie, no matter how much you've given up your heart this man, you cannot clear his name — not after that confession video has played on a continual loop on cable news worldwide for weeks and months on end. "Goodbye love," Brody said to Carrie before disappearing into the darkness. He was right. This is only going to end in tears.
With the Carrie/Brody storyline unraveling so haphazardly, Saul began to take center stage with a series of terrific scenes that offered the promise of a much more Saul-centric season 3. Thanks to Estes' death, Saul was the highest ranking officer left, and the one tasked with briefing the president — though it's not clear if this means the CIA Director was at the funeral and died too. Regardless, Saul learned that both Carrie and Brody's bodies were unaccounted for, but thanks to that magic Chevy, no one had seen them leave, so they were presumed dead. Still, Saul held out hope that his protégée and surrogate daughter was somehow still alive, leaving a plaintive and heartbreaking message on her voice mail: "Carrie. It's me. I'm looking for ya. Please call me back."
Instead of Carrie, though, it was Saul's wife Mira who called him — yet another unexpected and welcome return of a forgotten plot strand from last season. Throughout the episode, I fought hard from associating this fake tragedy with the all-too real tragedy in Newtown, Conn., especially since I'd watched the wrenching interfaith vigil for the Newtown victims less than an hour before Homeland began. But Saul's soft, high murmur as he spoke one-word answers to Mira's questions — his response to her question about Carrie: "Gone"; his whispered "Yes, please" when she said she was coming back — finally broke my resolve, and I could not help but get misty.
And then Saul began singing the Kaddish surrounded by the all the recovered bodies from the bombing, and the waterworks began. Man oh man, Mandy Patinkin, prepare for your Emmy next year, if for nothing else than that magnificent smile that stretched across your face upon seeing that Carrie was alive. And yet, thanks to the mournful music that played underneath, I felt the smile also carried with it the melancholy knowledge that life was only going to get harder for Carrie, both professionally and personally. She would have to account for where she had been during the bombing and the 24 hours following it, and fight alone in her struggle to make good on her promise to somehow clear Brody's name. But at least with Saul in a place of real authority, she may have an ally in the right place at the right time.
So, am I "done" with Homeland? No. This has been the most exciting and exasperating season of television since Lost's third season, and like that show, I think I'm far too hooked on these characters — especially Carrie, Saul, and, yes, Peter Quinn — to give up on them after only a few wonky episodes. Besides I don't think I could write this many words about a show I didn't want to see next season.
But how about you? What did you make of "The Choice"? Were you satisfied with how Homeland resolved the question of what to do with Nicholas Brody? Do you want to see how his family copes next season? Would you prefer reinvesting in the CIA manhunt for Brody, perhaps led by Dar Adal and a guilt-ridden Peter Quinn? Or do you think the show should move on completely, with Brody only flitting around the background if at all? And will you come back to watch season 3?
all credit goes to ew.com
Carrie's fateful choice about Brody sets the stage for season 3, and whether you'll want to keep watching the show
By Adam B. Vary @EW.com
Did he do it?
That is the question Homeland has left us with at the end of its revolutionary and controversial second season, the question its writers hope will fuel countless debates that will carry us until next fall. On the one hand, we have Nicholas Brody's word to Carrie that he had nothing to do with the car bombing that killed over 200 souls at C.I.A. headquarters, including David Estes and the rest of Vice President Walden's family. On the other hand, we have the fact that Brody's car was used for that bombing — and, more to the point, that practically every single thing we know about the man other than his love for Carrie screams "ARE YOU NUTS?! OF COURSE HE DID IT!"
Then again, this question may be moot. If you scroll down to the comments below, I guarantee there will be plenty of people who have declared themselves done with this show. I suspect for many it will be for two simple reasons: Carrie believed Brody, and Brody didn't die. I've made no secret of my own belief that the best path for Homeland was to do what they'd originally planned for the end of season 1, namely kill Nicholas Brody off, and let Carrie and Saul move on. You can read my argument here, but apparently, the folks at Homeland did not choose to heed my sage advice. Instead, they crafted one of its best directed and acted episodes ever, a masterwork of cinematic scale and deeply felt intimacy. As my colleague Ken Tucker has been contending of late, all of it was designed to make as strong a case as possible that Carrie and Brody's impossible love for each other is the true core of this show, and that letting their love die along with Brody would silence Homeland's beating heart.
