Grade: 85%
Showtime’s HOMELAND begins its sophomore
season with “The Smile.” Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is in Beirut trying to
make contact with an important woman who can give the U.S. information
about an impending attack. Unfortunately, she doesn’t want to talk to
Saul. The only American this lady trusts is Carrie (Claire Danes), who
is in no shape mentally to return to spy work. But Carrie does anyway.
HOMELAND stunned viewers in its first
season, presenting an intricate, complex mystery. Carrie is a bi-polar
woman straddling the edge of insanity and genius. She could see things
others could not see, but her dogged efforts came at a price. She did
save the world, but it left her strung out and wasted. After
hospitalization and some meds, she is finally finding peace. Is she
really ready to go back to this world?
No, she is not. That is the frustrating
part of “The Smile.” Here we see a familiar, beloved character finally
getting a bit of happiness, and she willingly and knowingly puts herself
in a position to destroy that. Worse is Saul, who knows full well what
bringing Carrie back into the field will do, and yet he asks for her
anyway. This is a disaster waiting to happen, one that is totally
preventable, and will hurt main characters that we don’t want to see
hurt. Which means the series already starts off the second season on the
wrong foot.
The thing is, Saul and Carrie’s
decisions are completely rational. Saul has to weigh the mental health
of a woman he cares deeply about against the lives at stake. He doesn’t
want to cause Carrie more harm, but if it stops a terrorist plot, he has
to. HOMELAND doesn’t let the weight of this decision play heavily
enough in the episode for Saul, but it does provide a justifiable
motivation for anyone who stops and thinks about it.
Carrie can’t help herself, so her choice
to go to the Middle East is even more understandable. She has a
personality that cannot just walk away when she senses a crisis. She
will probably go down swinging one day, refusing to give up, even as she
knows it is destroying her. It’s a bad recipe, and one that I am not
anxious to see play out.
Which is why I didn’t love “The Smile.”
It left me with a feeling on intense displeasure. How can Saul and
Carrie do this? Surely, there are other ways to get the information for
the CIA. Why set up something so bad for the characters?
Brody’s (Damian Lewis) story is a little
less annoying. He is being offered the chance to run for Vice
President. Though he tells his wife, Jessica (Morena Baccarin), that he
doesn’t stand a chance, it’s easy to see that Brody himself doesn’t
believe such nonsense. Whether he is a bit drunk on power, or the
prospect of power, or if he is just foolhardy, isn’t clear. What is
obvious in the episode is that Brody plans to get into higher office.
What will Brody do with his position?
Will he help the American people, or will be betray his country for Abu
Nazir (Navid Negahban)? The terrorist leader sends someone to remind
Brody of his commitments. These are promises Brody did not make lightly,
even if he seems to be regretting them now that he is back in the
comfort of home. What will Nazir do if Brody refuses to follow through?
One thing is certain. Nazir will not let Brody maintain his comfortable
life.
Even though Brody is in just as
precarious a position as Carrie, one in which his satisfaction with life
won’t last, it’s harder to feel sorry for him. He may have a mental
illness, too, having sympathy for his captors. However, he seems to have
the chance to break away, and he’s continued to make bad decisions. He
can fight to save people over there by scaling back the drone strikes
and still be patriotic, but this isn’t the way he is portrayed. Brody
carries a bit more responsibility than Carrie for the position he is in.
Lastly, there is a subplot about Brody’s
daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor), telling her classmates that Brody is a
Muslim. This could be the seed of a neat plot where a war hero openly
runs for president as a member of an alternate religion, and tolerance
is battled for. However, because Brody is one of those bad Muslims who
might kill innocents, it kind of falls a little flat. Instead, it’s a
bit about continuing to trick his family, rather than an uplifting,
inspiring turn of events.
HOMELAND’s first season was good for a
lot of reasons. It kept you guessing who the characters were, what their
purposes and beliefs were, and what would happen next. These elements
do not feel as blatantly present in “The Smile.” Maybe it will just take
time to get back into the world. Or maybe HOMELAND would have worked
better as a miniseries, with a defined beginning and ending, rather than
trying to drag something out that becomes a bit staler the longer it is
continued. Either way, while still entertaining, “The Smile” did not
live up to the greatness of season one. Only time will tell if this is a
trend for the season, or just a fluke.
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