Well, Carrie's back drooling in the booby hatch so I guess now's as good a time as any to check in with ol' Nick Brody. What do you call a ginger with no hair? Just a guy. Just a guy with a soul. A guy who finds himself bleeding out in the back of a Venezuela pickup truck, having spent two months having what I'm sure is his usual amount of poor luck. Not that we ever understand for sure why he got shot in the first place -- it is enough, I think, that Nick Brody simply has that kind of life where maybe you get shot.
Caracas is the journey's endpoint, as we learn over the episode's first, Nick-centric half: After moving from safehouse to safehouse, Carrie's friend's people-smuggling network has deposited him here: In the titular Tower of David, a cyberpunk-as-fuck open-air abandoned highrise apartment building like something out of JG Ballard's porn collection. A ugly nasty afterworld for the most unwelcome denizens of Planet Earth, to live out their days in a bleak William Burroughs nausea: The perfect place for the 12/12 bomber, with a $10M bounty on his head.
There, he meets the most interesting person of any television show ever, the hypnotically demonic, child-molesting, by turns sassy-and-Satanic, Emmy-worthy doctor who saves his life and -- forward-thinkingly, it turns out -- offers him heroin pretty aggressively like a million times. Making friends with the daughter of his savior/captor (the guy who runs the Tower and who feels so strongly about protecting Carrie's cargo that he's willing to do it at gunpoint), Nick eventually wins escape from the Tower long enough to seek refuge at the town's mosque. The imam calls the cops, obviously, given that Nick is the most famous terrorist who has ever existed, but then the Tower guys show up and kill the cops and the imam, and escort Nick back to his new home: A hole. That he can never leave.
At the half-hour point we check back in with Carrie, and you know, our girl's not doing so great. She's back on her meds, but those take a while to accumulate, so she's still going pretty strong in terms of making herself look as crazy as possible to anyone and everyone it would benefit her to convince otherwise. Forming a manipulative bond with one of the social workers, she gets obsessed with the idea that Saul will come back and see how great she's doing (which she isn't) and then give her back her job (which he won't), but she also does radically crazy things, such as surprise headbutts into the mirror.
The complicated parallels between their two situations -- every time she mentions her meds, we cut to Dr. Devil's heroin, and vice versa -- hit their greatest point when, just as he's getting dragged back from freedom and shoved into a hole, Carrie finagles a meeting with a visitor she thinks is Saul, but it ends up just some guy who says he's a lawyer, but Carrie calls out -- probably correctly -- for trying to recruit her as an asset for some other country's intelligence service. That part was scary on many levels. The shame and fear and lack of autonomy that come with these Snake Pit storylines is really tough to take, but then you remember that she's also got the burden of her paranoia probably being real on top of it, and it's like, Jeez.
So she reads the guy the riot act, goes back to the depressing rec room, and decides that actually taking her meds and being a compliant patient rather than a total freak show might be a safer bet for getting out of there one day... And Nick decides that if he's going to live out his time trapped in a decrepit post-apocalyptic nightmare, he might as well get a hobby, and that hobby might as well be heroin.
So yeah, everybody's doing super great, thanks for asking. I guess we needed our perennial, critically lauded episode that only contains Nick and Carrie... But if you think about it that way, this bleak motherfucker is twice more brilliant than it even seemed at first.
Week: Well, now that Brody's back in the picture -- and in such an interesting and stressful way -- it'll be nice to hit the ground running with a better idea of what this season is actually doing. I could happily enjoy visiting the Tower throughout the rest of the season -- it is seriously one of the most interesting environments I've ever seen on a show, and such people in it! -- but something tells me Nick's going to end up back in DC and fucking everybody over sometime sooner than that.
PREVIOUSLY
Carrie Mathison and Nick Brody spent two seasons on parallel missions to save the world: They both wanted to kill the head of the beast, and they both accomplished it. Within minutes of each other, VP Bill Walden and Abu Nazir both went to hell. The story was over and the monsters were dead.