They've almost convinced me. For one thing, I'm not nearly certain that Brody did it. And for another, I enjoyed Brody and Carrie's early scenes together so much, I finally understood why the writers feel so strongly that they need to keep Brody alive.
And yet, when Carrie and Brody finally parted ways in the woods along the Canadian border, a very big part of me still wanted Carrie to go all Buffy season 2 on Brody and kill the man she loved knowing he was maybe-possibly-could-be-well-nigh good again. (Of course, Homeland can't avail itself of a metaphysical hell dimension that spits out a naked Brody a few months later after 100 years worth of torment. It's not that implausible.)
At least, that's how I feel right now. It could be how you feel too. Let's work through the episode together, and see if we still feel the same way on the other side. Rather than split off each plot strand individually, though, I'm going to more-or-less take on the episode as we saw it, if for no other reason than its 65-minute runtime is already neatly apportioned into three discrete acts. Starting with...
ACT 1: RETURN TO THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
After a brisk title card that abandoned the show's usual jazz freakout opening credits (something I believe last season's finale did too), and a nervy recap of the last few episodes, we opened in the forested idyll surrounding Carrie's family cabin. "Ah, it's all coming back to me," Brody said as they stepped inside, reflecting on the last time he and Carrie stole away to the woods for some private nookie and unexpected interrogation. Except this time, everything was different. "There's no secrets now," Carrie said with not a small amount of trepidation. Not so strangely, they were both even more nervous with everything out in the open — and consider this the obligatory nod to the fact that everything very well may not have been in the open, if Brody was still secretly working with Nazir, etc.
Actually, in a way, life hadn't changed for Brody. He was still under covert surveillance, this time by Peter Quinn, parked in an empty cabin across the lake, taking in the couple's oblivious domestic bliss with a growing-if-silent sense of unease — especially with David Estes' obsession with seeing it done. "She's unbelievable," Estes told Quinn after learning Brody was with Carrie. "You never made a bad move in your romantic life?" asked Quinn, not realizing Estes' answer to that question is "Yes: Carrie Mathison."
As Jessica began to pack up her soon-to-be-ex-husband's clothes, Carrie and Brody began to voyage furtively into the new territory of their relationship. He juggled potatoes, she fake laughed, he declared "I'm funny," she replied, "Now I know." But then he found the pistol Carrie'd kept during their first time at the cabin, and their cutesy banter turned a bit acrid. "A souvenir from my last visit," Brody said, casually aiming the gun in a way that unnerved me. "How sweet," Carrie said with a sour smile before she disarmed the gun, as symbolic an end to their old, contentious life as Homeland really gets.
Carrie disarmed things further by taking Brody on a walk around the grounds, and revealing a wound she had shown no one else: Her mother had abandoned their father when Carrie left for college — and hadn't been heard from since. Carrie understood why her mom had ended her marriage — her father's bipolar disorder was impossible to deal with — but the fact that her mother also abandoned her was something Carrie could never comprehend. "Thanks for telling me," Brody said softly, happy to be privy to Carrie's private pain after she'd been privy to so much of his. "You're the first one," Carrie said, looking up at him with an open loving face.
That night, in front of a roaring fire, Brody and Carrie nervously joked about hiring Brody to be her live-in cabin boy, until Carrie bravely suggested they talk about it "for real." They discussed Brody's post-Congress plans — maybe a builder, maybe a teacher, but definitely "a good person again." They both marveled at the second chance Brody'd been given, but that was fleeting; they had to confront whether Carrie would get a clean slate too, by leaving the CIA to be with Brody. There was a lovely moment when Brody tried to be the Understanding Guy by finishing what he thought was Carrie's thought about how much she loved her job, but instead Carrie said pointedly, "You interrupted me." It was the kind of awkward, relationship-y exchange that never gets to happen in Homeland's merciless universe — which made me relish it all the more.
Carrie pressed on. "The thing is, Brody, I also love..."
"Careful," he warned.
