Homeland - Recap: My So-Called Life Starring Dana Brody
Recap and review of Homeland - Season 3 Episode 5 - The Yoga Play:
Well, this was kind of tedious. Homeland is usually far more efficient about the ways in which it tells its stories. At least half of "The Yoga Play" is a study in such efficiency. But the other half is a meandering mess of unfocused stories that, while well-acted, do serious damage to the episode as a whole. "The Yoga Play" is a perfectly acceptable episode, thanks mostly to its final ten minutes, but it's just a wildly inconsistent hour.
On the plus side, the good stuff is really friggin' good. Carrie (Claire Danes) is continuing her play to bring "The Magician" out into the open. And it's working. We see Javadi himself, crossing over into the United States via the Canadian border, and then meeting with his contacts in preparation for the eventual meeting with Carrie. Of course, for Carrie to make this whole plan work, she needs to maintain the cover -- namely that she's a disgraced CIA agent willing to feed information to terrorists. If the FBI doesn't believe she's really a national security risk, they'll remove surveillance. If they remove surveillance, Javadi will no longer believe she's on the outs with the feds, and the entire operation will be blown. So, in order to give Carrie another ally, Saul (Mandy Pantinkin) brings Quinn (Rupert Friend) in on the plan. He'll monitor Carrie and help her to keep her cover intact. Everything appears to be set, until Carrie is unexpectedly drawn back into her Brody-centric past...
Credit: Kent Smith/SHOWTIME
Jessica (Morena Baccarin) shows up on Carrie's doorstep, pleading for help in location Dana (Morgan Saylor). It's a jarring moment, to say the least, but it's also Baccarin's best moment this season. She tells Carrie that she had been right about Brody, adding that she'd known about his deception, at some level, but simply didn't want to admit it to herself. Jessica says she knows something is wrong, and begs Carrie to find Dana, her face completely awash with tears. It's a fantastic scene for Baccarin, although the Dana Brody storylines always have good acting in them. The acting has never been the problem. It's the writing. Or, at the very least, whatever impetus compels the writers to devote enormous chunks of time to what is basically two teenagers going on a joyride. Dana and Leo (Sam Underwood) are down to roughly $70, which is enough to keep things going for a few days more. But it's unlikely they're going to escape the inevitable return to their home lives -- especially after Dana overhears a news broadcast on the TV at a gas station. On the broadcast, Dana hears about the missing persons report out on her and Leo, as well as the sordid history of why Leo was really committed to the wellness facility. The revelation prompts a huge argument between the young lovers, as Dana feels betrayed over yet another man in her life forging a relationship with her that's built on lies. She essentially calls it quits with Leo, just as the police close in on them. Dana returns home and breaks down, and I'll always say, I may not give a damn about Dana's storylines, but I'll always give a damn about Dana, thanks to Morgan Saylor's performance. She's such a quietly devastating figure in this show, a girl whose life is completely torn to pieces by an ongoing series of dishonest men, from her father, to Finn, and now Leo. It's incredibly hard not to sympathize with Dana, even if her storylines tend to be a rough sit.
Much of the rest of the episode is engaging more for its quality as an acting showcase. Mandy Patinkin gives a wonderfully nuanced performance here, as Saul goes on a hunting trip with the president's Chief of Staff, under the belief that he's about to be nominated for the position as new Director of the CIA. Yet he's eventually brought to the crushing realization, after all of his grandstanding about refusing to change his morals just to get support from men like Sen. Lockhart (Tracy Letts), that he's actually not being considered for the nomination at all. Turns out, the nominee is the man who's done little else but badmouth the CIA in the public all this time: Sen. Andrew Lockhart. And if that wasn't bad enough, Lockhart is threatening to get rid of Saul altogether unless he starts singing a different tune, where policy is concerned. So Saul gives a remarkable F-you speech, in which he both congratulates and condemns Lockhart, calling him out for his hypocrisy and wishing him luck in trying to fill a role for which he's hardly qualified. Patinkin continues to be one of the best actors on TV today, thanks to scenes like this, and a key moment at the end of the episode...
Credit: Kent Smith/SHOWTIME
In helping Jessica find Dana, Carrie risked blowing her cover, even though she thought she'd covered her bases with "The Yoga Play," a complex scheme in which Carrie feigns going to a yoga class and uses the fifteen minute window to both meet with her surveillance contacts, Virgil and Max, and badger a former colleague into actually searching for the missing teenager. It's all tightly paced stuff, and remarkably effective in creating drama, especially when Carrie's cover is saved by mere seconds, thanks to Quinn providing a last-minute distraction. Though both Carrie and Saul fear that Carrie has been "made," she's apparently still in business. And we learn this in pretty horrific fashion, as Javadi's men break into her house, force her to strip naked in order to search her for wires, and destroy her phone and SIM card to prevent her from being tracked by the agency. They then put a hood over her head and take her to the meeting with Javadi, and although Quinn does his best to intervene, he's too little, too late. This is because Saul ordered him to hang back on his surveillance of Carrie's house, even though his instincts led him to believe she was in danger. Saul reassures Quinn that at least they know which faction has Carrie, adding that everything is going according to plan. However, Quinn is concerned about Carrie's position, because they have no eyes on her. "She's on her own!" Quinn says, to which Saul responds, in one of the most elegantly plaintive line deliveries in the history of the show, "She’s always been on her own." And that would have been a fine moment on which to end the episode, but we get one more brief look at what's in store for Carrie, as she's taken to the basement of a luxurious house to meet with Javadi, who seems to imply that he knows all about "The Yoga Play," which could mean he also knows she's still working with the CIA. Should be an interesting game of chess between those two.
Credit: Kent Smith/SHOWTIME
"The Yoga Play" is a largely underwhelming episode, even though the espionage elements are enough to mostly outweigh the albatross that is The Misadventures of Dana Brody. It's hard to imagine there isn't a plan in place here, but the stories shouldn't have to be this tedious to get where they're going.