Hate-Watching 'Homeland' Or Nicholas Brody's 'Extreme Makeover'

Every now and again you run into an episode of a television series that turns the whole medium upside down. Episode 311 of Homeland was one such episode. But it’s not necessarily a good thing.
As is often the case with a season’s penultimate episode, this was clearly intended to be a Very Important Hour of Television. “Big Man in Tehran” is the episode that the previous 10 have been pointing towards. Everything in this topsy turvy season, from Carrie’s breakdown to Dana’s attempted suicide, from Brody’s exile to Saul’s house of cards, has been put into motion for a payoff in the last 20 minutes of this episode.

 

But before the big finish, we need more improbable set-up. We find Carrie Mathision, of all people, in Iran, of all places. While Quinn and other perfectly capable agents of the CIA are cooling their heels in Langley, Saul Berenson somehow decides that Carrie Mathison is the only one who can pull this off. The same Carrie Mathison who happily took a bullet to protect Brody’s reputation. This does not bode well.
Carrie meets Javadi in the basement of the hotel, and the guy who killed his ex-wife with a wine bottle somehow finds himself in the strange position of speaking truth to power. “The mission is Akbari,” he says. “Getting Brody out? Strictly optional.”
Naturally, Brody’s meeting with Akbari goes awry. He’s whisked away for a meeting with Abu Nazir’s widow, and next thing we know, he’s on Iran’s answer to Good Morning, America  chanting “Death to America.”
How does it feel? To be on your own? With no direction home? Just ask Nicholas Brody.

At this point, Senator Lockhart, the season’s Dick Cheney stand-in, takes his turn speaking truth to power, aka Saul Berenson: “We tried to extract him. Brody didn’t even show up for the rendezvous. And now he’s spouting off all over Tehran. Bottom line: Brody’s gone from asset to serious liability.”
And that’s where things got weird. By putting those words in Lockhart’s mouth, the writers meant for us to view them, at the minimum, with great skepticism. Except that I bought what he was saying. Not only about Nicholas Brody, Erratic Assassin. But about Nicholas Brody, Problematical Protagonist.
“We need to end it.”  Yes. We do.
From that point forward, I found myself actively rooting for those two Mossad guys to pop a cap in a Nicholas Brody, and, in doing so, end a story line that had gone on too long by half.  The fact is that Nicholas Brody was once a great character. But he was also a character who’s now well past his expiration date. A character who should have been killed off at the end of season one. Until the Showtime suits intervened.
They should have let the showrunner –and the C4–do its job.
Because for the better part of 23 episodes, Homeland has been adrift, the story line bending over to protect Brody, while exposing its own sundry weaknesses in the process. We knew Brody wouldn’t, say, get bumped off in Caracas. But now, with one episode left in the season, why not?
Kill Nicholas Brody. There. I said it.
And as I said it, I realized I had never been in this position before, of actively wishing for the death of a protagonist in a drama series. No matter how dark the antihero got, I never rooted for Tony Soprano, or Walter White or Avon Barksdale to buy the farm. But that’s exactly where I found myself with regards to Nicholas Brody.
Indeed, the only time I’d been in this territory before was with shows that had jumped the shark–Smash, say–where I was actively hate watching.
And as Nicholas Brody manages to murder the guy who’s more heavily guarded than the Ayatollah with an ashtray and a throw pillow, I’m hoping against hope for the guys from the Revolutionary Guard to bust in and do what Alex Gansa should have done two seasons ago.
Instead, I get one more impassioned phone call to our heroin, um, heroine, who’s poised to ride a headscarf and a bad dye job to an extraction that would have seemed improbable on Burn Notice. (On the season finale of Homeland, featuring guest stars Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless…)
Yes, there’s still a week left. And a glimmer of hope in the form of portentous trailer for episode 312. Can Homeland save itself from itself by killing off its main character? Sure. But I’m not exactly holding my breath.