Homeland - Recap: Iran So Far Away

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I say that mostly because there just isn't any plausible way for this show to continue to be about the star-crossed romance between Carrie (Claire Danes) and Brody. Even though Danes and Lewis have better chemistry than 80% of romantic pairings on TV, the series tends to suffer when Carrie and Brody's romance is the focus. Everything feels strangely purposeless, as the two characters are locked in their own world where not a whole lot matters but each other, and while that would be fine on a show that doesn't have a whole lot else going on in the periphery, that isn't the approach Homeland can afford to take, given just how much is going on in the ostensible background. The world is essentially falling to pieces, and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is in a race against time to install a new Iranian regime before his tenure as CIA Director comes to a close.

Saul's play involves getting Brody to turn himself in to the Iranians as an American fugitive seeking asylum. From there, the Iranian Defense Minister will meet with Brody, out of a desire to use him as a valuable subject of propaganda, at which point Brody will assassinate him. As next in line, Javadi will ascend to the key position, essentially going from being one of the 20 most important people in Iran, to being one in three. Saul would have an asset at the very top of the Iranian government, and peace talks with the United States would be more likely than they ever have been before. (The irony of this, of course, is the recent news of the US government's talks with Iran to halt their nuclear program, an historic accomplishment in itself. But since Homeland is still several months away from being current with our own time, I suppose we could view this storyline as Saul putting plans into motion that have led to historic action in the present? The writers couldn't possibly have predicted this would happen, but hey, I like to pretend...)

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So Carrie talks Brody into doing the mission on the flimsy promise of letting him see Dana (Morgan Saylor). When Brody comes through, Carrie has no choice but to deliver on her promise. So she takes him to the apartment where Dana is staying -- and which she pays for with money from her job as a motel maid -- leading to one of the best scenes of the episode. Brody attempts to make amends to Dana, to convince her that he's innocent of all the things he's being accused of in the media. He desperately tells her that he didn't commit the Langley Bombing, which is all well and good, except Dana doesn't even really care anymore whether he's innocent or not. As she tearfully explains, he's pretty much made life a living hell for her. “Do you want me to tell you you were a good father?” Dana screams, before grabbing a pen and notepad and telling Brody to just write down whatever he wants her to say so she can just say it, as long as he promises to never contact her again. It's a devastating scene, as Saylor embodies years of psychological torment and resentment in a single scene, while Lewis remains mostly stoic, falling to pieces as he comes to the realization of just what his choices have done to the people he loves. Dana is correct in her assessment: at no point did Brody ever seriously consider that Dana might not have wanted to see him, because so much of his world is still insular. He thinks gaining redemption will restore his family to him, but he fails to recognize that the damage has already been done. This isn't to say that his children (yes, even Chris, whom he apparently completely forgot about) are completely lost to him. But there is far more work to be done than just what can be accomplished at the point of a gun.

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Yet that's exactly what Brody's mission entails, as he'll assassinate the Defense Minister and then signal for extraction from a safehouse, which all sounds easier said than done. Brody vows to Carrie that he'll come back from Iran, and declares that Dana won't be the only thing he'll come back for, and even though it's a bit corny, Danes and Lewis have poured so much into making Carrie and Brody work as a pairing that the show can get away with lines like that. Of course, Carrie doesn't tell him about the pregnancy, and I suppose it's just as well, since Brody has enough on his plate as it is. But you'd think telling him would give him an added bit of incentive to keep living, especially since he was so eager to just give up mere days ago. Not only does Brody try to kill himself with the leg of a chair (in a particularly gruesome scene), but during an exercise meant to trigger Brody's self-preservation instincts, in which Saul's men drop him into the ocean, Brody doesn't lift a finger to save himself. "He sank like a stone," reports Saul's man. Granted, these attempts were before he'd fully detoxed, but I still feel it says a lot about Brody's psyche. No matter how rigorous the training, a man just doesn't recover psychologically from the kind of experience he had in Caracas in just two weeks. As Carrie reminds him, in her attempt to get him to seek redemption by agreeing to the mission, Brody is responsible for the deaths of the imam and his wife at the mosque in Caracas. He may be innocent of the Langley Bombing, but he still has blood on his hands. It's risky business to send a man of such uneven psychological temperament into the field again, but the storyline waves it away by portraying Saul as a desperate man. He really doesn't have any other play but Brody -- yet the rewards for playing Brody are arguably larger than any plan B he could come up with.

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Saul, for his part, is able to get an extension as director of the CIA by blackmailing Senator Lockhart (Tracy Letts) with photos of his meeting with Alain, whom, it turns out, is an Israeli intelligence agent. Of course, the question in this case is why Saul didn't just use the photos to ensure his permanent tenure as director of the CIA. Thankfully, Lockhart actually addresses this issue by asking Saul directly. Saul responds that he doesn't want to embarrass Mira, and adds that it would look bad for the agency if the photos were to leak to the press. And so this is a compromise -- one to which Lockhart agrees. This buys them some extra time to prepare Brody, and also to weather the fallout should anything go wrong. Saul keeps Lockhart in the dark on the Brody play, naturally, since he's having a hard enough time keeping the people who are actually in his inner circle in line. Namely, Carrie, who takes Brody off the base to see Dana without getting approval -- and a mere six hours before Brody is set to leave on his mission.

Saul is furious, but Carrie snaps back that Brody had threatened to walk on the mission if he hadn't gotten to see Dana. Saul is no less angry, and so Carrie adds that he needs to start having a little faith in her, since she's the only reason this mission is happening, as Brody wouldn't have agreed unless she talked him into it. ("In order for us to pull this thing off, we're gonna have to find a way to trust each other again. Or at least come up with a really great plan for faking it," Carrie says, with a hint of exasperation and disgust) The Carrie/Saul dynamic is a far more central and compelling relationship to Homeland than perhaps even the writers believe it to be, as there is a great surrogate father/daughter bond here, a broken relationship between two people who constantly disappoint one another. The journey towards reclaiming that trust in one another is among the more interesting storylines the show has been exploring this season.

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"One Last Time" is a table-setting episode, gearing us up for the last three episodes of the season. I'm not sure if the plot will hold together all the way through, but I'm optimistic, based largely on the clarity of the story in place. There's a clear goal here, a mission that needs to be accomplished, with redemption (if not exoneration) on the line. That's something worth watching for, even if the plots around it don't always click.