Homeland pretty well outside itself with its spectacular Season 2 shocker-finale tonight - which is saying a lot, since last season's finale was pretty shocking and spectacular itself.I knew something big and unexpected had to be up, with Brody getting out of the CIA's assassination cross-hairs so early in the episode, and the story moving slowly along to two funeral services, one for Nazir, the other for the US VP whom Nazir assassinated through Brody as the only way to keep Carrie alive. I knew something had to happen, when Carrie and Brody were so lovey-dovey and even flirting with spending a life together.
But, whew, I didn't expect that bomb to blow up the CIA and any complacency we might have had about knowing where the series was headed. In retrospect, the bomb blast was perfectly parallel to our struggle with international terrorism in the real world. We killed bin Laden in reality. We killed Nazir in Homeland. The two were each buried at sea in respectful ceremonies. But their organizations survive to mete out considerable damages in both reality and fiction.
The destruction of the CIA was much worse than anything al Qaeda has done on US soil since 9/11. But the point is made on both Homeland and our reality: the taking out of one leader, however dominant and charismatic, is no assured path to a safer world.
Otherwise, Estes is gone in the blast, and that's just as well - I didn't like his character. I hope Quinn comes back - he showed courage and clear thinking in not taking Brody out when he easily could.
And Brody ... once again, as always, we're left, or at least I'm left, with a sliver or more of suspicion about him. I'm pretty sure he didn't set the bomb in his car. But not completely sure. Why not? Well, what was that strange expression on his face when he and Carrie were talking, and she asked him what was wrong, before he noted that his car had been moved? He says to Carrie that's just him looking happy about their future, but he didn't exactly look too happy, did he ...
And so, next season will begin with another question, loyalties in flux, and the US still in danger - the makings of a great television show, if not our real world, but that's the way fiction should be.
See Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional
See also Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional
9 comments:
You don't think Saul had anything to do with it? There were heavy clues.
The thought crossed my mind - but I can't see Saul killing that many innocent people. He'd have had no problem Estes, sure - but the VP's wife, son, etc?
This show's MO is all about feeding the audience's mistrust, and I'm uncomfortably convinced that the production does like dancing around Saul a bit.
Uncomfortable because it seems to achieve this entirely by playing on his sincerity, his empathy and pragmatism, and his respect and adoption of other spiritualities and customs. I don't know if it's the cynicism that this would betray that bothers me, or the fact that it may well work with a lot of the audience. I mean, what actual clues were there, here?
If you look at what Saul actually does, rather than the lingering pauses that this show manages so well, there's very little ambiguity about which side he's on. He's more a man of duty and law than Estes or almost anyone else, his only blind-spot being his compassion for others.
Actually, considering he was the one who identified the problem with Quinn, there's an interesting parallel there - they're the only two characters who temper strict professionalism with a strong and unselfish moral compass, and it's cost them both.
I'm not saying the show will never hinge it's plot on Saul turning out to be the bad guy all along, I'm just saying that based on what we've seen him actually do, it'd be a cheap trick, and one that wouldn't make much thematic or narrative sense.
(I mean, even compared to the Carrie/Brody romance, which is one element that I think they pinned a lot on us actually believing in, and which I think is a really hard sell)
I agree with your analysis. The only reason I wouldn't ipso facto eliminate Saul as the suspect is he's one of the few people who had the knowledge sufficient to pull off the bombing. So, in the Sherlockian sense of eliminate the impossible, and what's left standing is the answer - we can't quite eliminate Saul as impossible.
I also agree that Carrie/Brody in love is a hard sell. It all hinges, on Carrie's part, on her love for the person who literally saved her life. My wife thinks that's not enough, that Carrie was still be repulsed by Brody's killing the VP, even to save her life. I'm thinking her rush of grateful emotion for her knight in grey armor would just be enough to overcome the revulsion - just barely.
1) Look at Saul's reaction when Carrie says she's going to the funeral with Brody.
2) They seem to be bringing back his wife next season, it seems. We don't know much about her at all, but the fact that they saw fit to include her in the closing minutes may be relevant.
3) Saul is muttering an Islamic prayer (I think it was the same prayer uttered during the sea funeral) when he thinks he's alone in the hangar full of corpses.
We're clearly, in my view, supposed to believe Saul is a bad guy. Whether he is or not is obviously open to interpretation, but we're certainly being led that way by the writers.
If not, what the hell was that ending about?
The prayer Saul was saying was Yizkor - the Hebrew (not Islamic) prayer of Kaddish or mourning. But the two languages do sound very similar - which shows how close those two cultures, now so often opposed, once were in history.
