In Which There Are No Secrets Now

The Sixteenth Floor

by HELEN SCHUMACHER

Homeland
creator Gideon Rath

It’s impossible to know for sure given the CIA’s classified records, but James Forrestal was perhaps the first person involved in its operation to go mad. As the first secretary of defense, Forrestal was instrumental in the creation of covert operations at the CIA when the department was established in 1947. By all accounts he was an obsessive workaholic and as such didn’t take it well when he was fired by President Truman in 1949. Two months later, Forrestal was dead, having jumped from the his 16th-story room at the psychiatric hospital he had been admitted to right after his dismissal. According to Tim Weiner’s history of the CIA (reported to be required reading for Homeland writers), Forrestal was in the midst of copying Sophocles’s poem ”The Chorus from Ajax” when he stopped in the middle of the word “nightingale” and lept to his death. “Nightingale” had been the codename for a CIA operation that Forrestal had been involved in to parachute Ukrainian resistors (including Nazi collaborators) into the USSR.

The Greek tragedy Forrestal had been copying before he killed himself is about the suicide of Ajax, a Trojan warrior. He has discovered that he has been tricked by the goddess Athena and was certain that the other warriors were laughing at his foolishness. Unable to face his shame, he impales himself on his sword.

Having garnered a dedicated fanbase during its first season and sweeping the drama categories at the Emmys about a week before the second season’s premiere, Homeland had to live up to some fierce expectations. And, of course, it didn’t, or at least not completely.

The actors’ performances continued to be top notch. We’ve been watching Claire Danes’s face crumple and quiver since 1994, and in 2012, her crying — a messy expression of hurt and anger — is no less compelling. Morgan Saylor got a sizable chunk of screen time in her oxford shirt and combat boots uniform after her keen performance in the first season. As a rule, teenagers are the worst and so was her Dana. I didn’t particularly enjoy the subplot that had her and Finn committing vehicular homicide, but it served as a turning point in her relationship with her father and illustrated the perils of honesty and how morality can turn grey when bad things happen to good people.

On the espionage side of things, the fast-paced second half of the season kept me guessing, which I love. Some critics may say it kept viewers guessing because the events were too preposterous to ever be logically considered. Maybe not, but as I’ve said before (and with apologies to the Sauls of the agency), when has the CIA ever acted logically? The agency has helped corrupt and unsparingly cruel dictators come to power, assured President Kennedy the Bay of Pigs invasion would be a success and produced a national intelligence estimate titled “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction” — all of which makes it seem petty to scoff a fictional show’s implausibilities. And if you think it’s unlikely that the agency would invite a bipolar analyst back to work for them, know that Frank Wisner, former head of CIA clandestine services and before that head of OSS (the agency’s World War II predecessor) operations, was diagnosed with “psychotic mania” and received electroshock treatments. Afterward he went back to work for the CIA at its London station.

It has been Carrie Mathison and the reaction to her illness that I’ve found most riveting this season. The initial question we asked week after week (for the first three-quarters of the season one anyway) on Homeland was, How deep is Brody’s allegiance to Abu Nazir? In one episode he was a traumatized marine reconciling his POW coping mechanisms with his suburban family-man duties and war-hero praises, in the next, a vengeful terrorist disillusioned by America’s hypocritical foreign policy. The tension between these two parts of a man was compelling but irrelevant once the CIA found out about the suicide vest and took charge of his relationship to Nazir. In the second season, this dynamic inner conflict was handed over to Carrie. We now found ourselves asking at least once during every episode, Is she still psych-ward crazy?

The best description of Carrie’s dance with madness I’ve read was in an interview with Kate Zambreno, who wasn’t talking about Homeland, but the online community she found herself in while writing Heroines, a memoir slash critical examination of the so-called hysterical women of modernist literature. In the interview, she describes Tumblr’s feminist confessions as a “circling around self-immolation.” It’s an act that sounds exactly like Carrie each time she runs into a Beirut apartment building looking for intelligence heedless of Saul’s protestations or makes out with Brody in a forest clearing.