"...being with you," she finished, zigging just enough to keep her declaration from freaking them both out. She looked so vulnerable, so young, in that flickering firelight, that it took my breath away. And that was before Carrie told Brody that he should be scared of the ugliness of her illness in the same way she is scared of the ugliness of his past actions. Though she never evoked it by name, it was the first time we got a sense of how Carrie felt about Brody sacrificing Walden's life for hers, and I was relieved to hear that it frightened her. For his part, Brody wasn't expecting that; I think he'd taken real comfort in thinking Carrie wasn't bothered by his past. Instead, her love for him was even greater: It was in spite of his past. "Maybe all this will end in tears," he realized. "Or," Carrie said with barely a whisper, "we might make it?"
Watching it all unfold, I wasn't sure if Carrie's darting eyes meant that she still planned on putting a bullet in his brain by the end of the episode. And in hindsight, I know one could also read into Brody's gentle efforts that night and the next morning to give Carrie an out — make the decision entirely hers, and his reaction entirely understanding — before the bombing. But I think the relationship is the real deal. It may be Homeland's own fault that it's conditioned its audience to always suspect a hidden agenda in every exchange, but I'm willing to give myself over to the idea that Carrie and Brody feel this constant pull between them because they can only be honest with each other.
I'm not the only one to notice the disarming purity of their attraction. With Carrie out getting morning croissants, Peter Quinn had a clean shot at Brody as he undertook his morning prayers in the beatific waterside sunlight. But Quinn didn't take it. (It's a measure of Homeland's anything-can-happen storytelling this season that I kinda bought in to this obvious fake-out.) Instead, he waited ominously that night in Estes' bedroom. Walden was dead. Brody was resigning. With no ability to reach higher office, he wasn't a threat to the nation anymore (or so Quinn thought). "Are you suddenly an analyst?" Estes asked with disdain. "No," Quinn said. "I'm a guy who kills bad guys." That said, Quinn had never seen a better intelligence officer than Carrie Mathison. "Killing Brody would kill her," he said evenly. "So the only reason to kill Brody now is for you, to cover your a--. And the collateral damage would be to wreck a woman you already wrecked once before. And I ain't doin' that." To make his point clear, Quinn stood, brandishing a pistol with a silencer. "Nothing happens to Brody, or you'll find me back in this bedroom one night, right back in that chair. 'Cause I'm a guy that kills bad guys." The wave of fear and shame overtaking Estes' face was the one — and, it turns out, the only — real moment of insight into the man's soul we got all season, and bless his unexpectedly chiseled arms, David Harewood made the most of it.
But this scene was also clearly directed at those know-it-all viewers (ahem) who are just as certain as Estes that Brody should die. Listen folks, the writers seemed to be saying, whether you like it or not, Carrie's given her heart to Brody. If we permanently take him out of the picture, we're all going to be in for a lot more episodes of Claire Danes' ugly cry face. Do you really want that to happen? No. Of course you don't. So stop blogging and tweeting about it and let us tell our story. To which I respond: You bring back Peter Quinn and Dar Adal as series regulars next year, and you just may have yourself a deal. Emphasis on may.
ACT 2: PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND
With Carrie still trying to make up her mind, all Brody could do was begin to recalibrate his relationships with his family. He rang up Jessica to clear a time for him to pick up his suit for Walden's memorial — turns out, Chris is "not eating" much in the wake of the divorce, which shouldn't be all that shocking for a character who barely exists — and then wandered into the watering hole where he knew he'd find Mike Faber.
Over some cheap bottles of Rolling Rock, Brody told Mike that he and Jessica were splitting up, and gave him permission to "keep taking care" of his family like he had been before Brody was discovered in Iraq. "Because I can't right now." Again, at the time, this sounded like a confession that Brody's still too f---ed up to manage a family, but in hindsight, it almost sounded like a man putting his affairs in order before exploding a bomb at CIA headquarters. Homeland, there you go again, making me paranoid. At least Mike Faber has the decency to remain the nicest himbo on TV, grumbling earnestly that "this isn't the way it was supposed to go" even though he had just slept with Jessica days earlier. Whatta guy.
