6x12 America First

[7.1/10] The pacing and structure for *Homeland*s season finales has been kind of wonky since at least Season 3. “America First” is half-climax and half-denouement, and that leaves it feeling a bit jumbled tonally. It is difficult, at best, to have the culmination of all the fireworks and plotting and threats that have bubbled up over the course of a season sewed together with the quiet aftermath and scenes of people putting the pieces back together. It leaves the finale of one of the show’s best seasons feeling like Frankenstein’s monster.

And yet, taken apart, each half of the episode is solid, if not exactly an achievement. The attempt on President Keane’s life, and Carrie and Quinn saving the day, would have worked better as its own thing, and expends a number of conveniences to get the characters separated and put back together right when the show needs it, but it has its moments.

For one thing, it’s nice to see Carrie taking charge a bit. One of the show’s recurring bits is Carrie as the last sane woman, and seeing her make her way to the President, figure out the plot (with some unexpected help from Dar Adal), and keep the President Elect safe from her would-be assassins is a minor thrill. The threat of the rogue ops team trying to blow up her car and then hunt her down verges on the unbelievable, but makes for a few nice set pieces at least.

And, oh yeah, Quinn is dead. It’s a moment that feels like it should have more impact than it does. It’s nice that he goes out with a heroic sacrifice, saving not only the leader of the free world but the woman he loves amid a torrent of gunfire. The fact that making it through that blockade means they’re suddenly safe, and the entire idea of pegging the assassination on him are a bit farfetched, but there’s the kernel of a good idea there.

Quinn goes down fighting, and when he believes he’s empty and worthless and only good at killing, he dies putting his life on the line for something bigger than himself. The tone of the moment is somewhat weird, as the show doesn’t get too impressionistic or too realistic, but it tries to follow up on the sense that Quinn has been out of sorts and trying to protect Carrie throughout the season, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice in that regard here.

The problem is that Quinn has been near-death so many times in this show, from his pirate king escapade last season, to his miraculous survival of the attempt on his life at the cabin this season, that it’s hard to gin up too much investment in his actual death here. “America First” doesn’t dwell on it, and I appreciate its commitment to not overdoing the moment, but you can only turn a character into a death-defying superman so many times, or fake out his demise so many times, before when you actually pull the trigger (so to speak) it doesn’t mean what it might have.

We then get to “six weeks later,” which conjures up troubling recollections to Brody magically beating his drug addiction through the power of a “three weeks later” mini-montage. Still, the passage of time puts some distance between the climax of the season and the inevitable end-of-the-line reflection, which at least softens the sort of disjointed feeling of it all.

The good guys have won! Brett O’Keefe still has his show, but he’s talking about how he’s let his fans down by letting Keane get inaugurated. Dar Adal and his cronies are in jail! Saul is the head of the CIA, or at least someone big enough to have a seat at the table when the heads of the intelligence community are gathered! Carrie is going to get Frannie back, and she’s getting a job in the White House! All is well! Conspiracy scuttled! Bad guys vanquished! Heroes victorious!

This being Homeland it is, of course, not that simple. I like the poetry of that “what hell hath I wrought?” ending to the season, where Saul is arrested, Carrie is used by the people in power, and things don’t look so sunny on the other side of Keane’s inauguration. There’s something uncomfortable in Dar’s ominous-yet-warm statement to Saul that what he did was unforgivable, but that he’s not sure he was wrong to do it. It feels like the show is trying to tie into Trump-related concerns of the real world that are an uneasy fit for Homeland’s fictional, if occasionally ripped-from-the-headlines one.

Still, I like the law of unintended consequences coming into play here. Dar and O’Keefe’s efforts stemmed from a mistrust of Keane, a sense that she would set back their projects and their way of life. Now, that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no doubt that Keane would have enacted reforms, but it is clear that the attempt on her life hardened her, made her into someone that would have heads roll throughout the intelligence agencies, who would reauthorize the patriot act rather than limit it, that would make mistrustful of anything that isn’t under his auspices.

As disquieting as that is to see, it’s entirely understandable. When your own deep state makes an attempt on your life, it’s not crazy to be mistrustful of anyone even remotely affiliated with them. When your enemies, who turn out to be mortal enemies, subvert the rule of law to run you out as a duly elected leader, it’s not a crazy move to subvert it yourself in order to ensure they’re not able to do the same thing again. There’s a troubling subtext from Dar’s comments and Keane’s own worries to Saul that there is something fundamentally unsound about Keane that makes her prone to this, or not up to the mantle of being President, but the show take an interesting tack in showing how Dar and O’Keefe’s plan changed the course of Keane’s presidency, but not in the way they imagined.

It’s not in the way Carrie imagined either. The iconography at the end of the episode, of Carrie looking off into the distance and seeing the capital, is a direct parallel to the famous image of Brody doing the same thing. The implication, at least as I read it, is that just as the first major arc of Homeland centered on the blowback and problems from the war on terror sparked by undeniable tragedy, so too does Carrie look upon a government in Washington that is poised to start the same cycle over again, the same recriminations and power-consolidating executive that helped to create an environment where Brody would be born. Carrie had hoped to avoid all this, to prevent Dar from perpetuating that cycle, and yet despite her best efforts, it’s all back where it began, even if it took a different road to get there.

But Carrie doesn’t just mourn the lost opportunity for reform. She mourns her friend. As Mrs. Bloom noted, Carrie discovering Quinn’s collection of picture hidden in a book is a nice callback to how she uncovered his former family life in the first place. The book itself, Great Expectations, is a symbolic choice, one that tells the story of a young man who idolized a young woman, and who went through hell in pursuing someone who would not, and arguably could not, love him back. The stack of pictures is a little cliché, but still, the moment where Carrie finds the photo of herself amid Quinn’s treasured snapshot memories is still affecting, a sign of intimacy that she was one of the few things in his life that mattered, that made him more than a heartless killing machine.

Season 6 was still one of Homeland’s best, one with an impressively unified story that relied on fewer wild twists or conveniences than most, and which offered better and more potent commentary on today’s political climate despite not quite tracking with the real world in its fictional leaders. “America First” isn’t the softest landing for an otherwise quality stretch of episode, with the divided structure and languid pace giving the entire efforts a less-than-cohesive sensibility, but it ties together a certain fatalism that has been with the show from the beginning.

There are good people, even good people who do bad things. There are well-intentioned people, in government and in the intelligence services, who mean to change things and defend their country. But sometimes the confluence of those intentions leads us inexorably back to the same place, sinking to the level of those we oppose, stamping out our enemies without process or justice, and starting the cycle anew, birthing more Brodys and Quinns to fight and die in the struggle. Carrie is a survivor and a witness, and all her talent, all her effort, all her sacrifice to make things better or different may be for naught. That’s not fun, but its potent, and so is Season 6 of Homeland.