The “Homeland” Finale

Spoilers below.

It was hard to watch the “Homeland” finale last night. What was once a starred and anticipated date on the pop-culture calendar had been dimmed by the crushing events in Newtown. With reluctance, after Obama’s speech, I turned over to Showtime for Carrie and Brody and Saul. At the very least, the show would be distracting, and perhaps there would be an unexpected gesture of uplift, like the children’s chorus that sang “Silent Night” to open “Saturday Night Live.”

The show pointed to Connecticut with an opening disclaimer, but otherwise kept to its frame of reference. And, in truth, I wasn’t too worried about a jolt of reality, since “Homeland,” this season, has departed plausibility long ago. Wouldn’t terrorists realize that a black van following them is not a good thing? A full-service, well-stocked tailor shop on the main street in Gettysburg? Maybe don’t take a phone call from your wife when you are about to break someone’s neck? Wait, what, Carrie is going into the tunnel herself to get Nazir? It’s easy to pick up any loose thread in “Homeland” and quickly find yourself in a laughable scenario.

Yet, there I was, each week, watching. The show captured our attention with its sheen of realistic spycraft, but it earned our grudging affection with its magnetic characters, especially Claire Danes as Carrie, who my colleague Sasha Weiss has rightly dubbed the queen of “Generation Cryface.” I was also taken in by Emily Nussbaum’s not-so-crazy theory that Nazir had re-turned Brody, and devised a six-moves-ahead plan with him where they would deceive Carrie and strike America. What else could explain Brody getting all moony-eyed around Carrie like some junior on the way to the prom? Poor plotting? No, couldn’t be.

Last night’s finale continued in the lovey-dovey vein, with Carrie and Brody back at the cabin where he yelled out “Issa” all those episodes ago. They were working on their relationship. Really? What is the plan here? To set up house in Chevy Chase? Brody becomes a local builder while Carrie devises elaborate schemata for the school holiday pageant? Then the guy who sort of looks like Christian Bale didn’t shoot Brody when he had the chance. And then Saul was unexpectedly moved by the sea burial of Nazir and then, “That’s weird. Somebody moved my car,” and then boom. We all missed something that day, again.

What the finale did do, very cannily, was to reëstablish the bond of trust and secrecy between Carrie and Brody (the engine of the show) and to create a new one between Brody and his daughter Dana. But don’t ask me what Carrie is going to tell Saul: another manic breakdown? Got swept up in a “Battlestar Galactica” marathon? I kid, but the joke is on me, because I will be front and center for the première of Season 3. So farewell for now, “Homeland,” the best bad show on television.* (*At least until January 6th, when the new season of “Downton Abbey” begins.)

Image: Twentieth Century Fox.