Homeland - Recap: Good Night and Good Luck

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We get a fairly routine amount of setup, as Brody and the agents tasked with ushering him across the border (each of whom are disguised as Al Qaeda agents), prepare for the task at hand. At the White House, Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham) is keeping White House Chief of Staff Mike Higgins (William Sadler) abreast of all the happenings in the mission, and constantly tamping down his eagerness to get the president and drone strikes involved. Back at CIA HQ, Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is chain-chewing his "lucky" gum with the hopes that the mission will be a success. Carrie (Claire Danes), meanwhile, is getting chewed out by Quinn (Rupert Friend), who apparently got a look at her medical charts and discovered her pregnancy. Carrie plays it off like the baby isn't Brody's, and implies that it's none of Quinn's business any way, yet he's still concerned about her insistence on participating in this stage of the mission. Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts) is also on-hand to observe the operation, and the future director admits to Saul that while he may not agree with the Brody play, he's now yoked to its success, so he'd prefer to see it succeed rather than fail. This early third of the episode is a simple enough setup for the chaos that is to come, as we take a tactical look at the approach to a CIA mission, and all its attendant problems.

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From the moment Brody and his team are stopped by Kurdish police, prompting Brody's handlers to execute the cops on-site after giving the go-ahead with the "good night" code phrase, the mission becomes a symphony of worst case scenarios. While driving Brody up to the Iranian border, Brody's lead handler drivers over an IED, prompting Saul to fear the mission lost, and Carrie to despair that Brody has died (in a wonderful moment of wordless misery from Claire Danes). However, Brody remains miraculously alive, though his drive loses a leg. This would be bad enough, but the situation escalates when an Iraqi military patrol catches sight of the explosion and heads towards the scene. A full-scale shootout occurs, with high command calling for a full extraction. Saul is dejected and leaves the room once it becomes clear that there is no other choice but to abort the mission, and even Senator Lockhart offers his condolences. But Brody refuses to allow it to be over. Despite having lost his head after the murder of the police officers, Brody regains himself and decides to move forward with the mission anyway.

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Carrie pleads with him over the satellite phone, but Brody is certain Carrie will find a way to bring him home again. In one of her brightest moments in the series, Carrie calls complete B.S. on that statement, telling Brody not to put that kind of responsibility on her, adding that he's living in a fantasy. But Brody affirms he has faith in her, and decides to go charging into the gunfire with the help of another of his handlers. And it's here that the episode takes a bit of a turn, as Brody and his colleague are surrounded -- not by Iraqis but by Iranians. Brody immediately reads off his lines about bombing the CIA and seeking political asylum in Iran, and within a matter of moments it's been accomplished. Phase one of Brody's mission has been completed.

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Saul can hardly believe the change in luck, and Carrie has the kind of smile you'd expect from a mother whose kid just demolished at the regional spelling bee. Yet things aren't exactly triumphant for Brody: when his cell door opens, he finds it's Javadi in control of the next phase of the operation. Fair enough, Brody surmises, as this is part of the plan. But I'm guessing it wasn't part of the plan for Javadi to shoot Brody's handler in the head in cold blood. Brody is devastated, but he's not exactly in a position to bargain. He needs Javadi to get an audience with the Defense Minister, and so it looks like we're getting a road trip to Tehran next week. Ah well, there are certainly worse ways to spend a Sunday than shoulder-to-shoulder in a car with the No. 3 bigwig in all of Iran. I just can't think of any, at the moment.

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What works so well about "Good Night" isn't really the action, although that's part of it. The sequences here are fleet but impactful, and the night lighting added to the chaotic nature of the battle without taxing the budget. But really, Homeland is far better as a character study than as a measure of verisimilitude in espionage, so I found a lot to like about "Good Night," which illustrated that, in a different time, Brody was a hell of a marine. Sure, he breaks down in the early going, and nearly aborts the mission entirely. But once he gets his head on straight, he becomes a far more efficient Brody than we've ever seen. He stems his handler's blood loss and gives him a shot of morphine, and then is able to chart his own trajectory in the middle of an open gunfight, assessing the situation and deciding it's possible for him to make the 300 yd dash to the Iranian border if he can just get a clear shot. I love this kind of high-functioning Brody, as this season has painted him as a victim for far too long.

I also liked the contrast between Brody and Carrie's satellite phone call, and Brody's similar phone call with Dana (Morgan Saylor) back in season one, just as he was about to detonate his suicide vest. In both instances, it was Brody caught at the crossroads of a life-or-death mission, and in both cases, he accepted the call. However, while Dana was able to talk him out of going through with his self-imperiling mission, Carrie has no such luck. But Dana's success and Carrie's failure come from similar places. It's Brody's love for Dana that convinces him not to detonate his suicide vest, and it's his love and faith in Carrie that convinces him he'll still have a way out if he goes through with this mission. Brody is still looking for redemption, and while death is the most likely way he'll achieve it, he doesn't want to go out without having achieved something of value first. Now that he's on his way to Tehran, he'll have a better chance than ever.

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As for Carrie, there isn't anything she apparently won't do for Brody, and that includes putting the family of one of their own in harm's way. Once it becomes clear that there's no way to get Brody out of Iran, Carrie turns to Fara (Nazanin Boniadi), who has an uncle in Tehran whose home Carrie wants to use as a safehouse. Of course, we know from earlier this season that Fara's father is paranoid about the Iranian government learning about her work with the CIA, since they still have family back in their home country. And Fara's father knows all too well what the government will do to perceived traitors. And so Fara is naturally hesitant to allow Carrie to rope her family into their hare-brained mission, but Carrie plays the family card, saying that they have a "brother agent" in the field to whom they owe every chance to get out alive.

It throws a darker shade on Carrie's character, as it's difficult to imagine her making a pitch this passionate for anyone other than Brody. In essence, everyone is a commodity where Brody is concerned, whether it's in proving his innocence in the Langley bombing, or getting him home from his mission in Iran. The irony, of course, is that had Carrie succeeded in publicly exonerating Brody, this mission could never have come into existence. Much like Quinn earlier this season, Brody is confessing to a crime he didn't commit as a part of a broader CIA operation to keep certain assets in play. It says a lot about how the agency burns its own to keep all available playing cards on the table. And we can't even be sure the CIA's methods have worked. Will Javadi really carry through with the CIA plan? Or is he comfortable with his current position in the Iranian hierarchy? This could mean everything, or it could all be for nothing.

Credit: Showtime

"Good Night" is a damn good episode of Homeland, although it falls just short of greatness, as this plot still relies a bit too much on contrivances like Brody's inexplicable plot armor, Carrie's obsessiveness, and simple, improbable instances of sheer luck. But all-in-all, this latter third of Homeland's third season is making up for any earlier shortcomings in a pretty big way.