What happened was the direct result of both: A gathering of the heads of our country's darkest sacred institutions were gathered together for two funerals. Saul saw Abu delivered to the extranational depths without ceremony, while the ranking officials of our shadow government stood to deliver platitudes and empty gratitude for a monster. In a petty continuation and grudge strike, the bombing at Langley took out the majority of our ministers and sent Carrie and Brody back into their separate emptiness.
It's a pretty classic story, the hero descending into the underworld at the conclusion of his mission, but for some reason it seems more confusing here than in most cases. Peter Quinn can tell you, Sergeant Brody could have told you, that being a soldier is about taking on damage and taint in order to save other people from having to play a part in war. Carrie does it -- warps her way from high to low and back again -- as a matter of course, as a function of her calling. What is happening now is the price these people pay, having elected themselves to the higher calling of killing our monsters for us, or war, which never changes.
I think we're at a point in our relationship to culture where relying on the delivery of content, reliably and to our whim, gives us a sense of ownership that storytellers never had to -- and still shouldn't -- service. That's not the purpose of stories. The role of ratings, a hollowed-out dinosaur that doesn't actually mean anything anymore, was always to mediate that conversation. But I think we're at a time where even the people who call themselves reviewers and critics and recappers can fall into that hole, by appealing to their readerships' sensibilities in a way that can feel very Emperor's New Clothes, if we're lazy enough to conflate our own confusion with disappointment. (As a friend once said, the central geek fallacy is believing that your consumption of and investment in a given product makes you "as important as a scientist.") But the story goes on, and in this case it seems obviously to be going exactly where it should be: Into the shitter. Because at no point in the telling of this story could it have gone anywhere else.
Paul: "The hearing sounds nightmarish, so we both know you're here for a while. One of our partners would like to meet with you..."
Carrie: "Well, I'm clearly not going anywhere so I'm not sure I understand having a meeting about a meeting."
Paul: "I mean, get you out of here. Come to us. To see this partner. Free and clear. Whatever this is about, it's important enough that he sent me. In your position, I'd be paranoid, too..."
He smiles way too much; he knows the language too well.
Carrie: "You don't know shit about my position."
Paul: "You don't belong here. You're not crazy. All you want is to go home. Carrie, I'm on your side..."
It falls into the silence between them in the courtyard, like a silver pin.
Carrie: "That's it, that's the flag. You're working me."
Paul: "What do you mean?"
Carrie: "I am a case officer, bro. You're using my playbook. I was the best recruiter in the department and you know why? Because I was on their side. Every time."
Every asset we've seen was devoted to her; every asset we've seen died for her, eventually. But it's not untrue. She crouched in the walls of a soldier's house for the better part of the season, listening to every word and every stifled sob, and by the end of it she was in love.
Paul: "I swear this isn't like that."
Carrie: "I couldn't be more vulnerable right now. Obviously. You dangle any carrot, I'm going to bite. You think I'll give up, I'll turn. But you don't understand that I never will. You tell Syria, or Israel, or Iran -- whoever thinks I'm a good bet, your fucking 'client,' your 'partner' -- that Carrie Mathison will never go down like that. I would rather die in here."
Paul: "You're not seeing this clearly..."
Carrie: "What part am I wrong about? The part about me, or the part about you?"
Graham looks at him almost longingly. That belief, that still-going soldier part of him, after all this, still pushing. It's heartbreaking to see someone still believing they have a story left.
Brody: "I literally cannot do this. It's the hole, just like Iraq. I can't do it."
Graham: "One thing I know about you is that wherever you go, people die. But you tend to survival. Every time, have you noticed that? You're a cockroach, still there after the last nuclear bombs go off. You belong here."
