Showtime Homeland "I'll Fly Away" #208 Losing It

by Catherine Giordano

Showtime’s “Homeland” season 2 episode 8 is entitled “I’ll Fly Away”.  I naming the episode “Loosing It.” The characters literally get lost in that people who should know where they someone is, don’t know where someone is.  I also mean losing it in the sense of losing one’s sanity, losing one’s temper, losing one’s will to fight on. The main action in this episode involves Carrie and Brody finding each other and losing each other, both literally and metaphorically.   

Brody is supposed to meet with Roya. But he is busy having a screaming match with Jess, his wife. Dana has gone missing, and she blames Brody and his “secret mission wit the CIA. She tells him that he has to tell the CIA to back off.  Brody loses it and screams, “I can’t, I can’t.  

Just then the phone rings, Dana has gone to Mike’s house. Dana and Mike had become close when he was seeing Jess before Brody returned. When you’re a teenager and Mom and Dad are pissing you off, it is nice to have a Dad-in-waiting to pick up the slack. 

When Brody doesn’t leave his house, Carrie goes in and finds him sitting on the floor in a corner. He’s pretty much lost his will to live. He tells Carrie that he doesn’t care what happens to him, he just can’t do this double-agent routine anymore. Carrie talks him into getting up and going to the meeting.  

He meets with Roya, but he loses it again. He asks her for answers and she won’t tell him anything. He begins shouting at her about how stressed he is. He shouts “I’m through” and he storms off. 

Quinn, the leader of the CIA team working with Brody, says “We have to bring him in. This thing is over.”  After Brody walks away from Roya, Carrie, who is in a surveillance van, tells her associates to strop tracking Brody. She chases after Brody and finds him, but the CIA has lost surveillance on both of them. This buys her a little time to try to turn things around. 

Carrie drives Brody to a motel near a lake. She continues to try to persuade him to call Roya, and get back into the good graces of the terrorists. “You’d be a real hero,” she tells him. “This deal is the way out for both of us.”  She means that Brody will not be prosecuted, and she will be able to be a hero also and return to the CIA. She knows that if this operation is not successful, Brody is ruined, but so is she. 

Brody tells Carrie that he has burned every bridge— with Nazir, with the CIA, with his family. He says, “I’m more alone now than I ever was in that hole in Iraq.” He’s sure that he has been replaced in the plot, and he is glad to be done. “I’ll finally be able to stop lying to everyone.” 

Carrie says, “You are not all alone.” She kisses him. They make love. For a long time.

By this time the CIA has established an audio connection. Saul guessed that she went to a “safe harbor site where she knew I would find her.” They all listen in to the grunts and moans of love-making until Saul cuts the audio.  

The next morning Brody calls Roya. He tries to get Roya to take him back. “I’m under a lot of pressure,” he explains, “I have troubles at home. I just lost it yesterday.”  He explains that he wants to continue with the mission. Roya is cold to him. 

Carrie tells Brody that he doesn’t have to feel alone. He can talk to her if it gets to be too much. They share a tender moment. Is Carrie for real or not?  Does she love Brody or is she just using him to accomplish her mission? I think Carrie is lost in a confusing web of conflicting emotions. She tells Saul and Quinn that she is not emotionally involved—she is just doing her job. She took Brody to a motel where the CIA could find her—that’s the CIA agent acting. But the love-making? Is that just to control Brody or is it because she loves him? I think a little bit of both. Saul warns her that things did not work out well for her the last time she got emotionally involved with Brody.     

The CIA is tracking Brody again. Brody meets with Roya in a parking garage. Roya tells Brody to turn the car around and drive.   

The CIA team follows cautiously. Roya brings Brody to a deserted field on a lonely road.  It has gotten dark, and the team can’t see what is happening. Carrie is ordered to stay back, but she insists on doing a drive-by to catch a glimpse of what is happening. They see that Brody and Roya have been joined by a third man, the unidentified terrorist that Roya met with several episodes ago and who shot up the “tailor shop.”  

Carrie is again ordered to stay back, but she leaves the van and approaches on foot. A helicopter lands, and Brody is strong-armed into the helicopter. The helicopter flies away with Brody on board.  

Carrie is standing in the middle of the field screaming, “We’re losing him. You have to track it.” As the helicopter leaves, she stands there screaming, “He’s gone. He’s just gone.” She’s lost it. 

Brody is brought to some kind of hanger or warehouse. A car drives in. A man gets out of the car—it is Nazir. The episode ends with Brody and Nazir face- to-face. No words have yet been spoken.  

Was the CIA able to track the helicopter?  If not, they have lost Brody again. 

Dana is having a crisis of her own. When Jess arrives to take her home, she asks if she can stay with Mike. This is the “this-is-a-little-weird” moment of the week.  I know he is a stand-in Dad, but isn’t it a little strange to let a teen-aged girl sleep over at the apartment of a bachelor? 

The next morning Dana asks Mike to take her to the house of the woman that was the victim of the hit-and-run.  Mike waits in the car as Dana goes to the house.  She meets that daughter of the dead woman. The daughter is holding a crying baby on her hip—the baby is one of her two younger sisters. She immediately recognizes Dana as the girl she met at the hospital and she puts two and two together.  

She loses it. She berates Dana. She tells Dana that she must not go to the police.  Things have been taken care of. She has been given money not to pursue anything about her mother’s death. She needs this money to care for her sisters. She warns Dana not to mess things up for her. 

Dana is lost. She has issues with her mother and father. She is confused and hurt and angry. She has gotten a lesson about how “might makes right” and as a girl who was brought up with values, this sudden revelation of how the world works has affected her deeply. She goes home to her mother and falls into her arms sobbing because she will not be able to confess.  

Everyone is lost, and found, and then lost again. Everyone is lost in more ways than one.

 

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