Homeland

Who's the hero? Who's the threat?

"The nation sees a hero. She sees a threat."

A Psychological Thriller, loosely based off the Israeli series Hatufim (Literally "Abductees", English title Prisoners of War) sharing an executive producer, produced by Showtime and set during the War on Terror. It premiered in October 2011. Its second season will air in September 2012.

A raid on a terrorist safehouse in the Middle East leads to the rescue of USMC Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis), who has been missing in action for eight years. Brody receives a hero's welcome from his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin), CIA Deputy Director David Estes (David Harewood), the Vice President and the entire country -- but not from Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a former CIA Operations Officer. Based on intelligence from her last (and completely unauthorised) mission, Carrie believes that Brody is a sleeper agent waiting to be activated. With the help of her mentor, CIA Middle East section chief Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), Carrie sets out to prove that Brody, seen by the world as an American hero, is really a traitor.

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Tropes used in Homeland include:

• Adaptation Distillation: The original series had three kidnapped soldiers: one whose wife was faithful to him, and he has two children he doesn’t know; one whose wife left him for his brother several years after he was kidnapped; and a third one who was returned dead. At the first season finale, we found out he’s alive and well, but he converted to Islám and joined the terrorists. The American adaptation has just one.
• Alliteration: During her manic flights, Carrie spouts - quite realistic, with a hint of psychosis - word salad (schizophasia). Like many instances of schizophasia, the words she uses are connected on a semantic level; they have similar meaning. Carrie's ravings have a morphological connection too; she's very fond of alliterations. It goes even further, when it turns out that Carrie's Colour Coding is connected through pseudorhyme to different fases in Abu Nazir's life: in yellow, he lay fallow, purple indicates his purpose. When arranged as a colour spectrum, this forms a time line, so in a case of fridge brilliance, Carrie made a connection between the chronology and the chromatology, again words with a very similar morphology.
• Armor-Piercing Question and Villainous BSOD: Used in a tense scene between Brody and Dana in "Marine One".
• Artistic Title: The credits come with some memorable imagery. Although not stated outright, the credits imply an origin story for Carrie Mathison, in terms of her interest in global politics stemming from watching news broadcasts when she was younger.
• The Atoner: Carrie wants to atone for missing seeing 9/11 coming.
• Auto Erotica: Carrie and Brody have their first fuck in Brody's car.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Even though the original suicide vest plan failed, Brody's public image is still intact as a War Hero, his election as a Congressman all but guaranteed with the Vice President's help, and he's still working with Abu Nazir. Carrie - who has had her career, reputation and emotions wrecked by Brody - ends Season 1 at rock-bottom, undergoing electric shock therapy to help with her disorder.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Brody was tortured and broken while in custody, but Abu Nazir gains his loyalty by being kind to him after years of abuse. Walker is also turns evil, apparently without being shown kindness, and he shows much more ruthlessness than Brody.
• The Big Board: Saul draws the undesirable task of trying to file Carrie's colour coded Room Full of Crazy into some kind of order, and this is the result. There's a more straightforward example in the CIA office.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Combined with Sinister Surveillance-Carrie does this to the Brody family based on gut instinct and initially without a warrant.
• Book Ends: A very subtle one in "The Vest". While on a family trip, Dana makes an offhand comment that Brody's scars are starting to fade. At the end of the episode, Carrie, while preparing for Brody's arrival, tries to cover up her scars.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Dana showed signs of this at the beginning of Season 1, but toward the end she became the emotionally closest family member Brody has.
• California Doubling: Charlotte, North Carolina, doubles as DC and Northern Virginia. That is why so many cars lack front-mounted plates; NC does not require it.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Dana goes off on her mother because Jessica is hiding the fact that she had been sleeping with her father's best friend while he was MIA.
• The Cassandra: Nobody wants to believe Mathison that Brody is an Al Qaeda agent. The end of the first season has Mathison kicked out of the CIA even though her actions prevented a terrorist attack.
• Catapult Nightmare: Brody at the start of Episode 2.
• The Chessmaster: Nazir.
• Children Are Innocent: Abu Nazir's son is quite adorable and his death is a legitimate Tear Jerker.
• Cold Sniper: Walker.
• Dark Secret: Carrie's Bipolar Disorder/Psychosis as well as her affair with Brody. In "The Vest", her psychosis causes her to cross the line with Brody, who tells Estes about the affair and gets her fired.