When the monster is dead, and the hero passes into shadow, it's not a fun time. And for those of us who want sticky candy, we lie at odds with the calling of the story itself: We're so used to the heroics that we forget there is a story past that. You're looking at Homeland: Reloaded, or maybe even Homeland: Revolutions, and say what you will but those are the more important part of any myth. Not what happened when you won, which is a story for children, but what happened after you won. The blindness and the scars you earned for yourself; the price you agreed to take on, for saving the world.
The man who was Nicholas Brody has spent two months being passed from safehouse to safehouse, with a $10M bounty on his head at all points. Mercenaries and Good Guys alike have every reason to chase him, and every safehouse has its nasty possibilities of being the last. But what Nick doesn't know yet is, the Tower of David is the last.
John Doe arrives in the back of a pickup truck, being delivered to Carrie's last checkpoint -- a man named El Niño, a man who owes Carrie or the CIA something large -- and with a bullet hole in him. Everyone involved in the handoff is stressed out, not only because of the high stakes and general radioactivity of being involved with this man, but also because he's bleeding out.
Eventually they get the half-dead traitor to the Tower, the gorgeous empty ruin of an abandoned highrise apartment in the serious, filthy ghetto. It has no walls, the wind whistles through it. Post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk in the truest and most global sense; men with guns patrolling the hated, priceless human cargo inside. The worst of humanity, protected and imprisoned by men who don't even serve a master and are there only for money; who live at the place where the scum is collected.
Dr. Graham is one, played by Erik Todd Dellums whom you might remember from scattered appearances as Dr. Frazier on The Wire -- or possibly Koh the Face Stealer from Avatar, which frankly is a lot closer to his role here despite (or because of) being an hallucinatory, giant spider demon wearing a succession of vile masks and human faces, demanding hellish bargains for unclear recompense -- and the way he earns his keep is by offering medical aid to the inmates. Down among the dead men, you don't have a lot of options.
The first thing Graham does is shoot him up with heroin, a makeshift anesthetic; he snaps at the younger guards, at El Niño's daughter Esme; he bitches about the zapping lights and the filth all around them. He is charming, he is repulsive; he is a monster that saves and dooms. Nick goes in and out while he works, never quite focusing.
Graham summons Paco -- his horribly young companion, his assistant and protégé; his victim -- to clamp a bleed with his fingers. Like Esme, this is the only life Paco knows and it's the only life he'll ever know. He stares mutely not because he doesn't care but because he doesn't know what caring is. He stares at Graham, like everyone does, because he can't look away.When Nick wakes, he feels trapped. He doesn't know that he is, yet -- he thinks this is just another waystation, his life and soul and identity given up to constant movement -- and he doesn't think fate would be so cruel to stick him back in a hole, after all this. He doesn't know how well he did, or what a hero he turned out to be, to earn such a terrible punishment, so he still thrashes. Graham and his helpers, Esme and Paco, can only do so much to keep him down.
El Niño: "Welcome home."
Brody: "Where am I?"
El Niño: "I just told you."
They load him up onto his bed again, stitches tearing, and explain that he was caught in a bounty hunter shootout: A Colombian group nearly got him, and that would be the end of him. It isn't safe out there.
Nick remembers someone, in his fevered dreams, making off with his wallet and his passport. He doesn't understand that he doesn't need them anymore, but it's a good chance for El Niño to make a point to him, and so he will. He promises to find out.
Nick: "And why are you helping me?"El Niño: "You know Carrie Mathison. So do I."
It isn't comforting. It sounds like it, but he knows. Somewhere in there, he knows. And he must get strong, strong enough to run, because the way station at the end of it all is just death, just the Hole. He was crazy once.
Eventually he's on his feet. He teaches Esme, no more than sixteen and beautiful, the word for "walking." They learn to speak, over time, to each other. She isn't Issa. But she's the only one that registers as human, in this place.