Phew. Thought I'd subscribed to these comments, but clearly I failed!
My biggest problem with Carrie's return to Brody's arms is that they've done a pretty good job of selling it as being an almost inevitable love-connection - there are overtures to it before he saves her life - which seems to undermine the hardness of what he allowed to happen to her at the close of the last season, which she had a totally sane and rageful response to earlier in this one.
I could see her seeing his part in the assassination of the vice president as a hard choice made on her behalf, but I don't know how a person could love someone who exploited their health weakness, allowed them to be subjected to EST, and spend six months (a year?) exiled from the job she loves, doubting herself and thinking she was crazier than she was.
Maybe over a longer stretch, but you'd have to spend a season convincing me of an emotional transition like that, not a couple of episodes.
I watched enough 24 to never trust ANYONE in weekly tv, but where that show habitually pulled a switch on us with characters already long in place, this one so far hasn't - cheap, quick & dirty 360s haven't been part of the DNA of it. Brody's loyalties and the not-that-game-changing twist that his fellow captive was also turned notwithstanding, I don't recall an established (or even sketched out) character in this show turn out to be someone other than who we thought they were.
Even Quinn, who we found a lot of twisty stuff about as the season went, was never the subject of a lie told to us by the production... Data we were given was sketchy, and Saul identified mystery there from the start. There's room for expansion within the parameters of any character, but a production that lies would make for a whole other show than the one we've had so far, and damage it badly, I think.
So when we consider that Saul is one of the only people who has the knowledge to pull off the bomb, I'd counter with "that we have met so far". This show has established a model of introducing new Nazir cronies as needed, and having just killed off half the supporting cast, I'd expect that model to continue.
At least, I hope so. I LOVE 24, but we don't need every show to become it.! :D
To Anonymous:
All of the moments you refer to seem to really obviously be character moments to me. This is a show that has delivered and thrived on them from the beginning, and hasn't given us any reason to second-guess them when they arrive.
Why wouldn't Saul react the way he does when Carrie tells him she's going to the memorial with Brody? We've been shown at least once an episode since the first episode how protective and loving he is of Carrie, and she's in the process of falling in love with someone that they know is capable of terrorism.
What in the scene with his wife suggests anything other than a concerned estranged spouse concerned for a husband who has just lost most of his colleagues in a terrorist attack? I think they're bringing her back so that Saul has more going on emotionally next season... Estes is gone, Saul will probably be in charge, and from the time he's had this season maybe the writers thought that he deserved a bit of emotional stability.
(So they can use it to mess with him next season.)
And although Paul has clarified that what Saul was saying wasn't an Islamic prayer, both Carrie and Saul have shown in the past that they are versed in, and sympathetic to, the cultures that they have to study in their roles. If this show has one brave, palatable message consistent within it, it's that Islam isn't the enemy, terrorists are.
The counterpoint to that is that if it has one unpalatable technique in keeping its audience off-kilter, it's in the use of cultural fear as a narrative trick to get people worked up, which is what I was referring to upstream. It's a bit creepy, and a bit creepy that it works, when in the same episode as Saul reciting the Hebrew prayer, we have Carrie et al wrongly profiling one of their own as a traitor because he's a muslim, and Flynn observing Brody in prayer as the signifier that earns him a reprieve from being assassinated as a "bad man".
The writers are leading us every which way because it's their job to whip us up for the next season. However, so far very little of what they've done has been cheap, and they've been focussed on characterisation over tricksy turnarounds, so I think Saul's moments in the final part of the finale were all about character and emotional truths. They needed to hit Saul with something sufficiently horrific and clear-cut to put him at odds with Carrie again next season.
Excellent comments again, Nick - thank you.
A few brief responses -
1. I agree completely that Carrie's loving Brody is illogical. But, isn't falling in love by definition illogical? How many times do people fall in love for all the "wrong" reasons - i.e., reasons that contradict logic and common sense. I actually have no idea how literally often - but it's often enough to have become a staple of romantic and related fiction.
2. Sure, the bomber could be someone we don't currently know. but it's more fun if the villain is someone who's been in plain sight. And the more we're surprised, but the more in retrospect the villain makes sense, I'd say so much the better.
3. I still feel, after all of these years, that 24 was one of the best 4-5 shows ever on television, sometimes higher. So I don't mind seeing any of it return at all. But I'm not sure I agree with you that the show pulled villains totally out of hats - there was always some hint of possible motivation.
Anyway - good to have such a savvy double fan (of 24 and Homeland) commenting here.
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