Role Reversal Between Carrie and Saul Raises the Stakes for the Series Finale of SHOWTIME’s HOMELAND, Sunday on Crave

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede There is only one episode of SHOWTIME’s HOMELAND left. The series finale for the eye-opening drama, which for eight seasons has sparked debate about what’s right and what’s wrong in the dangerous world of counterterrorism, airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, only on Crave. As one would expect with a series as carefully crafted as HOMELAND, this final season has brought the narrative full circle, leading to a pressure point on Sunday (SPOILER ALERT: without revealing specifics, the general set-up of the final episode is discussed below). Loyal viewers have seen the countless occasions in which Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, has survived due to the protection of Saul Berenson, played by Mandy Patinkin. But this arrangement always has been fraught with tension, and the mentor/mentee relationship between Saul and Carrie logically has a limit, as Patinkin acknowledged at the Television Critics Association event in Pasadena, Calif., earlier this year. “As much as Saul is defined by protecting his ‘child’ Carrie Mathson, he would throw her to the wolves if he thought that’s what it meant to save the largest portion of humanity,” Patinkin said. “Saul can be ruthless in any way, fashion, and shape imaginable to achieve his goal. And so the question for him always has been, if I save her, how many millions will she save? Or do I sacrifice some to save her?” But in the series finale, the writers of HOMELAND have created a scenario in which the shoe might be on the other foot. It may come down to Carrie choosing whether or not to save Saul, with world-changing consequences hanging in the balance. Danes pointed to an exchange between Carrie and Saul in the first season of HOMELAND, a scene that she believes set the stage for the entire series, up to and including the final episode. “I remember there was that scene, I don’t know what episode it was, in the first season, when (Carrie) was talking to (Saul) about her frustrations with the job, and about being lonely, and that she would be alone for the rest of her life – it’s like a mission statement,” recalled Danes, also at the TCA event. “That was their crisis. That was going to be the sacrifice that they were going to have to make, over and over and over again. So that was a meaningful exchange.” In addition to frenzied action and unfathomable tension, HOMELAND has specialized in meaningful exchanges. As executive producer Lesli Linka Glatter put it, “To me, a quintessential HOMELAND scene is when two characters have completely opposing views and they’re both right.” Danes also shared her thoughts on playing a character who is bipolar and was hiding that fact back when HOMELAND began. While Danes was speaking a month or so before the threat of coronavirus became widely known, her comments ring especially true, given what the entire planet is dealing with right now. “Carrie can never take her sanity and her health for granted,” Danes said. “She knows that things can go boom. They can go really wrong, really, really fast. So she is always vigilantly guarding that, and I think it was easy for her to extrapolate and imagine the country in those terms. That’s what I admire about these people that I’ve learned in my attempt to portray this experience, just how hard they work to live an ordinary day, and how much we as ‘normal people’ take for granted. With her vigilance and her protective impulse and her understanding that danger is real, all of that just made a lot of sense to me, and I found it very moving.” Viewers found it very moving, too. Here’s to HOMELAND, a groundbreaking, exciting and thought-provoking series that is ready to stick the landing on Sunday. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv