That anon who quoted the Vanity Fair article ("a nation that is forever betraying its own people, let alone those around the world.") was, I believe, asking if any of you agree with Lawson's perspective on American foreign policy and, as such, agree that Carrie's rebuilding of Saul's network protects that dangerous power. Now, I'M someone who does agree with Lawson on that, but also with him being "GLAD" about Carrie's decision on "individual terms." Full context matters, anon!
Anonymous: Sara - you quoted Richard Lawsons Vanity Fair piece that included the phrase about A nation that is forever betraying its own people. Let alone those around the world. I found that so surprising that I asked if that’s what you believe? I’m writing again because you said you didn’t understand the question.
Whoops, leave it up to me to fully quote the piece and then have no idea what you’re talking about!
Again, full quote in context:
“In that losing of particular relevance, Homeland found a freedom. The final season’s odd dashes of blinkered hope—its notion that forever picked wounds can somehow also heal—gave the show a mournful glow, allowing for a finale that was jarringly poignant. Why should I be so glad that Carrie is still out there, plugging away, trying to protect some idea of a nation that is forever betraying its own people, let alone those around the world? Because Danes and the writers made us care on individual terms. What worked so well about “Prisoners of War,” I think, is how it stripped away some of the show’s brittle context and compacted itself into a character study.”
Yes, I fully believe that America is forever betraying its own people. I believe this on the show and I believe it in real life. How can you not, at times like these?
Re: the show specifically, they repeat this idea in every season, in new permutations. Carrie, of course, is betrayed by her own country. She’s left to rot in Moscow for months. She never gets to tell the real story of who Brody was (until now). She treks into Pakistan searching for Max because no one else gives a shit. She fights for that fucking flight recorder every step of the way because, again, no one else cares. She’s labeled a traitor, which is true in one specific way but demonstrably false in so many others.
Here is Lawson elaborating on the “individual terms”:
Or, more inclusively, a study of a complicated relationship—mentee and mentor, errant daughter and stern but forgiving father figure. In the final scenes of the episode, Carrie reached out to Saul in furtive fashion two years after she cleaved a seemingly unclosable rift between them—Carrie drugged Saul and almost had Russian agents kill him in order to extract the name of Saul’s mole in the Kremlin. This twist curiously brought to mind the ending of the ravishing French romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire, in which a coded message is discovered, with melancholy joy, after years of painful and irreducible distance.
Maybe it was another Homeland indulgence, to focus the show’s final moments on the emotional journey of these two characters rather than the larger world they so routinely messed around with. As pure narrative television, though, it delivered a disarming wallop, beautifully shot by mainstay director Lesli Linka Glatter, as Carrie sat and enjoyed some of her favorite feverish jazz music at a Moscow theater, smiling a smile not of settled contentment, but of the chase being happily back on.
Carrie is flawed. She is a patriot for a flawed, imperfect nation. Brought up by Saul, in service of his mission, it became theirs together, and that’s what she’s rebuilding at the end: the promise, the hope, for something better. A new paradigm. For her, for them, and maybe for the whole world too.