Episode 11 | Aired Dec 9, 2012

Carrie's hunt for Abu Nazir hits a series of dead-ends, and Jessica and Brody's marriage reaches a milestone
By Adam B. Vary at EW






The hunt for Abu Nazir, the mission that has consumed Carrie Mathison and hung over Homeland for two seasons, is over. Ding dong, the terrorist mastermind is dead. And so is the Brody marriage, as the very last thread binding Jessica and Nicholas Brody together — the prospect of a Walden/Brody presidential ticket and a life in the political spotlight — perished with Walden's death in Brody's arms.

From the looks of it, Brody may be joining Walden shortly, if Estes' determination to end his life by Peter Quinn's hand is successful next week. We'll have to wait until then to unpack whether killing Brody off is a good idea just as his love story with Carrie has finally been allowed to flower. (Y'all know where I stand on the subject.) But to start this week's recap, I'd like instead to explore the possible exit of a character I would not have predicted would be on the chopping block come the end of season 2: Saul Berenson.

I don't mean that literally; I don't think Saul's gonna die. But I am still haunted by our introduction last week to the formidable Dar Adal, and his parting insult to Saul: "I'm amazed you lasted this long." And now, at the end of this week's episode, Saul's very existence within the CIA is hanging by just the wiry threads of his most awesome beard.

It started inside an anonymous meeting/interrogation room, when nerdy CIA polygraph administrator Larry (the fabulous James Urbaniak) wheeled in his device and deflected every sour grumble out of Saul with a practiced chipper professionalism. "Saul, we all agree to this," he said. "Section 17.3 of your employment contract." (Somewhere in the pop-culutre multiverse, Sheldon Cooper just swooned.) Eventually, Saul wanted to cut to the chase: What b.s. line of inquiry was Larry going to be using to keep Saul from seeing through his mission to kill or capture Abu Nazir? Oh, no, I'm just here to set up the equipment, said Larry. And in walked a nameless jock-y CIA agent, holding a folder full of questions and looking like the crypto-bureaucratic version of a hired goon.

From the start, Saul was fantastically hostile. "Is your name Saul Berenson?" asked the goon as a control question. "Yes," Saul answered. "Are you sometimes called 'The Bear'?" the goon asked. "F---in' hope not," Saul answered. (It's warm fuzzy moments like these that endear Saul to my heart.) Soon enough, though, the goon got down to business, asking about Aileen Morgan, the terrorist who killed herself while being questioned by Saul after Saul foolishly left his reading glasses alone in the room with her. Or, as the goon put it to Saul, "Did you provide the weapon that Aileen used to kill herself?"

It wasn't just that Estes was using Saul's oversight against him that got to Saul. It was that he genuinely cared for Aileen, genuinely wished he could save her, and genuinely grieved for her death and his own responsibility for it. Estes was breaking the stitches in a still-fresh wound. And Saul "The Bear" Berenson began to roar: "You tell Estes no matter how many bulls--- charges he trumps up, I'm on to him. … You know what this is really about, do ya? Plan to assassinate a U.S. Congressman the second Abu Nazir is out of the picture. Why don't you ask me a few questions about that?"

Alas, the goon did not. Nor did he include Saul's outburst in the official report he handed to Estes the next morning, a report filled with self-incriminating admissions from Saul's own mouth. (I found it particularly chilling how nonchalantly the goon said his report could allow Estes to "refer [Saul] to harsher interrogations." Homeland's vision of clandestine American power isn't exactly brimming with Obama-era hopefulness.) But the goon did mention Saul's accusation to Estes, which Estes threw back at Saul when they finally met face to face. "We both know what Brody is, and Congressman is the least of it," Estes said. "We don't make deals with terrorists. And if he's confused about that, or you are, that's not my problem." The thing is, Estes is kinda right. Saul's umbrage at Estes' deadly plan for Brody smacks of exactly the squeamish sentimentality that made Dar Adal question why Saul even works for the CIA.

Of course, Estes had to take his anger with Saul even further, intoning darkly about how Saul — and I think by extension Carrie — "continually undermine" his authoritah. "I want you gone," growled Estes, brandishing his report and threatening to tie Saul up in bureaucratic purgatory if he didn't leave willingly. It was about as unequivocal as ultimatums come, but I can see it playing out in a few ways. One, Saul leaves willingly, and season 3 begins with a role reversal: Carrie officially back on the books at the CIA, and Saul living as a civilian trying to become the next Tom Clancy and failing spectacularly. Two, Saul reminds Estes that he also has a loaded gun implicating Estes in the illegal drone strike, and season 3 begins with both men locked either in a wary detente or a scorched Earth war of mutually-assured destruction. Or three, Estes dies (due to Quinn?), and Saul is saved.