There is a thing he shares with Carrie Mathison, an ability to bond so strongly with a person that they ignore their better interests. He and Nazir loved each other; he and Issa loved each other even more strongly. It's hard for people sometimes to understand the difference between that kind of love and the others; when he and Carrie turned this ability on each other, it burned with such a fury that it brought the world to its knees. And even then, they still didn't know for sure.
Graham welcomes him back to his cell one day, doctor-disappointed in him for walking around, but glad to see him adjusting. He tells him the truth, but weaves back and forth just enough to hypnotize, so Nick doesn't hear the words.
Graham: "You still seem like you're in a lot of pain."
Nick: "I'll survive."
Graham: "Guess you're good at that, aren't you?"
"What did you make of it, what you saw. This abscess beyond healing we call home. The Tower wasn't named for King David -- Heaven forbid! -- but David Brillembourg, the particularly egomaniacal banker who commissioned it. Unfortunately, before it was completed, David died. Then the whole economy died, construction stopped, the squatters all moved in..."
Nick: "If you hate it so much..."
Graham: "I didn't say I hate it. I didn't say I don't hate it. Those words still have meaning for you. You think you have choices about where to be, and thus produce opinions."
Nick: "Why are you here?"
Graham: "That's not a good question. We are here -- all of us -- because the world outside can be judgmental, and cruel."
He reaches out, absent-minded. Puts his hand on Paco, who doesn't move. He doesn't hate it. He doesn't not.
Graham: "We're here because this is the place that accepts us. We're here because we belong here."
Because the world hates us, he means, but Nick can't understand that. He doesn't know about what's going on, up north. The hearings and the betrayals. He doesn't know how far Dana was willing to go.
The only one that accepts us all, without question, is death. You can't hate her, or not hate her. She welcomes us all into her embrace. But eventually we all end up there, in the realms below. The people move like shadows, like ideas of people; they don't hate it either.
Nick: "I'm not staying."
Graham: "That's what they all say. You. We."
Nick: "I just need to get my strength back."
Graham: "We all say that, too."
One day they summon Nick to a high story; vertiginous. You can hear the calls to Salat from a nearby mosque, five times a day, but up here you can see it shining. The golden welcome. He remembers who he is.
El Niño: "Is this the man that robbed you?"
Brody: "I don't think I could answer that even if I could answer that."
El Niño: "He confessed."
Gravity always wins. You can fight, you can twist in the air, you can call out the names of your fathers and every good deed you ever performed. Won't help. She accepts us all into her embrace.
The thief goes over the edge, down into the bowels of the building; he doesn't know which one of them is screaming, or when it ends.
El Niño: "When we let people rob us, we tell them it's okay. The Tower falls, no problem. Except that you have a ten million dollar bounty on your evil head. If it's okay to steal, then it's certainly okay to tell other people what they see."
By the time Esme returns, he's out of bed again. Up and moving. He demands money, but she has no money. He demands her help. They don't get far.
El Niño: "It almost seems like ingratitude, this."
Brody: "No, not that. I just need to go. It is converging with every other hole. I was crazy once."
El Niño: "Then you'll die, probably immediately."
Brody: "That's not the threat you think it is."
El Niño: "Is this about that thief? I'm sorry about that. But you really need to understand your life right now. You think you have options that are not actually available to you."
Brody: "Does Carrie know I'm here?"
El Niño: "You know she's smarter than that. But even if she weren't, what are you suggesting? We give her a call? I could really use $10M and I don't care if you're alive or dead. But you need to stay alive, here, because that was the agreement. I won't let you escape, through death or anything else."
Graham: "You really don't understand this is the end of the line. I had to talk El Niño down, do you understand that?"
Brody: "This is not acceptable."Graham: "On the contrary. You will be accepting it. Therefore, it's possible. How long that takes, and how bad it gets, is up to you. Don't go confusing the rest of us shades for friends, or for the living. If there were anyone here, there still wouldn't be anyone to save you."
"This is your home. It isn't easy to accept. Believe me, I know. It's not how you pictured yourself, you weren't planning this, there must be some mistake, and on and on. Those voices in your head are not your friends right now. You have to make them go away."
