Can you hear a faint rumbling noise, like a motorboat in the distance? It’s a long way off, but it’s definitely getting closer – and Nick Brody is on water skis behind it, clad only in ominously tight swimming trunks and a leather jacket. Homeland, incredibly, is in danger of jumping the shark.
The show has always trod a fine line between genius and ridiculousness, and up till now has always managed to maintain its balance without toppling into overblown dialogue or preposterous plotting, the contrivances of its outlandish scenarios either cleverly explained or glossed over with enough finesse to deter naysayers. But there’s a limit to suspension of disbelief, and ironically enough, the moment it came crashing down involved Damien Lewis stripping off and getting wet.
Halfway through ‘The Clearing’, Brody dives into the outdoor swimming pool of political sponsor Rex Henning, flashing his scarred torso and boxers as he ducks underwater, moody music soaring on the soundtrack. It couldn’t be more clearly flagged up as AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN WHICH BRODY REFLECTS UPON STUFF if subtitles suddenly appeared in neon purple, and yet … it’s not really emblematic of anything. It’s just a piece of empty symbolism that goes on for so long without saying or meaning anything that it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the episode was a few minutes short and they needed to fill a few minutes get it up to requisite length.
If anything’s guarantee to kill an audience’s attention boner and drag them out of the moment, it’s pointless filler – particularly after having to swallow an increasingly oversized succession of unlikely scenarios. Peter Quinn leads a CIA ground offensive against a multiple murderer despite having almost been killed last week and the fact he’s just an analyst, not a tactical SWAT-trained badass. Carrie and Brody abruptly suck face in the woods around Henning’s house, the ex-marine finding time to quip, ‘Is this for real or are you just handling me?’ like Roger Moore in a Tintin wig. Worst of all, Saul accidentally allows Aileen Morgan (a grumpy terrorist who was in a couple of half-remembered episodes back in season one) to kill herself with the shards of a smashed bottle of wine that he gave her, despite her being a terrorist in a maximum security stockade.
‘I got emotional,’ he admits guiltily to Quinn afterwards – but why? We’ve seen Saul overcome his obvious attraction to Carrie without letting it jeopardise his professionalism. Hell, he pretty much gave up on his marriage to keep working for the CIA. Why did one girl he only knew for the duration of a trip through the southern United States get him all of a flutter? Sorry, but it’s about as buyable as lines like Quinn’s immortally awful rejoinder to Carrie when she sees him stripping off: ‘Like you’ve never seen a dick before …’ Somehow, and in a horribly short space of time, a lot of the glue holding the programme together has come unstuck.
It’s not all bad. Despite its improbability and irrelevance, the scene in which Aileen lies dying in a puddle of her own blood, Saul crying in frustration and despair, is incredibly moving; Finn Walden minesweeping discarded booze as he tries to pluck up the courage to confess his automotive sins to Mom and Pop has a smack of realism about it which stands out like the Washington Monument amid the implausibility surrounding it; and you have to admire Brody’s humbleness as he compares himself to genuine war hero Henning and finds himself wanting.
But having fallen so far and so quickly, Homeland now has its work cut out getting away from shark-infested waters before it makes the leap from which no TV show has ever returned.
This week’s big Homeland question: When Carrie says to Mike Faber that the Brody Bunch may need him soon, is she envisaging Brody himself being punished for his crimes – or picturing herself stealing him away from Jess and the kids?
This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: Why has Max taken to sitting around the ops room like a forlorn teenager unwilling to admit his date has stood him up?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 18 November 2012 on Channel 4.
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