In her pursuit of Nazir and her relationship with Brody, Carrie was reckless and impetuous, never more so than in the episode “I’ll Fly Away.” My pleas at her through the TV to stop running after Brody were no more effective than sidekick Virgil’s. And after Brody she went. The pair ended up hiding out at the Chaptico Bay Hotel. After eating dinner, as Carrie cleans up their styrofoam takeout containers, the mood turns romantic. She tells Brody that she had hoped catching Nazir would have made way for them to have a future —  together.

“You know how crazy everyone says you are?” says Brody. “You’re even crazier than that.” They then begin fucking. Loudly. And, because Carrie has taken them to a safe harbor site where Saul was able to locate them and bug the room, everyone back at the operation’s headquarters gets to listen in. It’s painful to watch the reactions of all the agents who consider this woman a lost cause. Saul hopes that Carrie’s seduction is her way of restoring Brody’s shattered psyche so that he can continue as CIA informant. He argues with Quinn over whether or not to send in a team to arrest the paramours. Quinn turns up the climatic moaning on the agency speaker and asks Saul, “Is that someone turning it around or a stage-five delusional getting laid?”

The scene is thoroughly discomforting. It is a brazen act of self-immolation and the reaction to it bears a resemblance to the reaction to the story “Adrien Brody” by Marie Calloway (a writer whose Tumblr could be a candidate for the ones Zambreno was referencing). And while Calloway may not have the bipolar diagnosis of Carrie, there is a similar disgust and rubbernecking of Estes, Quinn and their goons at the CIA and online commenters of Calloway. And like Calloway’s concerned readers, Saul wonders if Carrie has considered the consequences and really knows what she’s doing. At times it has seemed that Carrie’s appetite for Abu Nazir is matched only by her willingness to humiliate herself.

In the Observer article that brought Calloway’s piece to a larger audience, Emily Gould is quoted: “Why do women who aren’t afraid to humiliate themselves appall us so much, and why do we rush to find superficial reasons to dismiss them (‘she’s crazy’ ‘she’s a narcissist’ ‘she’s young’ ‘she’s a famewhore’)? I think in part because they pose a threat to the social order, which relies on women’s embarrassment to keep them either silent or writing in socially accepted modes.”

Humiliation is a powerful emotion. The American government has used it (including sexual humiliation) on POWs in the “war against terror.” Carrie has been through the gauntlet of shame after being forced out of the CIA, arrested on the Brody family’s front lawn and committed to a hospital at the end of the first season. In the second season, Estes and others continue to try to use her unrestrained emotions to embarrass her into submission. She undermines their attempts by adopting humiliation as a tactic of her own — hyperperforming it, subverting it and being a better agent because of it — instead of succumbing to shame as Ajax did.

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 an archive of her Homeland reviews here.

"Weightless" - Natasha Bedingfield (mp3)

"Run-Run-Run" - Natasha Bedingfield (mp3)

In Which We Plan Murder And Deceit

Something You Can't Have

by HELEN SCHUMACHER

Homeland
creator Gideon Rath

The body count of last week’s episode of Homeland was high after Abu Nazir’s well-armed men opened fire on the Gettysburg tailor shop being searched by the CIA’s forensic team and recovered the trunk of explosives hidden there. This week, the show focused on the psychic costs of battle — on injuries sustained and sustaining that are left on the ledger after the initial fight is over. As shown in the lessons the Waldens and the Brodys tried to pass down to Finn and Dana respectively, it is a balance sometimes repaid by the next generation. The episode was a somber fit for its Veteran’s Day air date.

In the opening scene, the odious journalist Roya Hammad intercepts Brody, dressed in Lululemon, during his morning jog to let him know the Big Terrorist Plot is going to start moving very quickly. Until then he needs to keep Vice President Walden happy during an upcoming fundraiser.

Meanwhile, Saul pays a visit to one of the few known members of Nazir’s network still alive, Aileen Morgan, the fugitive who surrendered to him in Mexico during the last season and is now being held in solitary confinement at a supermax prison in Pennsylvania. She hasn’t taken to her incarceration well.