Diacetylmorphine is created by the acetylation of morphine, extracted from natural opium sources as far as back 3400 BCE Mesopotamia. A chemist in England synthesized it in 1874 and by 1900 Felix Hoffmann -- working for the company that is now called Bayer -- created heroin by accident, trying to make a weaker codeine and ending up with something twice as strong as morphine. They called it heroische.
"They had a special name, for a medicine strong enough to quiet pain itself. Heroische means heroic. So you don't have to be."
The hero rises into the sky, slays the dragon. Comes back down, burning like a meteor. Is buried.
But heroic is all he's ever been, even when it looked like the opposite. The call to Salat comes five times a day; five chances to remember who you are, and how you fit into a plan that passes understanding.
Rebuffed and denied by the hero, Dr. Graham takes Paco by the hand. He's neither heroic nor a villain, not down here; he's neither kind nor cruel. He is death.
It isn't her first time acclimating to lithium, so she knows the symptoms will go away. This isn't where Carrie lives forever; it's just where she lives right now. It's not the final way station; it's a siege perilous but it's not that. A vacation from heroism.
She's hydrating, she's up to six hours a night. "Surprisingly lucid," she calls herself. Headaches and dizziness. Like coming up through the Bends.
Carrie: "I was wondering if you could tell Saul Berenson how much better I'm doing?"
Doc: "What makes you think I talk to him?"
Carrie: "Because somebody must know where I am. It's not paranoiac to imagine that you are reporting to him, taking notes on him. This isn't just my last way station forever."
Doc: "Okay, if I were..."
Carrie: "Which is fine! I do not begrudge you that. But tell him I fucked up when I went off my meds after 12/12. It was a mistake, but that was the only one. The starting domino. So now that I'm back, I can be back."
Doc: "You were so convinced it gave you powers."
Carrie: "It gave me too many. I was a threat. I'm fine being less. The answer to crazy is not more crazy."
Doc: "You have never once believed that."
Carrie: "I've been in a mental hospital for three weeks talking myself into it. Into believing, or at least taking the stance, that Saul did me a favor."
Doc: "Removing you from a delusional relationship -- with a suspected terrorist, no less -- was the right thing to do?"
Carrie: "Sure, whatever!"
Doc: "I really need to believe you are telling the truth about this."
Carrie: "You and I both know that's not it. You are not curing me by making me say this, because the truth is that I am not crazy. Or at least I'm not here because I'm crazy. I'm here because I'm a loose end and a wildcard, and he didn't want me dead. So I will stop being those things."
e writes, and she gets angry, loopy, comes at him with that face she makes, and he reconsiders their meeting. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I am demonstrating rationality, I am so sorry for falling out of line." It's repulsive, to see her down so low; to see her beg and scrape for this man -- who doesn't even care, who is just a puppet in the puppet show -- and pretend whatever she needs to pretend so he'll believe she doesn't know the truth. That she no longer shines with it.
Doc: "No one said you were crazy."
Carrie: "Nobody had to. I'm in a fucking psych ward. But the sooner I talk to Saul, the sooner we all go back to our lives. You can deal with crazy people that actually need you."
Doc: "If you really mean it, about earning your visitation after treating Quinn so horribly -- and also of course your family, and especially your competency magistrate, which talk about crazy -- then you need to walk the line. I mean, is that something you've ever done in your entire life? Played the game?"
Carrie: "It feels like choking on vomit, but would you believe I'm doing the best I can?"
Salat calls him to do the right thing, to retain his soul; he makes his way to the ground floor to give his thief a proper burial. Esme is horrified. We are all already dead; he was buried when he hit the pavement. He was buried long before he ever took flight.
Antigone couldn't stand to see her brothers left to the elements, like heads on a pike. She defied the Gods and the laws of man to see them commended to the Earth, to be at peace. She looked up and saw the sky before they pulled the stone over, and found herself home.