• Dating Catwoman: Carrie and Brody.
• Deadpan Snarker: Virgil.
• Deep-Cover Agent: Carrie fears Brody has been allowed to go home to become one. The couple introduced buying a house with the laundered necklace money are revealed to be ones too.
• The Determinator: Carrie, bordering on The Unfettered.
• Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: The CIA uses sleep deprivation (via sporadic bursts of Grindcore and bright lights) to supplement their interrogation of Brody's former guard.
• Eureka Moment:
  • In the first episode, while Carrie was in a bar and about to go home with a guy, she has one while she watches the musicians. She fixates on the bassist's fingers moving and remembered that Brody's fingers moved in a pattern whenever he was on air.
  • Carrie's final act in the first season is to have one realizing that Brody called out Abu Nazir's son's name in his sleep. She makes an effort to ingrain the revelation in her memory before passing out for shock treatment.
• Face Heel Turn: Carrie is convinced Brody has undergone one.
• Flash Back: Used heavily to explore what happened to Brody during his time in captivity. The prime plot device of "Crossfire", where the motivation behind Abu Nazir's plot is revealed.
• Flashback Cut: Sometimes. The scene can then be expanded on with the further flashback later in the episode.
• Flashback Echo: Sometimes to show/contrast with what is happening in Brody's present and the link to his torture.
• Foreign Remake: Trans-Atlantic Equivalent for an Israeli series Hatufim about recently released prisoners of Hamas.
• From a Certain Point of View:
  • Depicted in "Crossfire". Compare Abu Nazir's version of a drone strike in Iraq to the version given by the fictional U.S. Vice-President.
  • Played with in "The Vest". Saul finds out that Carrie is bipolar and tries to cover for her in front of an inquisitive Estes. Saul says Carrie may not return to work right away after the bombing; Estes asks "what's wrong?". Saul says "doctors' orders," but does not say that the doctor is Carrie's sister.
• Gray and Grey Morality:
  • This whole show is full of this. On one side is the CIA and the American government, who are repeatedly shown bending and breaking their own rules. This is often shown to put lives at risk. On the other side is a war hero who suffered years of torture by Al Qaeda, and has been turned into a Well Intentioned Extremist after witnessing the murder and cover-up of 83 children by the US.
• Hannibal Has a Point: Abu Nazir is the mastermind behind the deaths of untold civilians in terrorist bombings, and he's hypocritical in saying so, but in the aftermath of a botched drone strike that kills 83 children at a nearby school, he's got a point that the Americans have innocent blood on their hands too.
• He Knows Too Much: Walker kills a hunter who witnesses his target practice in the woods. He's eventually killed himself for Knowing Too Much about Brody and Nazir.
• High-Class Call Girl: The prince has a harem of them, whom he hires for two-year stints and pays outrageous sums of money.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Reed. A hooker she might be, her willingness to work with the CIA and use her position to spy on suspected terrorist financier is absolutely commendable.
• How We Got Here: The whole of Brody's plot.
• Honey Trap: Claire Danes described Carrie as such in an interview with Conan O'Brien. For most of Season 1, Carrie does not play this trope straight... but could still be one eventually. Lynne Reed, Carrie's callgirl contact, does play the trope straight.
• Hot Mom: Jessica, combined with a healthy dose of Fan Service.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Carrie's callgirl contact, Reed. Carrie doesn't handle the death well and considers herself at least partially responsible for it especially since she promised Reed (non-existent) protection beforehand. She also seems to treat 9/11 this way.
• Important Haircut: Jessica cuts her hair to match the short cut she had when Brody left for Iraq in an attempt to turn back the clock and rekindle their former romance.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: "Representative Brody" has a really bad one. When referring to the Vice President's offer, Brody asked Jessica if she had "thought about the politics of it all."
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Averted. Brody uses a bag of ice to deal with his swollen knuckles after delivering a pretty vicious beatdown to Mike. He also points to his bruised knuckles after decking a Neo-Nazi not long afterwards.
• Ironic Echo: In "Crossfire", Jessica remarks to Brody that "it's a violent country" after Brody tells her he was mugged. The audience has recently learned that Brody turned because of the bombing of a school by American military.
• Jumped At the Call: Presumably with Carrie when she became the CIA's point person on investigating Abu Nazir. She followed her intuition to the point where she was seen by other characters as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Last-Name Basis: Brody. Even his wife calls him "Brody".
• Lima Syndrome: Carrie falls in love with Brody over the course of her surveillance, despite the fact that she believes he's a terrorist.
