This Tv series ran for eight seasons from 2011 to 2020. I was able to watch parts of it on DVD at the time, but now I am having the pleasure of watching the whole thing from start to finish via Netfix streaming. The series follows CIA agents as they fight foreign terrorism. I can best describe it by discussing some of the characters.
Carrie Mathison. This character, played by the amazing Claire Danes, is the series' central character. She plays a totally committed and obsessive CIA agent in the fight against foreign terrorim. Her obsessiveness is enhanced by her bi-polar condition, which flares up periodically. Danes expresses more with her facial espressions than most actors can express with pages of dialog. She has deservedly won six major acting awards for her work in this series, along with many more nominations and minor awards.
The series begins with a foreign terrorist who is about to be executed whispering to Carrie that a former U.S. prisoner of war has been turned. Carrie assumes it is Nicholas Brody, who has recently been rescued after eight years of captivity and has returned to the U.S. She orders, without agency authority, to have Brody's house put under constant surveillance in order to obtain the evidence to prove that that he was turned. It lasts for a month, with no clear evidence having been gathered, and the surveillance has to be shut down.
She remains convinced of Brody's' guilt until another prisoner of war, previously thoguht to have died in captivity, is discoverd to be alive and working for Al Queda. For several episodes she is baffled by how she could have been so wrong about Brody. But then it turns out Brody has also been turned, as we learn when a tape surfaces that he made in anticipation of conducting a suicide bombing of top government officials.
Sol Berensen. This character, wonderfully played by Mandy Patinkin, is a veteran CIA officer who is a mentor and father figure to Carrie Mathiessen. He is basically a kind man who believes in Carrie and supports her, but he also has to balance that with his desire to defend the CIA's reputation. He becomes the acting head of the CIA at the start of the third season, after the death of the former head.
Jessica Brodie.This is Nicholas Brody's wife, played by the the beautiful Brazlian-American actress Morena Baccarin, also known for her role in "Gotham" as Leslie "Lee" Thompkins. During the eight years Brody was in captivity and presumed dead, she began an affair with Mike, Brody's best friend. When Brody is rescued and returns home, she tries her best to make a life with him and their two kids, but Brody has been forever changed and it just doesn't work out.
Nicholas Brody.This is a very weak character, a dull and wooden performance by the actor who plays him. He conveys no emotion, there is nothing there that causes us to care about him, to take any interest in him. This is the biggest drawback of this otherwise fine series. The first time I was bored was in the final episode of the second season when Brody and Carrie are discussing whether they have a future together. She helps him obtain a new identity and get across the border into Canada, and I was hoping that would be the end of him. But, unfortunately, we see him again in Season three when he mysteriously appears in Episode three in Caracas, with no explanation of how he got there. The love affair between Brody and Carrie is completely unbelievable; surely a better actor would have been able to pull this role off, but not this one.
Dana Brody. This is the 16-year-old daughter of Nicholas and Jessica Brody. She is a senstive soul who is always the fisrt one to sense when something is wrong. She has there teenage romances, all quite believable and touching.
William Walden. This is the Vice-President, an unsavory charzter who is gungho to root out the terrorists by any means necessary. When Brody returns from captivity, Walden proposes
Brody for Congress and then picks him to be his running mate for his upcoming run for president. Walden's plans get derailed when he is killed by an electronic sabotage of his pacemaker.
David Estes. This is the CIA Director, a protege of VP Walden, and just as hard-hearted and cruel and opportunistic. He dies, along with 218 others, in the bomb attack which takes place at Langley during the funeral of VP William Walden. After his death, Sol takes over as Acting Director for the CIA.
Peter Quinn. This strong character, a CIA assassin expertly played by Rupert Friend, shows up in season two and ends up appearing in 58 episodes, third-most after Carrie and Sol. At one point Estes orders him to kill Brody, but Quinn refuses, telling Estes that he is "the guy who kills bad guys", and Brody isn't a bad guy at that point.
Dar Adal. This CIA man is a strong character, played by accomplished actor F. Murray Abraham. He is a real hard-ass, which is obvious from the first time we see him. But the full extent of his evil cruelty isn't obvious until season six, when he feeds false intelligence to President-elect Elizabeth Keane about the Iranians violating the nuclear agreement, and then is involved, or at least his people are involved, in an attempt to assassinate the president-elect. He ends up in federal prison, which is where he deserves to be.
Maggie Mathison. This is Carrie's sister, one of my favorite characters, played by the amazing Amy Hargreaves. There is just something special about her, that twinkle in her eye, that certain indefinable spark that makes a person special. She is a medical doctor who helps Carrie cope with her bi-polar condition. After Carrie's daughter Frannie is born, Maggie takes csare of the baby while Carrie is overseas, and then in season seven when Carrie is back in the states, Carrie and Franny live with her. Eventually she gets custody of Franny as Carrie's life is just too chaotic to be a custodial parent, with Carrie having every other weekend visitation rights.
Conclusion. In season three Brody is sent into Iran, with instructions from the CIA to seek asylum there so as to get close to Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Danesh Akbari and assassinate him, so that CIA asset Majid Javadi can take his place, creating an opportunity for a U.S.–Iran rapprochement. Brody does his job but the CIA refuses to extract him from iran, so that the larger mission can go forward as planned.
One of the central themes of Homeland is that anti-terrorism work often forces impossible moral tradeoffs. Brody's death is arguably the series' clearest example: he finally redeems himself by accomplishing his mission, only to be sacrificed because his survival would jeopardize a major geopolitical success. The show intentionally leaves viewers wrestling with whether that sacrifice was justified.
Before his execution Brody is permitted a final meeting with Carrie, who is still hoping to rescue him from Iran. During that meeting he wrestles with the moral ambiguities of his situation, saying, "In what universe can you redeem one murder by committing another." Later in the conversation he tells Carrie, "I'm OK, I really am. I just want it to be over."
In the fourth season we see Carrie serving as head of the CIA operation in Pakistan. Her main adversary is not just the Taliban and other terrorist groups, but aslso the ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's main intelligence agency. This is a powerful organization, established in 1948, shortly after Pakistan's independence. Just as is the case in real life, in Homeland the ISI is depicted as hopelessly duplicitous, half on the side of the terrorists and half on the side of the government which is supposedly trying to fight the terrorists. Hence the Obama Administration's decision not to inform the Pakistani government about the raid which killed Bin Laden.
The first two seasons of Homeland take place in the U.S., but the nest few seasons take place abroad, in various hot spots including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Germany, Russia, Syria, and Lebanon. The show depicts the CIA engaging in assassinations and engaging in activities within the U.S. borders, both contrary to its charter. The real issue here is how to get the CIA to stay within its stated mission, and how to improve the intelligence-gathering process.
Also, how to get the exective branch to take the intelligence seriously. Just recenty we heard that the recent strike on an Iranian school which killed more than 170 people happened because the military did not heed the CIA warnings that the intelligence saying it was a military installation was outdated. Not to mention Jimmy Carter's 1979 blunder in ignoring the intelligence telling him that our embassy in Iran would be in danger if he let the Shah into this country.
