Homeland ‘Semper I’: Back to Reality

This week’s episode of Homeland brought a lot of our characters face to face with the reality of their worlds, something they’ve either not acknowledged previously, or have been trying to escape. There were a ton of examples, and although there didn’t seem to be a lot of plot advancement, there were a lot of parallels drawn between characters as they all faced situations they’ve been trying to avoid. It was a slow, smoldering type of episode, punctuated by two strong moments in the final third.

Let’s talk about Carrie’s snap back to reality first. With her month-long surveillance running out of time (and with not much to show), Carrie’s got to shut it down, and struggles with the idea of moving onto other leads (primarily, the money trail from the necklace taken from the neck of dead Lynne). As Saul wisely points out, she feels like she’s missing something because she’s missing Brody. She lives for her job, and the thrill of the chase certainly plays into that. So what does she do when she can’t find a way to watch Brody anymore? She arranges a way to run into him innocently, even flirting with him a bit as she relates with him over a group therapy session for veterans. Small bits of the mentally unstable Carrie are beginning to seep into her work, and it’s already starting to cloud her investigation into the reasons why Lynne was killed.

There’s also her discussions about her supposed relationship with her boss, Deputy Director David Estes, and although they have a nice, normal-sounding scene during a work party at the local watering hole, there are still some serious red flags about her and what happened between them. Nothing was mentioned specifically, though ‘I was still married’ and ‘I ran away to NY’ suggest there was some crazy shit going on between those two, and who knows what Carrie’s role in all that was. Hopefully this is something the show won’t spend too much time on, because adding a relationship drama into the already dense work and personal life story of Carrie, would really muddle the show through its first season run.

Brody also had to face some realities of his own, including a marriage on life support, a friend who was banging his wife, and remembering the social faux paus of shooting wild animals in your backyard during a barbeque. The more normal Brody’s public face becomes, the more unsettled his personal and home life are becoming. The guy is seeing things in his mirror, has had vivid flashbacks in every episode, and is having to face a lot of uncomfortable things upon his return home (media attention, feeling normal, etc.).

Even the loving terrorist couple living by the airport are dealing with some realities of their own: they are almost given up by a CIA tail, only to be warned by an unknown entity, who was watching the CIA watch this family. They are important to whatever attack is trying to be prevented (it is revealed this man is a professor in mechanical engineering), and even they weren’t completely prepared for what the reality of what they are doing really is (as is Brody, in another interesting parallel). Looking over your shoulder constantly can make you unstable as hell, and its something many people are trying to deal with (including Galvez, who Estes has under his thumb to keep an eye on Carrie).

Overall, a great episode, and I thought the moment between Brody and Jessica was especially strong (Brody: “what, say it..” Jessica: “… you can’t even fuck your wife”), and the last scene with Carrie and Brody was subtly mysterious (how attracted to Carrie was Brody… and vice versa?), and something I was hoping the show would do sooner rather than later. We can’t have ten episodes of Carrie stalking Brody, it would just get annoying – but if he needed, Carrie would always know where he left that damn khaki tie.

Couple other thoughts:

– religion continues to be a major theme. Brody goes to Catholic mass, Este’s ex-wife converts to Judaism, and Carrie asks about certain possible suspects being Muslim. Faith is an important part of both being a terrorist and working for the government, and it’s yet another interesting parallel drawn by the creative team.

– anyone miss the reason Brody shot a deer in his backyard? The deer is a symbol of purity and gentleness (and of power), and when Brody shot it, it also shot Jessica’s perception of the old Brody, who we’ve seen in flashbacks to be a loving, caring father and husband (their long embrace before he went to war was a great sign of this). A gentle-man is no more.

What did people think of last night’s episode? Too slow, or magnificently well-paced? Stop back next Monday to read about the next episode!