TV Review- Homeland 3x02: "Uh... Oh... Ah..."
Note: Spoilers through Episode 3.02.
“I’m telling you the truth” –Saul Berenson
“We’re not defective, you know?” – Dana Brody
What is the truth? Is it some universal answer that we all invariably have if we dig deep down to find it? Is it something that has to be revealed for us, like Morpheus bringing Neo into the real world? Or is it something manufactured by those in power to silence those that would seek to disrupt the natural order of things, whatever that natural order may be? In Homeland, and in reality, it’s a combination of those things, because truth takes on many different definitions, from the truth that we believe to be true to the truth that society universally accepts to be true. The real problem stems from the times when those two definitions of truth contradict each other, devaluing that personal truth and causing enough confusion to drive a person mad.
“Uh… Oh… Ah…” explores what happens when people feel the isolation caused by that contradiction, showing how that isolation causes a person to do anything to feel like they’re correct and society is wrong. Just like the bizarre title, “Uh… Oh… Ah…”, is an utterance of confusion and self-doubt, both Carrie and Dana are labeled crazy by everybody around them, unable to escape the deepening confusion and self-doubt that comes from that label.
Dana understands who she is and what she did. She wanted to kill herself because the weight of her father’s sins was just too much to bear. She tried to kill herself when she slit her wrists in the bathtub. And she failed, so she was thrown into a mental hospital for rehabilitation. Her suicide attempt was her way of saying that she couldn’t live with society’s rules anymore; she couldn’t handle being the isolated one in her own household. All Dana wants is to fit in. Her brother tries to communicate that to Jessica, but she isn’t hearing any of it. She refuses to understand that Dana really wanted to kill herself because it’s just too hard a truth to bear. Dana harbors that truth, but can’t get anybody around her to listen to it.
The only person who will listen to it is another patient at the hospital, Leo, and it’s the reason for their connection. Dana isn’t attracted to him as much as she’s attracted to the idea of being happy again, of being accepted in a place where she even feels isolated from her family. And it’s not that Leo takes advantage of her; there’s nothing to indicate that he’s a shady guy as of yet. He’s a troubled kid too who just wants somebody to connect to. Of course, Jessica isn’t entirely wrong when she says that Dana needs the support of her family and a return to a normal life, but Dana isn’t getting help from her mother. She’s just not willing to listen to Dana, not until Dana gets in her face and forces her to listen. It’s not a pleasant conversation, but Jessica is able to listen to it. She’s at least capable of the change Dana needs to survive.
On the other hand, we have Carrie, who has a strong sense of personal truth, but those around her are doing everything they can to undermine it. Now that Carrie has been outed by Saul, she’s willing to sell out the CIA’s secrets to the press in order to save herself. Only, nobody will let her do that because it would be catastrophic for her as well as the CIA. So, when the CIA does everything it can to crush her, it contorts the truth she knows to be true, changing it within the public sphere so that whatever she says sounds like insanity. When Carrie tries to go to the press, she’s committed. When she tries to prove that she’s part of the CIA, she wonders if the CIA revoked her status. She can’t outsmart an organization that’s taking the truth away from her because she can’t even fathom what she could say to turn it around. She’s powerless because the CIA obviously has more power than she does. And so Carrie spirals downwards because, when she doesn’t have somebody out there validating her version of the truth, she wonders whether or not she’s actually sane. When she’s sitting in front of the judge, she has no idea what truth he knows. She can’t possibly even begin to talk because who knows when she’ll make a misstep. So, she runs, and she loses all the same.
And it’s Saul who’s manufacturing that truth because he needs to be able to find the truth himself, a truth that he believes to be more important than any other. He hires a woman named Fara to help him trace the money trail to the people behind the 12/12 attack on Langley, and no matter how hard he searches for a truth he believes to be setting others free, it always seems to evade him. And Saul believes that what he is doing to Carrie will be worth it in the end because he’ll have that ultimate truth. But Quinn is disgusted by what has happened to Carrie, what depths Saul and Dar Adal are willing to plumb to find this truth. He dealt with the carnage firsthand when he shot that boy during a mission taken to find that truth. And because Quinn believes himself to be a good man, he tells Saul that he’s out after that truth is found. He sees that he can’t change what to come and that he might as well see it through to the end. This moral dilemma within Saul is what makes the ending so poignant, when Carrie, doped up on meds, curls away from him. He sees with his own eyes the damage he’s willing to do to find that truth.
Truth is one of the most important things we have. Without it, everything else is clouded and unclear. So, when Dana uses Leo to find her truth, when Carrie loses hers and questions everything, and when Saul contorts the truth to find a bigger one, we see what happens when the truth is so important. People are trampled when more powerful people conduct that search for the truth because some truths simply cannot coexist. And, hopefully before it’s too late, Carrie had better figure out just how to discover a truth that does coexist with Saul’s.
Also: No sign of Brody yet. Though, if the Season 3 promo is any indication, we'll see him soon.
Final Thoughts: Another excellent episode of Homeland, “Uh… Oh… Ah…” examines what happens when personal truth is contradicted by social truth.
Grade: A-
So, I’m going to try to review Masters of Sex tomorrow when I get the chance. Hopefully, I’ll have time to do that, as I’m teaching more than I was before in my internship and am SUPER busy now. Oof. Anyway, Masters of Sex is coming tomorrow, as is the Dexter finale probably on Thursday. Aside from those, I’m working on a couple other reviews, from Grand Theft Auto V to one on the new movie, Gravity. So, yeah. Working on it. Until tomorrow, loyal followers.
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