Back in D.C., the vice president’s motorcade makes its way to the big fundraiser. In the backseat of one limo Dana guilts Finn into agreeing to confess to their hit-and-run manslaughter, while in another Brody confronts Jess about Mike’s last visit to their house. Unfortunately for Brody, the visit was an attempt to expose his role in the death of Tom Walker and win back the heart of Jess, who makes her weekly plea for the truth from Brody. He cops to it — but as an order from the CIA, not Abu Nazir. “Tom lost his way,” says Brody, obviously talking about himself. “He just went through too many things and he couldn’t get right again.” And in turn, Carrie tells Mike to stop his amateur investigation into Walker’s death while also letting him know the CIA is wise to his former affair with Jess. “It’s hard wanting something or someone that you just can’t have,” says Carrie, obviously talking about her feelings for Brody.

In this episode especially, stories parallelled each other. Aileen in the Waynesburg penitentiary was a correlative to Brody as a prisoner of war, with Saul playing the sympathetic provider role that Abu Nazir acted out during his mind games with Brody. His visit grants her respite from her underground cell and a day with natural sunlight. Aileen agrees to share what she knows about the Gettysburg murder-squad mystery man Roya met with if Saul can get her room with a view.

While waiting for her request to be granted, the pair indulge in reminiscence of their cross-country roadtrip over bread, cheese, and Argentinian wine. Aileen gives a name and Newark address, too bad it belongs to a music studies grad student. While Saul rushes out to give the info to Quinn, Aileen uses a pair of reading glasses left in the room to slit her wrists. Saul and Aileen may have been using each other, but their interaction attests to a subtle tenderness not usually found between opposing sides at war.

Back at the fundraiser (which has me wishing the writers would have taken the opportunity presented by the episode’s country-estate setting to really go all in with a Rules of the Game homage), Brody sees the man he could have been in Rex Henning, the Vietnam vet hosting the event. The two knowingly scarred men have a heart-to-heart, after which Carrie calls requesting a rendezvous in the clearing behind the stables. Reminded of the last time they were alone in the woods together, they make-out. It all seems very sincere and self-destructive. Dana and a drunk Finn interrupt the ladies’ croquet game with their big reveal. Cynthia Walden tries to explain to the naive Brody household how things are done inside the Beltway. No one is saying anything and Estes is assigned to tie-up any loose ends.

Worried his wife's warning may not be heeded, Veep Walden pulls Brody —  who, like the injured stable horse Amelia, has just taken a rehabilitating swim in the cobalt waters of the manor’s pool —  aside after the fundraiser’s big toast insisting he follow his lead in the old Potomac two-step. Brody gives his best  ”I’m sorry, Mr. Vice President, I don't dance" retort and hightails it to the police station with daughter in tow. Their mission to get Dana arrested is thwarted when Carrie shows up to remind Brody that if he doesn't play stoolie and get them Nazir, he's going to prison for treason. Brody’s morality was reinvigorated by his poolside baptism, but it looks like for now his legacy is still one of murder and deceit.

Well done, Homeland!

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 an archive of her Homeland reviews here.

"Transgender" - Crystal Castles (mp3)

"Kerosene" - Crystal Castles (mp3)

In Which We Are Jailed By Our Homeland

Enduring Feelings

by HELEN SCHUMACHER

Homeland
creator Gideon Raff

There has been some hand-wringing on the part of critics and fans about whether or not Homeland’s writers were going to drag out Nick Brody’s double life as a hand-shaking symbol of American military success and bomb-wearing traitor for the entire season — or even possibly the rest of the show’s run — to a point where the audience would have lost interest and the show credibility. Those fears were allayed within the first five minutes of last week’s episode when Estes and Saul decided to set up a surveillance operation on Brody and bring Carrie in as bait.

Convinced Brody has made her during their hotel bar apologies, Carrie confronts him before he can warn Abu Nazir’s network, and we all get to relish the showdown as Carrie asks, “Do I want to be friends with a demented ex-soldier who hates America, who decided that strapping on a bomb was the answer to what ailed him?” In last night’s episode, titled “Q&A,” it seemed that while Carrie might not want to be friends with a demented ex-soldier, she still wants to be his lover.

