Showtime’s Homeland ended its eighth and final season on Sunday with a cry for help. As the preceding episodes had threatened, the show descended into an abyss of the ludicrous. (Spoilers ahead.)
We learned that the United Nations is a place where Russia’s GRU intelligence service can be America’s friend, even as it is a de facto American executioner. The writers apparently thought this juxtaposition was clever. It wasn’t. I’m sorry, there is just no way that the GRU would have lived up to their bargain with Carrie to prevent a looming nuclear war between the United States and Pakistan. In the real world, the GRU would have likely gotten what they wanted from Carrie, then happily stepped aside and allowed the U.S. and Pakistan to nuke one another.
Recommended Stories
Then there’s Carrie, who chose to betray her mentor, Saul, and her country. She delivered to Russia the name of America’s best and longest-tenured spy inside the Russian government. This, the writers clearly intended for us to believe, was Carrie’s only good option.
Then came the chase at the U.N. As the GRU closed in, a U.S. official tried to evacuate the spy by … hiding in an empty U.N. basement. Why not put the spy into a cab? Why not take the spy straight to the U.S. delegation’s office at the U.N.? Why not shoot the Russians as they sought to break into the basement hideout?
No idea. Instead, he called Saul, who told him to let the agent shoot herself.
The most idiotic moment, however, was saved for last. Somehow, in the wake of her betrayal, the Russians don’t mind Carrie accessing high-grade Russian military intelligence secrets. This is absurd. The Russians would have allowed Carrie to defect, but, as with Edward Snowden and other defectors, she would have been denied access to anything that could serve America if transmitted back home. But Carrie somehow earns access to the GRU’s Grizodubovoy Street headquarters — all she has to do for it is write useful idiot propaganda for Russia.
So ended Homeland, once excellent espionage fiction, but in the end, ridiculous Russian propaganda.