At Langley, Estes also mended fences, releasing Saul from his corporate furniture prison cell after three days of confinement, with the details of his polygraph death sentence redacted to boot — yet another clean slate. Earlier in the episode, it was bracing to realize that Saul had been confined like this, and that no one at the CIA seemed to think it all that out of the ordinary. But it did allow for the best line of the night, spoken as Estes entered: "Well, if it isn't Javert." (Having seen the upcoming feature film of Les Misérables, let me just say that I would have been most pleased to experience what Mandy Patinkin and his formidable beard would have made of that particular role.)
Back at the Brody home, Brody absorbed the reality of his packed up life, and began changing for the funeral, when his professional lurker daughter sauntered into the bedroom. In her enervating mumble, she demanded honest answers about that fateful day when she'd caught him putting on his bomb vest and Carrie later came by talking crazy about how he was going to kill a lot of people. "She isn't crazy, is she," Dana said. "So you were gonna do those things."
"But I didn't," Brody said, without flinching. And even though a part of Dana knew it to be true, she was overwhelmed by her father's backdoor confession. "It is like you just don't know anyone," Dana said, backing away before her father could have the satisfaction of convincing her that he had changed. But he must have made some kind of impression, since later, Dana would cite this conversation — and her father's levelheaded demeanor during it — as proof that Brody was not responsible for the bombing, since he was nothing like the sweaty spaz he'd been at the end of season 1. I'm inclined to agree, though I did also note that he never even entertained the notion of inviting his daughter to the funeral of her friend's father; maybe it was because he knew it was gonna go boom?
For all his hullabaloo over Estes' plan to assassinate Brody, meanwhile, Saul was fairly well convinced that Brody hadn't changed, that he knew exactly who Brody was. And he made no bones over making his point of view clear to Carrie as he left to oversee Abu Nazir's burial at sea. ("Seems to be the method of choice these days.") He was angling to use his newfound capital with Estes to make Carrie a station chief, the youngest in the history of the agency, and he had run out of patience for Carrie's inability to understand how much Brody's actions had sealed his fate. "It's complicated," Carrie stammered. "No, it's crystal clear," Saul said patronizingly. "You cannot be with him." Unlike Brody, who'd been so understanding, Saul backed Carrie into a corner, incredulous that she would choose a man who wore a suicide vest over him and the agency. "You're throwing your life away," he said, the paternal subtext quickly becoming text. "Or maybe I'm just not giving it away," Carrie said, throwing Saul's own romantic unhappiness back at him. Saul's face twisted into a disgusted sneer. "You're the smartest and the dumbest f---in' person I've ever known." And with that, Saul was off to a Naval ship to watch Abu Nazir's bullet-riddled body be prepared for a simple Muslim burial and dumped into the Atlantic.
If Carrie had been on the fence before, that seemed to push her over the edge. At Walden's funeral, she couldn't take her eyes off of Brody as he walked a Xanax'd-up Cynthia Walden to her seat. (Me? I just kept thinking, "This feels weird. Brody killed her husband. And now he's shaking Finn's hand? Weird weird weird.") At Estes invocation of the CIA drone program, Carrie clocked Brody's bubbling ire and shot him a "You wanna get outta here" look that Brody gladly reciprocated. (Let me just pause here and say that Homeland's decision to incorporate Osama bin Laden's death into the show makes for an uneasy marriage with our current reality. I suppose Walden was always meant to be a sinister hybrid of Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden, but since Homeland barely refers to the president, and never by name, I can only conclude that Barack Obama is president in this show's reality too. Again: Weird weird weird.)
Brody followed Carrie up into what I think was Saul's office, where she declared herself for him with a massive smile, and fell into his arms. "What made you change your mind?" Brody asked. "You did," Carrie said. And then Damian Lewis had maybe the biggest acting challenge of the entire episode. His face turned suddenly somber, almost guilty. His head turned to the window for a brief second. Carrie asked him what was wrong, why the sad look. "Nothing," Brody whispered. "Not sad. The opposite."