He can hear them calling him to Salat, and he must go. If not for his faith he'd be dead so many times over already; this is God's way of reminding him that he will always be safe. One place in the world that offers freedom, in defiance of the laws of man. In defiance of gravity.
If Esme can just get him there, he among all the dead men will be granted his reprieve. She doesn't hate the Tower, nor does she not hate it; but she can see the sky.
It's okay again until the voice -- wheedling, patronizing -- deigns to celebrate Carrie's popsicle-stick house. It's a cabin, with a little balcony. Strange angles and juts. Perhaps it belongs to a popsicle-stick mother, who died. Perhaps it's where he is, off beyond the horizon. More alive than she is.
But it's okay until the voice. Until the nurse calls the other ones over, to look at the detail and the glue, the joists and the magnificent detail. If she had markers, she'd cover it in colors. A code only Saul can read.
In the bathroom, the voices are loud. She bashes her head against the glass, once, like the sky.
The woman who comes to her then, on that sound like the ringing of a bell, is named Abby. She could be named Esme; in another life she might be. What Abby doesn't know is that Carrie shares a certain thing with Nick Brody; the ability to bond so strongly with a person that they'll ignore their better interests.
Abby: "What is going on right now?"
Carrie: "I needed a minute."
Abby: "Then why are you bleeding?"
Carrie: "That was the minute I needed."
She breaks down, appealing to Abby's maternal instincts; she has the stink of social worker all over her. Just you and me, she signals; just you and me against the world, Abby. It's a language only the two of us know.
This is how you recruit an asset; this is how you make a terrorist. We are all powerless before gravity, before death, but you could be the exception.
Abby: "Honey, if you're hurting yourself I need to know."
Carrie: "It's not me doing it. It was a bad moment. I am compliant. Meds and group and little gluestick cabins. Thanks to you."
Abby: "That's it? That's all?"
Carrie: "Just please don't tell. It's just you and me."
In a hoodie to hide his face, in a language only the two of them speak, Esme gets him out of the building. Out of the shadows and into the streets.
Dr. Graham always leaves the medicine just out of reach. It's there, freedom. You could taste it.
Abby: "Just promise this won't happen again? Let me stitch you up and let that be the end of it."
Carrie: "I promise, I promise. I won't tempt fate again."
Abby: "It's not like you're forgotten. This isn't the last way-station. In fact somebody's already come looking for you."
Carrie: "It'll be Saul. It rings like a bell. Is he here now?"
Abby: "I don't know, but we don't tell them anything. We're not allowed."
Carrie: "The time he comes, help me. Be my friend. It's the last favor I'll ever ask."
It's the last favor I'll ever need.
Every sound she heard, down under the ground, was the chance of rescue. Every footfall belonged to a savior. And every time it wasn't, every time she was mistaken, Antigone felt gravity pulling down, all the harder.
Esme is worried; everywhere around, she sees recognition on their faces.
Brody: "The Imam won't turn me in, I'm a Muslim. It's his job. The only real thing about me is my faith. That's a refuge."
Refugio. At the gates, Esme begs him to take her along. But he can't. He casts her aside, like a well-meaning social worker; like another dead thing. He leaves her behind. She watches, from the shadows, as his savior welcomes him in. She returns to the Tower, afraid. If they know she hated it, even for a second, it won't end well.
Carrie sees a car drive up, but can't see the driver. The nurses note her agitation; she's still not allowed visitation. She begs, louder and more urgently, to talk to Abby. Abby can get her out of there, to see the man who must be Saul. Refuge.
Just before they take her back to the rec room -- or worse -- Abby arrives, speaking a language only the two of them know, and spirits her away.
For the first time in months, Nick Brody showers. The water is warm; ablutions are a necessary prelude to Salat. He will be clean for the first time in months, and then he will remember who he is. Five times a day for the rest of his life.
