Dead End

The last paragraph of this post is about Master Of Sex. For the rest, let there be a general SPOILER ALERT for Homeland:

The trades recently announced Morena Baccarin and Morgan Saylor, who play Brody's wife and daughter on Homeland, were being demoted from regulars to recurring characters. This made sense, as their relation to the show, with Brody long gone from the household, became more and more tenuous (not to mention in the case of Saylor annoying).  But after watching the final episode of this season, "The Star," it's even clearer why they're gone. See, they killed off Brody.

There's been a lot of negative fan reaction, but I'm glad they did this, since I believe he should have died at the end of season one. If anything, this was overdue. The plot looked like he and Carrie were all ready to get out of Iran--they even had a conversation as to what would happen next, and Carrie revealed her pregnancy and they talked about their cosmic connection--but at the last second Saul was countermanded by Lockhart, who informed Javadi where they were hiding.

The deal was to pick up Brody, thus assuring Javadi's continued influence, but leave Carrie behind.  But Carrie didn't want to be left behind, so she went back to her hotel, the beginning of implausibility piled upon implausibility.  She might not like what happened, but she should be smart enough to get the heck out of there as fast as possible. There's nothing more for her to do on the ground.

So she goes back and is immediately picked up by Javadi's people.  She confronts him, demanding he free Brody, as if this were possible.  In fact, despite what she and Saul hoped, this play made sense--and in any case, there was nothing Javadi could do at this point.  So the question here is not can he let Brody go, but why would he let Carrie go?  She's already shown herself to be a loose cannon, and she knows all about the Javadi deal, so why not just kill her and try to explain to the CIA how things got away from him.

At the very least, why doesn't he get Carrie out of the country?  He doesn't even put her on ice for a while, but let's her do whatever she wants (after allowing her to talk to Brody on the phone, I might add).  He even has leverage on her--as if he needs it--knowing the people in Tehran close to another agent whom Carrie likes. But no, he leaves her on her own so of course she attends the hanging (after Brody told her not to) where she may attempt who knows what shenanigans? (All this on top of the previous implausibility--that high profile Agent Mathison, who's testified before Congress and has been outed as crazy by the CIA, can ever do any more undercover work.)

But the main thing is Brody dies, thank goodness, so we can all heave a sigh of relief.  But that doesn't stop the implausibilities.  Four months later, we see Iran is now much more pliant diplomatically, thanks to Saul's machinations. Her wife congratulates him, telling him it's his doing.  She knows?!  He's the head of the CIA, but apparently he spreads the deepest secret the government has as pillow talk?

Carrie meets with Lockhart, who wants to name her head of Istanbul.  Huh?  If there's anyone he'd want out more than Saul, it'd be Carrie. She was insulting to him and also showed herself to be a rogue in the field.  He was the one who gave the order to make sure everything Carrie wanted wouldn't happen. (This on top of the implausible scenario that Carrie would ever be allowed back in the CIA after she was discovered to have mental problems that required medication and didn't tell anyone about it.) Lockhart would either give her a dead end position or have her quietly cashiered.

Then she meets Quinn.  He's still working for the CIA?  A few episodes ago, in a stupid character moment, he said it was time for him to leave--he was just sticking around till the end the mission. They never should have done it, but once they committed him to that path, can they pretend it never happened?  Next Carrie decides she can't raise the baby.  The baby was the stupidest plot point of the series by far--worse that the mental problems which annoyed me in the first season, worse that anything morose daughter Dana ever did--but now they try to claim it's just a head fake?  Why bother in the first place if you're not going to go through with it.

The future plot is uncertain.  Carrie has always been the center of the show, so presumably she'll continue with her merry adventures.  But Saul is gone. How is that gonna work?  Brody out of the picture is fine with me, but I don't want to continue without Saul, and not as a private contractor.

By the way, I also watched the finale to the first season of Masters Of Sex. It was okay, but the show still doesn't even try to have the dialogue sound like how people talked in the 50s.  Within a ten-minute stretch, I heard the phrases "wrap my head around," "done deal" and "game changer."