• Logic Bomb: Carrie throws the FBI agent's solution of TV ads back in his face, when the FBI agent says it worked for catching Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. Carrie points out that it took almost 20 years.
• The Long Game: Invoked a few times by Carrie Mathison to explain Brody's actions. She believes that Abu Nazir planted intelligence on hi s own safe house in order to have US forces rescue Brody, whom she believes to be a Turncoat or Manchurian Agent. She says he has turned down opportunities to kill high-profile targets in order to get an opportunity for a really big score.
• Love Dodecahedron: Carrie/Brody/Jessica/Mike.
• Meta Guy: Virgil. He watches the surveillance footage as if it were a TV show.
• The Mole: It's yet to be revealed.
• No Medication for Me: Carrie, after being blown up.
• Not Quite Dead: Brody, of course, but apparently Tom Walker is too.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: David Estes.
• Oh Crap: Two occurrences in Episode 7 alone.
  • Carrie, after offering Brody a cup of his favorite tea-and so giving away her surveillance of him, since he never mentioned it to her.
  • Saul, upon learning that Aileen's rooftop had a direct line-of-sight to the President's helipad.
• Only Sane Man: Carrie thinks she is this, and as of Season 1, she turns out to be right about Brody all along, but the twist of it is that she's not psychologically a sane person either.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Delivered by Carrie in, of all places, the opening credits! Even by premium-cable standards, this may be a first.
  • Brody to Carrie, when he realizes she's been spying on him the whole time.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Carrie has unknowingly managed to prevent Brody's suicide bombing at the expense of her career and brain cells. However, this still leaves Brody as a future member of congress, where who knows what damage he'll wreak.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: YMMV on this one. In the sixth episode of Season 1, Lauder, a member of Brody's unit, gives one to Brody that questions why Brody came back alive. Tom Walker, another member of the unit who was tortured along with Brody, did not return with Brody. At least, not at the same time. A subsequent episode reveals Walker is back in the U.S. and working for Abu Nazir. Lauder unravels his argument by outright saying that any member of the unit wanted to sleep with Jessica, Brody's wife, while he was away.
• Red Herring:
  • Brody's finger tapping. Turns out it's only a substitute for not having his prayer beads. By the time Carrie learns this, she's already figured out that he's a Muslim.
  • The womanizing Saudi prince. Turns out it's his aide who is a terrorist supporter.
• Reveal Shot: At the end of Episode 1, the camera reverses to give a new perspective on the death of Thomas Walker.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Dick Johnson, the Democratic congressman who sent racy images of himself to female aides, is an obvious reference to Anthony Weiner, who is also a Democratic congressman who sent racy pictures of himself to women. "Dick" "johnson" and "weiner" are also all words that can describe a penis.
• Room Full of Crazy: Carrie's place after she's been off her meds. Painstakingly transformed into The Big Board once Saul stays up all night organising it. Turns out Carrie wasn't so crazy.
• Scary Black Man: Tom Walker.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Brody among other things: he sleeps on the floor to avoid assaulting his wife in his sleep, cowers in a corner of his bedroom all day after slipping into an Angst Coma and has intimacy issues due to his time as a POW.
• Sitting on the Roof: Brody and Dana in the finale.
• Society Marches On and Technology Marches On: Brody is unfamiliar with Vitamin Water while grocery shopping. He refers to a "video called YouTube".
• Soundtrack Dissonance: A lively jazz number plays over the Tear Jerker chaotic ending of "The Vest".
• Spiritual Successor: To 24. They share a lot of writers and production crew, and Homeland could be reliably summed up as what you'd get if the characters from 24 went home at night, got eight hours of sleep, showered, shaved, came into work the next morning and actually had to deal with the regulations and beaurocracy of intelligence work.
  • Although it's arguably less over-the-top.
• Stockholm Syndrome: The reason Carrie believes Brody is a Turncoat or Manchurian Agent.
• String Theory: In the first season's 11th episode ("The Vest"), Saul can only make sense of Carries various notes, documents and pieces of information after he applies them orderly to all wall that connects all of the bits in a spatial fashion. There are no strings, though, so this might belong to a (existing?) higher-ranking trope of "external thinking", expressed through spatial arrangements of information.
• Ten-Minute Retirement: Carrie, at the end of "Blind Spot"/start of "The Good Soldier".
• Torture Cellar: Most of Brody's torture seems to have taken place in small, dark rooms, most likely underground.
• Working with the Ex: Carrie and Estes.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the aftermath of the botched attempt in "Marine One", Nazir orders Brody to kill Walker to keep Brody's contingency plan secured.
• You Have to Believe Me: Carrie can't really fault people for not believing her when she does things like scream at the top of her lungs "None of you understand! The world is ending!"