There are two ways to interpret this exchange, and Lewis had the unenviable task of playing both of them at the same time. One, faced with the reality of Carrie's choice, Brody felt suddenly guilty for taking Carrie away from the only life she's known, undeserving of the ardor of such a formidable woman — which really does make perfect sense. After all Carrie's been through because of him, to have her choose him anyway would be incredibly humbling.
But then there's the second explanation: Brody does have real feelings for Carrie, but he always expected her to choose the job over him, which made the fact that his car was about to explode a lot more difficult. This also makes sense, to a point. Sure, I'd feel guilty too if I was a terrorist who had been part of Abu Nazir's ingenious plan to lure the CIA into a false sense of security by taking part in a massive charade that resulted in the arrest of Nazir's U.S. network, the fake capture of my sorta CIA girlfriend, and the death of Nazir himself — and then that sorta CIA girlfriend announced she was choosing to spend her life with me riiiiiight as that plan was about to hit its climax. But Brody wasn't the one who suggested they leave the funeral; Carrie was. And the show made an explicit point of showing Brody park his car in Lot C, so at the very least, Brody would need an accomplice with access to the CIA parking lot to move his car.
In any event, at that very moment, Brody saw his car parked at the entrance, and said to Carrie, "Somebody moved my car." All Carrie had time to say was "Oh f---," and then...
ACT 3: KABOOM
The entire sequence leading up to the explosion was a masterful example of building suspense and paying it off — especially since I hadn't the first clue what was about to happen until seconds before it did. By cross-cutting between Abu Nazir's funeral and Carrie and Brody's clandestine excursion away from the funeral, I knew something awful was about to happen — I just wasn't sure what it was, and I sure didn't expect it to be quite as awful as it turned out to be.
The subsequent 25 minutes, on the other hand, kept goading us on with the expectation that at any moment, Carrie was going to come to her senses and kill Brody herself — only to have her let him go instead. If you're a romantic at heart, this was likely satisfying. But if you were turned on to Homeland first and foremost because it's a crackling spy thriller, then this was the worst kind of tease. And then there are folks like me, died-in-wool romantics who love them a great crackling spy thriller. Which is to say, I found Homeland's final act of the season simultaneously frustrating and fabulous.
When Carrie came to, she scrambled for a gun one of Saul's cabinets, and leveled it at Brody's head. With the kettledrums pounding away on the soundtrack like the adrenaline coursing through Carrie's veins, the shock of the explosion had finally allowed Saul's parting words to her to click in. "Why would I do this?!" Brody protested. "You can't change I can't see into your f---ing soul, Brody," Carrie snarled. It wasn't until I re-watched this scene later that I caught Brody's pleading, whispered response, "Yes you can." (UPDATE: Apparently, watching it two times wasn't enough; thanks to eagle-eared Twitter peep @Irishgirlnc for pointing out what Carrie actually said instead of what my sleep-deprived brain thought it heard. To be sure, it is quite a different sentiment, as is Brody's response.)
In pretty short order, though, Brody turned things around in the worst scene of the episode by far. First, Brody gave Carrie every opportunity to kill him. Then he pointed out that this was exactly the sort of thing Nazir would do — mass casualties on a major target — by spouting a clump of clumsy exposition that neither made Brody sound credible nor made all that much sense. (I don't have time to get into all the different things that had to fall into place that Nazir had zero control over in order for his scheme to have worked, so I'll just point out one that the writers themselves seem to have ignored too: that no one would even think to look into why Brody was the only person with the vice president when he died.) Then Brody flashed a "You believe me, riiiiight?" smile that rang so incredibly false to me, I couldn't believe it was intentional. (Lewis is a fantastic actor, but whenever he's got to speak a lot of lines while under duress, he gets an unfortunate case of the crazy eyes.)
A little tender stroking of her face, and Carrie was back on Team Brody — or, at least seemingly so, until it was clear her certainty was no act. With her magic invisible Chevy, Carrie was able sneak Brody out of the blast site undetected. She immediately activated her "insurance policy," collecting her "go" bag from a storage locker for a quick escape into Canada and then out into international waters, switching cars at some point along the line, and then driving Brody to a fake ID guy who apparently will do anything Carrie tells him to even after Brody's suicide confession video hits the cable news.