This will likely (i.e. hopefully) unfold along some fourth option that hasn't occurred to me, but any way you slice it, Saul's future at the CIA has never been as tenuous as it is now. What that means for his future on the show, however, is much less clear, and for that, at least, I am grateful. While some of you can't imagine Homeland without Brody, I can't imagine it without Saul and his simultaneous grizzled wisdom and stubborn idealism.

While Saul was stuck brooding in the CIA basement, Carrie was bouncing around the greater D.C. area proving once more just how invaluably crazy she can be. We picked up right where we left off last week, with Carrie stumbling through the abandoned industrial center in a half-mad hunt for Abu Nazir. Among the many complaints about last week's episode, the one about Carrie's decision to go back after Nazir struck me as the least credible. It is completely in character for Carrie to risk her own safety in service of capturing Nazir, and with the man so desperately close, it would be wildly out of character for Carrie to just wait around for the CIA to arrive.

For one brief moment, Carrie caught sight of a figure down a long hallway, but after stumbling to the ground, her pursuit led her only to blinding glare of law enforcement spotlights outside. Peter Quinn was waiting for her — along with Danny Galvez, more on him later — and as he guided Carrie to the medic, he had one natural question for her: "How did you get away?" I thought it really odd last week when the show never once clocked Carrie deciding not to warn anyone of the vice president's impending demise. But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that her supreme loyalty to Brody is now a given. After Quinn asked her that question, however, and revealed that the vice president had indeed died from a malfunctioning pacemaker (more on this later, too), we finally got to see Carrie take in just what she had done: Choose Brody's life over the vice president's. She did not seem thrilled by her decision.

With a blanket over her shoulder and a cursory tending to by an EMT, Carrie called Brody to try to sort out their story, but he put it off by sharing his sincere relief that she was safe. So all Carrie could do was take advantage of the unbelievably strong cellular signal in the area to watch a streaming video report about Walden's death on her phone. (Quinn's comment on the vice president's paltry bio — "You'd think they'd find something more vivid to say than he played football in college" — felt like the first of several nods to fan commentary about this season, namely that Walden was never much more than a one-dimensional cynic.) In short order, Carrie became alarmed that Quinn's team could find no trace of Nazir inside the factory. She was absolutely certain that she saw Nazir — "I was right on his heels," she told Quinn, even though that's not quite how the show itself depicted her experience. Quinn fixed her with a long stare, trying to ascertain the same thing I was: Was this the über-competent Carrie speaking, or the über-crazy one? Right up until Carrie stood over Nazir's body, I was never entirely sure myself, but Quinn was confident enough in her to at least try for another sweep.

When he came up empty a second time, Carrie took to interrogating one of the tactical teams, a move that offended Quinn's own background as an ex-special ops soldier. So Carrie returned to my own favorite Homeland bug-a-boo, the CIA mole. Carrie pointed out that their operation was off grid because they'd been having leaks all along the way — well, that, and Estes needed to keep Brody's involvement off the vice president's radar — so who from inside their operation had been leading the search in the factory? Me, said Quinn. Carrie asked about anyone else. "Does that mean you trust me?" asked Quinn. Carrie moved on without answering, leading to an embarrassing interlude in which the sudden realization that Galvez could be the mole ended in Galvez on the gravel with Carrie screaming questions about Nazir at him while his popped stitches oozed blood. Whoops! Way to rip into the guy who risked his life to find you, Carrie!

So I guess that means Galvez is not the mole. (Fan service #2: Carrie and Quinn's quick caucus on Galvez's feasibility as the mole played like a transcription from one of hundreds of Homeland message board debates.) We may never get a satisfactory answer to this particular mystery, I'm afraid, though before I move on, I feel obligated to point out that it is quite odd that Quinn never noticed the false wall obscuring Nazir's hiding place, especially since Carrie noticed it almost immediately.

All Carrie could do was head back to Langley to wash her face, survey her wounds, and get back to work. Though Estes told her the snafu with Galvez was no biggie, he also knew Carrie wasn't exactly at her best: He ordered Quinn to question Roya instead, in the hope of learning of Nazir's whereabouts. Estes apparently didn't realize that the Langley architects had placed the women's restroom just down the hall from the interrogation rooms; when Carrie saw Roya being placed in one, she took the opportunity to get a jump on questioning one of Nazir's top operatives.

