Spying Run Amok

By MAUREEN DOWD, NYT

WASHINGTON — I miss Brody.

So why did he have to go?

The poor guy was put at the end of a rope because the writers of “Homeland” were at the end of their rope.

They had conjured a hypnotic character who was both hero and villain, patriot and traitor. Brody was still on the run, but his creators had run out of ways to reconcile their curdled Marine’s poles without making the plots too implausible.

In the finale, during a scene set at a C.I.A. safe house in Iran, Brody fretted to Carrie that maybe he was, as a doctor in Caracas had said, “a cockroach. Unkillable, bringing misery wherever I go.”

The talented Damian Lewis told The Times’s Dave Itzkoff, “They ended up creating such a compelling, unpredictable, sad and ambiguous character who was capable of so much damage — he was able to affect story on such a grand scale. They created a monster that they couldn’t quite control.” He added, “The thought of having to continue to write him was too hard, perhaps,” noting: “Brody’s a very unbalancing force.”

(More here.)