As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. There may be no logic to her enduring feelings for Brody, but Carrie has come to a point of accepting them and then uses them to get inside the Congressman’s head. It was kind of nice to see love as strength instead of a weakness of a CIA agent.

The episode begins with Brody being hauled to an off-the-grid, poorly lit basement where Peter Quinn and his menacing cheekbones get the first crack at interrogating him. Peter confronts Brody with the shooting of Elizabeth Gaines to enable Secret Service protocol and Issa’s death. As Saul puts it, he sets the table with Brody’s lies. Brody’s initial defense is aggressive but after being left to dine on his damning confession video, begins to show signs of indigestion.

Meanwhile, outside the shadowy world of CIA interrogation, the Brody household and his legislative team begin to wonder where he’s disappeared to. To buy themselves 24 hours of questioning time, Estes tells the politician’s office that Brody is helping out on a hush-hush assignment. Still, they’re running out of time to get answers.

Putting the “dagger” in “cloak and dagger,” Peter speeds up the interrogation by stabbing Brody in the hand with a switchblade and enabling Carrie to enter the questioning, playing good cop to his bad. She starts with their relationship, asking Brody if he had fun breaking her heart, and then moves on using an angle that has gotten her past his defenses before — their shared trauma from frontline horrors. “You said up at the cabin that you didn’t have anyone to talk to. Did you ever find anybody — a friend, a therapist?” she asks Brody. They agree that “no one survives intact.”

Throughout the interrogation Brody still maintains that he never put on the bomb maker’s vest, but Carrie’s intimate series of questions and confidences do get him to give them Roya Hammad’s name as one of Nazir’s henchmen and that, as feared, a retaliatory strike on America is being planned. As always, the scene between Carrie and Brody was beautifully acted by Danes and Lewis, but it still felt self-consciously like an Emmy reel submission.

Brody’s interrogation ends with him back in a broken state, curled up on the cement floor in the fetal position. For the first time this season I felt sympathy for the guy as he once again got roped into playing the puppet, this time for the CIA in exchange for the organization keeping the suicide tape private. Seeing how well being Nazir’s and Vice President Walden’s lackey has worked out for him, it’s clear this agreement is only to further disrupt Brody’s domestic life and eat away at his poor crushed soul. Carrie and Saul scrape Brody’s destroyed psyche off the floor and Carrie drives him back home, leaving him to come clean with his wife.

As we near the second season’s halfway mark, there are two aspects I’m looking forward to seeing play out, besides obviously Carrie and Brody’s relationship. The first being the question of whether or not there’s a mole in the CIA. I finished the first season thinking the show’s writers wanted us to think there was one. It’s not a point that’s been raised yet, but it would be a great way to add a few twists into the second half of the season. There was an episode or two, when the razorblade was given to Afsal Hamid, and Saul first avoided then failed his lie detector test, that we were led to believe he was the mole. However, if there does turn out to be one, my money is on Galvez, even though he has so far spent this season in the background.

The second is the parallel father-daughter dynamics between Brody and Dana and Carrie and Saul. Both are touching. Dana understands her father better than anyone else in his life (besides maybe Carrie). She sees through his charade of normalcy and even managed to talk him out of blowing up the Vice President. Saul is not just Carrie’s mentor, but the stable father figure she didn’t get from her manic dad. He was able to make sense of her rantings when no one else could and, with less hesitation than anyone else at the CIA, trusts her judgment and has continued to advocate for her. It was probably nothing, but it would be clever for the scene in the previous episode, where Saul visits Estes at his home and is greeted by his son in a Darth Vader costume and growling “Luke, I am your father,” to turn out to be a bit of foreshadowing into either the Brody/Dana or Carrie/Saul relationship.

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. She last wrote in these pages about recess.

"Chelsea Hotel No. 2" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)

"Go or Go Ahead" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)