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The Fifth Column

by HELEN SCHUMACHER

Homeland
creator Gideon Raff

Both last night’s episode of Homeland and the previous week’s ended with the playback of Congressman Nicholas Brody’s black-and-white avowal to hold the United States, namely the Vice President and members of his national security team, responsible for the deaths of 82 children. Still, throughout both episodes, Brody’s earlier commitment to the terrorist cause, or as he calls it, “fulfilling my oath of defending the country from threats both foreign and domestic as a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps,” seems to have become flimsy motivation since rejoining his family in Virginia. Rather he seems a man lost.

I had a hard time believing in such naiveté from a grown man. I would have thought that if eight years of being held prisoner by an al-Qaeda terrorist cell hadn’t jaded a person, than six months in politics would have. And here Brody is, still failing to grasp the fact that once you join the dark side, there’s no turning back. The man is in some serious denial to think he’s not bound for the rest of his life to do the dirty work of both Abu Nazir and Washington D.C. Yet every time Roya Hammad begins a sentence with “Need I remind you...” or Vice President Walden whispers a favor in his ear, he’s incredulous. Did he really think he was going to be able to renege on a deal with the CIA’s most wanted? You’re the fifth column, Brody!

Brody was also foolish to ever believe there was honor in his cause — that before those drone strikes, the soul of America was lily-white (I’m pretty sure that purity was lost the moment we stepped onto this continent and claimed it as our own) — and for thinking that Nazir wasn’t aware from the start that his family would be likely collateral damage in his crusade against America.

I guess that’s always been one of Brody’s biggest flaws — an aw-shucks belief in a binary good and evil. He thinks he knows better than anyone else the difference between the two and that he’s the last moral man on the Eastern seaboard. Look at the disgust in his treatment of former military buddies Mike and Lauder. Sleeping with your friend’s wife and developing a taste for booze both seem forgivable in comparison to Nazir’s nefarious agenda. The veneer on Brody’s fantasy may be finally wearing thin. Apparently power washing the blood of another man out of your clothing at a carwash late at night will elicit some soul searching.

Brody is also still figuring out how to lie. His wife Jessica accuses that they roll off the tongue, but really they more sputter. He wasn’t able to come up with a plausible cover for his day attempting to take the tailor to a safe house that entire drive to Gettysburg and back. The only thing that makes me believe Brody was ever a marine is his ability to improvise in the field. The carjack he jerry-rigged out of firewood seems like the work of a man who has had to repair a Humvee in an Iraqi battlefield.

There are a couple other ways Brody is still adapting to life stateside. He’s still getting the knack of contemporary cell phone usage. Texting mayday messages to Beirut using a Blackberry presumably paid for with tax dollars seems like the kind of thing that could be uncovered by any citizen that knows how to file a FOIA request. Also, your smartphone is a tracking device and if anyone was ever to question his story about attending union meetings in Culpeper, you’re busted. This one seems the most obvious, but if your wife calls you while you are in the middle of chasing down a fellow subversive, let it go to voicemail lest she hear you break his neck.

While Brody is having second thoughts about what is driving his life, Carrie Mathison is as obsessive as ever. I love the way she can hardly contain her excitement each time Abu Nazir’s name is mentioned.

As Saul shared the footage recovered from Beirut at the close of last night’s show, Carrie got the validation for her work and intuition that she needed. Up until that point, there was plenty to keep audiences wondering if she wasn’t about to slip back into oblivion. Signs included sitting in the dark listening to jazz and promiscuous sex. All that was missing was the alliterative speech. (Really you could make a drinking game out of most behavior on the show — impulse control, suicide attempts, alcoholism — take a shot every time someone exhibits DSM criteria!)

Even though previews of upcoming episodes show Estes learning that Carrie was right about Brody, it is still not clear if she’s ever really going to be able to get her security clearance back. It’s hard to believe there are not going to be Agency eyebrows raising each time her chin starts quivering. I suggest she get a job in the private sector. Contractors do all of America’s dirty work these days anyway.

So far this season, Claire Danes’ acting has continued to be a highlight. I was skeptical when the show began, but watching her question her judgment on the rooftop of the Beirut safe house and her defeat after being kicked out of the debriefing back at Langley headquarters, her raw vulnerability still impresses. And while some viewers may be worried about the believability of CIA operations as they have played out these past few episodes (Skype?!?), it seems par for the course given the Agency's real-life tactical operation success rate. For the first half of its existence, the main approach of the CIA was to either throw money at any con man claiming Communist intel or parachuting untrained student insurgents behind enemy lines.

Helen Schumacher is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She tumbls here and here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. You can find her earlier reviews of Homeland here. She last wrote in these pages about recess.

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