This was a choice twist, resurrecting the artifact that had damned Brody at the beginning of the season, and outing him as a terrorist to the entire nation. It also makes for a strong case as Brody as simply a patsy — some payback from Al Qaeda for turning double agent — but I don't think it's 100 percent convincing on its own. Brody may have intended to die in the blast, or the release of the video was all part of his cover with Carrie.
What the video did provide, however, was the one and only time Chris Brody has made any tangible impact as a character on the show. Watching his sunny face crumple at the confirmation that his father was a terrorist drove home just how devastating this moment really was for Brody — even if he could contact his family without the entire law enforcement establishment crashing down on his head, would they even want to speak with him? As the sight of the news vans gathering in front of their house drove home, Brody had well and truly ruined his family's life, dooming them to months if not years of bearing the stain of his sins. Let's just hope for everyone's sake they bear them mostly off camera next year.
With his family severed from him, likely for good, there was just one more person left for Brody to leave behind: Carrie. He knew before she told him that she wouldn't be coming with him — she had been ready to share a life with him, but not give it up entirely. "It can still happen, one day," Carrie said, her words sounding hollow. "I'm going to clear your name, Brody." I can understand the attraction of setting up season 3 to be the inverse of season 1 — the whole world believing Brody is a terrorist, with Carrie the only one who's certain he's innocent. But no, Carrie, no matter how much you've given up your heart this man, you cannot clear his name — not after that confession video has played on a continual loop on cable news worldwide for weeks and months on end. "Goodbye love," Brody said to Carrie before disappearing into the darkness. He was right. This is only going to end in tears.
With the Carrie/Brody storyline unraveling so haphazardly, Saul began to take center stage with a series of terrific scenes that offered the promise of a much more Saul-centric season 3. Thanks to Estes' death, Saul was the highest ranking officer left, and the one tasked with briefing the president — though it's not clear if this means the CIA Director was at the funeral and died too. Regardless, Saul learned that both Carrie and Brody's bodies were unaccounted for, but thanks to that magic Chevy, no one had seen them leave, so they were presumed dead. Still, Saul held out hope that his protégée and surrogate daughter was somehow still alive, leaving a plaintive and heartbreaking message on her voice mail: "Carrie. It's me. I'm looking for ya. Please call me back."
Instead of Carrie, though, it was Saul's wife Mira who called him — yet another unexpected and welcome return of a forgotten plot strand from last season. Throughout the episode, I fought hard from associating this fake tragedy with the all-too real tragedy in Newtown, Conn., especially since I'd watched the wrenching interfaith vigil for the Newtown victims less than an hour before Homeland began. But Saul's soft, high murmur as he spoke one-word answers to Mira's questions — his response to her question about Carrie: "Gone"; his whispered "Yes, please" when she said she was coming back — finally broke my resolve, and I could not help but get misty.
And then Saul began singing the Kaddish surrounded by the all the recovered bodies from the bombing, and the waterworks began. Man oh man, Mandy Patinkin, prepare for your Emmy next year, if for nothing else than that magnificent smile that stretched across your face upon seeing that Carrie was alive. And yet, thanks to the mournful music that played underneath, I felt the smile also carried with it the melancholy knowledge that life was only going to get harder for Carrie, both professionally and personally. She would have to account for where she had been during the bombing and the 24 hours following it, and fight alone in her struggle to make good on her promise to somehow clear Brody's name. But at least with Saul in a place of real authority, she may have an ally in the right place at the right time.
So, am I "done" with Homeland? No. This has been the most exciting and exasperating season of television since Lost's third season, and like that show, I think I'm far too hooked on these characters — especially Carrie, Saul, and, yes, Peter Quinn — to give up on them after only a few wonky episodes. Besides I don't think I could write this many words about a show I didn't want to see next season.
But how about you? What did you make of "The Choice"? Were you satisfied with how Homeland resolved the question of what to do with Nicholas Brody? Do you want to see how his family copes next season? Would you prefer reinvesting in the CIA manhunt for Brody, perhaps led by Dar Adal and a guilt-ridden Peter Quinn? Or do you think the show should move on completely, with Brody only flitting around the background if at all? And will you come back to watch season 3?
all credit goes to ew.com