Homeland Season 2 Episode 10 recap
He would never. He would absolutely never say “at least several” martinis, along with something else in that same speech that’s now lost to my memory. Are you kidding me with this? I don’t think CIA members are perfect, but I think they have to be able to get around the basics of speaking well.
Also, I’m not sure, if you are injured enough that everyone stares when you walk in the room, that “I want to help” is all you need to say in order to get everyone back to the main action. I look askance in your direction, Galvez.
Sometimes I wonder whether Homeland was going on its merry way, getting started with season 2, and then all of a sudden it blew up, and they were having to deal with the fact that everyone and their brother said “Let’s dumb it down a bit, it’s not just an intellectual thriller anymore. We have too many people watching and we should slow things right down by investigating what would happen if Dana did nothing at all.”
Sure, I kid and all. But the pace of Homeland hasn’t been as breakneck as I felt it last year. The twists aren’t really twisty – just new timebombs thrown in the way of our characters. The eventuality that we’re heading towards – Brody is found out, and is captured and revealed to be a terrorist – has its bumps in the road, but I haven’t felt like there’s been a gamechanger in a long while. (Please don’t let it be Saul.)
The love story of Carrie and Brody is, of course, more an additional albatross than it is a real story engine. They do desperate things for one another, of course (more on THAT in a minute), but it never has any result except continued ambiguity. I suppose that’s very real, in a way – they do things for the love of one another, full stop; it’s not the love of one another and the expectation that they will somehow be together someday.
That said:
Seriously with the magnifying glass?!
This is what I mean when I say I feel like the show is getting dumber. This is not a move that would have flown in season 1. It also doesn’t feel like resourceful Brody. I know being under pressure is not his strong suit, but he would have been better off taking a picture of the serial number and sending it on his souped-up amazing Blackberry. Originally, when I thought he might be cleverer, I suppose I bought the concept of the magnifying glass if never, ever the execution (guys, always try the bookshelves behind the desk to the left, as that’s where magnifying glasses are always kept. He had a harder time finding the box, for the love of God!), but even then I thought Brody’s devotion to Nazir was location-based. I thought the utter gripping fear for his family and, yes, his Carrie, might give him the foresight to, I don’t know, text a wrong number. Since it took long leering-by-Brody minutes for anything to take effect on Walden and since Nazir was nowhere to be found (with the understanding that of course he has the ability to be everywhere), maybe it would be worth it.
But the truth is that part of the reason why this all landed for Brody – why he wasn’t executed in the first year in captivity –is because he has some of what it takes. The vindictiveness, the satisfaction in seeing people hurt. Brody has killed two people this season, and he doesn’t seem to suffer from it. His warped sense of what constitutes justice is the reason he hasn’t peed his pants or had an aneurysm just yet.
The other factor, of course, is not Carrie (whom I assume is being shot in such a way that Danes’ pregnancy can be hidden) – Carrie’s an open book, relatively speaking. But since Saul has gotten too close where Quinn is concerned, it’s a safe bet that won’t be the way Brody goes down. Instead, Estes is now the keeper of the keys – what does he choose to do with that kind of a threat?
The only thing I know for sure is that something dramatic has to happen to Brody’s family. I’m not calling for bloodshed exactly – well, actually, I am absolutely calling for bloodshed. We’ve seen that they don’t matter to Brody in a real, tangible way, so something’s gotta happen to them because I don’t want to waste any more TV real estate on Dana’s existential understandings of what does or doesn’t make a good boyfriend. I mean, what is this, My So-Called Life?