The police arrive at the Imam's call, and quickly take him in chains. The Imam explains, easily enough, that he had no choice: Nick Brody is a terrorist, he's no kind of Muslim at all. Some might have done it for money; it's more painful and less that this spiritual man would have done it for reasons that aren't even wrong.
They beat Nick and shuffle him to the door; when it opens they are immediately gunned down around him. Then the Imam. Then his screaming wife. And then they take him home.
It isn't Saul. It's a man named Paul Franklin, a smiling man, a man with secrets; a man representing Bennett, Parr & Hamilton, on behalf of a client with an interest in her case.
Esme begs them to forgive Nick, when he's brought back in irons. They lock him in a cell.
"I told you, don't leave. But you go. This is what happens. We all get trouble. So now you stay here. Between these walls, now, this is your new home. You will eat here, sleep here, shit here, die here. Carrie won't save you. No one will."
And Esme too. He takes Esme away too. But Graham can still visit. "Naughty boy," he mutters, floating on dark and oily air. He's not impressed, but he's not unimpressed. He just knows that, in the end, striving is suffering. It's a room you can never leave.
Paul: "The hearing sounds nightmarish, so we both know you're here for a while. One of our partners would like to meet with you..."
Carrie: "Well, I'm clearly not going anywhere so I'm not sure I understand having a meeting about a meeting."
Paul: "I mean, get you out of here. Come to us. To see this partner. Free and clear. Whatever this is about, it's important enough that he sent me. In your position, I'd be paranoid, too..."
He smiles way too much; he knows the language too well.
Carrie: "You don't know shit about my position."
Paul: "You don't belong here. You're not crazy. All you want is to go home. Carrie, I'm on your side..."
It falls into the silence between them in the courtyard, like a silver pin.
Carrie: "That's it, that's the flag. You're working me."
Paul: "What do you mean?"
Carrie: "I am a case officer, bro. You're using my playbook. I was the best recruiter in the department and you know why? Because I was on their side. Every time."
Every asset we've seen was devoted to her; every asset we've seen died for her, eventually. But it's not untrue. She crouched in the walls of a soldier's house for the better part of the season, listening to every word and every stifled sob, and by the end of it she was in love.
Paul: "I swear this isn't like that."
Carrie: "I couldn't be more vulnerable right now. Obviously. You dangle any carrot, I'm going to bite. You think I'll give up, I'll turn. But you don't understand that I never will. You tell Syria, or Israel, or Iran -- whoever thinks I'm a good bet, your fucking 'client,' your 'partner' -- that Carrie Mathison will never go down like that. I would rather die in here."
Paul: "You're not seeing this clearly..."
Carrie: "What part am I wrong about? The part about me, or the part about you?"
Graham looks at him almost longingly. That belief, that still-going soldier part of him, after all this, still pushing. It's heartbreaking to see someone still believing they have a story left.
Brody: "I literally cannot do this. It's the hole, just like Iraq. I can't do it."
Graham: "One thing I know about you is that wherever you go, people die. But you tend to survival. Every time, have you noticed that? You're a cockroach, still there after the last nuclear bombs go off. You belong here."
And maybe he's right. Maybe Nick's survival isn't strength or providence, maybe it's just an inability to die. To live forever, down in the hole.
But if you have no story left, you must have another plan. If the angel wasn't Saul, if the Imam was just like the rest of them -- dead -- then you need to find another way out. Into the arms, perhaps, of gravity.
She pushes through the noise and shades, the people who are barely there, all the way back to Abby. First compliance and then freedom. The right way.
It's sundown in the West, as they call us to Salat; as darkness falls, on Maryland and Caracas, she demands her medication, and he picks up his needle.
These are the stories we don't want to hear anymore. These are the stories that nobody tells. Shadows and shades and torment that never ends, down among even the righteous dead.
Once they were heroes. Now they are rewarded.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, Ravenswood, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.