She was, to put it mildly, not successful. Carrie tried the same plaintive empathy route that she'd used with Brody, saying she couldn't believe Roya was as ruthless and vicious as the man who gave her the wounds on her face and wrists. But Carrie neglected to take two things into account: One, she hadn't bothered to establish any sort of rapport with Roya before presuming to know her heart; and two, Roya did know something about Carrie's heart. "Have you ever had someone who somehow takes over your life, pulls you in, gets you to do things that aren't really you?" she asked Carrie. "That you knew were wrong? And you can't help yourself? Do you have anyone like that?" A tear streaming down her face, Carrie whispered, "Yes." Roya's face twisted into a hateful grimace. "Well, I've never been that stupid," she spat at Carrie. "You idiot whore!" Snnnnnnap! (That very well may be the last we see of Roya for a long while, so at least Zuleikha Robinson got to do something before she disappeared that wasn't transmitting exposition.)

Quinn quickly ushered Carrie out of the room, and ordered her home for some needed sleep. Carrie was doubly devastated: One, that she'd blown it with Roya, setting back any further interrogation with her; and two, that she'd admitted to herself that Brody's presence in her life isn't ultimately a good one. The last time Carrie went through a major physical and emotional trauma (i.e. the suitcase bomb in season 1), she plummeted into a severe bipolar episode. So while what Carrie decided to do next — drive back to the factory on the hunch that Roya's Arabic (?) outburst that Nazir would never run meant he'd never left the site — was on one level completely crazy, on another level, it demonstrated some heartening growth. When pushed against the wall, Carrie didn't dissolve into a pool of self-doubt and lip quivering. Instead, she popped her medication and redoubled her efforts, fully comfortable in her own instincts once again.

At the site, Carrie convinced the last tactical team there to sweep through the factory tunnels once more, this time with her at their side. She noticed the false wall, and got the soldier with her — but without his fellow ops partner, bizarre given how much of a big deal Quinn made about this the night before — to confirm that it was indeed Nazir's hideout. The next few minutes unfolded like a horror flick, with Nazir transformed into a literal boogieman stalking the shadows: He slit the soldier's throat, chased Carrie through the factory, snuck up behind her and threw her to the ground. On cue, the other soldiers swept in before Nazir could finish Carrie off, surrounding him as he sat kneeling in prayer. For a moment, I thought Nazir would detonate a bomb, but instead, as my colleague Ken Tucker has already astutely pointed out, his death was much more mundane: He put his hand on his heart, and was shot dead in the dark. And that was that.

"It's a big day," Estes said to Carrie matter-of-factly outside the factory. "You must be very happy." The look of ambivalent exhaustion cascading over Carrie's face at that moment is something I won't soon forget. When you've dedicated your life to a single pursuit, a pursuit that has all but laid waste to your life, to see all that work finally end, even successfully, is as much a loss as it is a triumph. It's Homeland's ability to capture those nuances that still make the show such demanding, engrossing television, despite its more recent flaws.

By comparison to Carrie, Brody didn't do much of anything during this episode. Since no one at the CIA thought it any way suspicious that the man who had admitted to strapping on a suicide vest to kill the vice president was the only person present for the death of the vice president, Brody was sent back to the safe house to wait out the hunt for Abu Nazir. With all that sudden free time, he finally could confront what was left of his family, really for the first time. It started with Jessica, who pivoted from reminding Brody that Walden's death left behind a grieving family to pointing out that his death had also altered the trajectory of their lives. "It's all changed, hasn't it, now that Bill's gone," she said. "I keep asking myself how we even got here. Things just happened — opportunities, they seemed like. We just went along, one thing to the next. I think maybe this is a time to stop and think." She was speaking about Brody's political career, but she may as well have been talking about his secret life, first as a terrorist, and then a double agent — for so long, Brody had let his life be dictated by outside forces that he told himself he had no choice but to follow. For the first time since he'd left for Iraq, he was ostensibly his own master.

Brody sighed deeply. He seemed ready to tell Jessica everything. He was cut short, however, by Carrie's call from the factory. He took it, stepping out into the balcony. "All that matters to me right now," he told her, "is that you're safe." At that moment, Brody looked back at his beautiful, heartbroken wife staring at him, trapped behind a pane of soundproof glass, unable to reach him. In truth, it wasn't clear if Jessica could hear him or not, but that didn't really matter — she understood what he was saying either way.

The next morning, Dana was in a particularly foul mood. She was fed up with being stuck in their penthouse prison, and infuriated that no one could explain to her why her life had become such a stultifying purgatory. And they were out of milk. "I thought we were doing better," Brody said, apparently forgetting that his last meaningful experience with his daughter was denying her the chance to atone for participating in the death of another human being. Chris, overwhelmed by the exchange of actual emotions, retreated to do the only he seems to know how to do, play videogames. (Fan service #3: Dana, storming over to the controller: "I swear to God, if I have to listen to another second of Kuma War, I am going to kill someone.")

Just as Dana was reaching her boiling point, Jessica returned with milk, but it was icky leaking milk that was totally disgusting, you guys, so Dana exploded into a full blown tantrum. "Why are you even here," she screamed at her father. "Why do you not just go live with that crazy woman and leave us alone?!" Part of me wishes that the writers had found a less blunt way of confronting the core issue within the Brody family, but mostly I was just grateful that Dana was finally putting everything out on the table, even if it meant carpetbombing any lingering vestiges of likability in her character. "We're better off with Mike," she said. "All of us. He has been a better father to us than you ever were!" (I'm likely in the minority on this, but I thought Morgan Saylor's acting here was top notch — her off-kilter, overly dramatic line readings to me sounded exactly how a royally pissed off teenager would talk. Which is to say, I am unfortunately not old enough yet to forget when I was an overly dramatic, royally pissed off teenager, and I talked exactly like that.)

Jessica called a momentary truce, decreeing nothing about their family would be decided until they could all go home. Little did she know, they would get that opportunity that very day. Jessica, Dana, and Chris all came into the penthouse living room with their minder agent to tell Brody that Abu Nazir had been killed. Like Carrie, Brody's reaction wasn't a rush of exultant glee. Instead, for the first time he allowed his children a glimpse into the chasms of pain he'd kept from them since he'd returned, and barely let Jessica experience at all. It was heartbreaking to see Brody so suddenly consumed by such a powerful wave of emotions — grief, anger, relief — and none of his family even thought to offer him any comfort. He'd kept them at a distance for so long, they didn't know they could.

Back home, Brody sat in the car, watching his family through mirrors and windows, paralyzed by the impossible distance he felt between himself and all of them. All he could manage to say to Jessica was a choked, "I can't." So she got in the car and did the talking for them. "I don't want to fight any more," she said. "Even for something. I'm tired of fighting." Brody agreed. She talked about how they'd always been "okay" since they first got together at 16, so certain at such a young age that they would be together. (It's a detail about their marriage that I'd forgotten, that they started before either of them really knew who they were.) She wanted to know if Mike was to blame, and Brody had the grace to be clear Mike had nothing to do with it. She spoke of wishing desperately that she'd been "bigger," able to take on the mission of making her husband whole again. "It was just beyond me." Brody sighed. Again, he absolved Jessica of her guilt, saying that no one could have fixed him after he got back — including himself. "I was f---ed the moment I left for Iraq," he whispered. "We all were."

Jessica began to quietly cry at the plain awful truth of Brody's words. And it was here, finally, that Brody tried to admit to his wife that the crazy things Carrie had been spouting that day at their house were, in fact, completely true. But it was too late. Their marriage over now for good, Jessica had lost the will to know who her husband is. "I don't have to know anymore," she said. "I just don't want to." She sighed. "Carrie knows, right? She knows everything about you. She accepts it." Brody knew better than to do anything other than nod. The words barely escaping her throat, Jessica pushed further: "You must love her a lot." Brody did not know how to answer, so he didn't. Instead, he asked about the kids; Jessica said they already knew it all; and she left. Brody closed his eyes and exhaled like a man who just had a burden lifted that he knew was also taking part of his soul.

In two seasons, this was the first time Jessica and Brody really took the time to understand each other, and one of the very few times Morena Baccarin could sink her teeth into playing something other than the Exasperated Jilted Wife. The promo for next week's episode makes clear the Brody family remains very much in play in the season 2 end game, but for my money, this particular storyline could not have had a better end.

For one thing, it made room for a possible new beginning. Brody left his home, and appeared on Carrie's doorstep. "What I did, to get Nazir to let you go," he told Carrie, stroking her newly clean face. "It was you or Walden, Carrie. It wasn't even close." I gotta admit, even my hard-hearted belief that Brody should die melted a bit (just a bit!) at this moment. And I don't think I'm alone; Peter Quinn, watching from his car, also seemed troubled by the task sitting before him. Can the final hour of season 2 convince him, and me, that he shouldn't put a bullet in Brody's brain?

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