Morality and Covert Affairs

"I want you to know that what's going on here is not okay with me." — Quinn, "Homeland"

What began as a slow, confusing and frustrating season of "Homeland" has begun to develop its central premise. Saul and Carrie have been playing the long game, sacrificing their public reputations in order to do what needs to be done to secure long-term security for the United States.

As a bonus, their new asset has confirmed what Carrie wanted to believe in her heart all along — that Brody was as much a victim of terrorists as those who perished in the CIA bombing. Clearly the back half of the season will be about uncovering the truth — or for Carrie, clearing Brody's name — and developing this new source of information. Sure, there will be fallout from Saul's actions toward the Senator, but the overall narrative seems to be in a better place.

Save for one character — Peter Quinn. Quinn has a conscience. That's a good thing for a human being, but a bad thing for an intelligence officer. The weight of trying to be an intelligence officer while caring about people around him is weighing on Quinn.

At the end of last season, it was his conscience that stayed his hand and spared Brody's life. He believed that Brody was honest and had changed, and more than that he seemed to feel Brody and Carrie deserved a chance. When the bomb blew at the CIA — apparently at Brody's hand — Quinn felt the guilt caused by his choice not to act. He carried that into this season.

On his first mission of the season, Quinn was forced to kill a child. He didn't know it was a child, and he believed his life was in danger on a covert mission. No one at the agency blinked or blamed Quinn — but he spent a lot of time blaming himself.

In assisting Carrie to bring in Javadi, Quinn found himself in another undesirable situation. His target brutally slaughtered two innocent women. Instead of bringing the man to justice, Quinn had to help clean up the situation, eventually falsely confessing to the crime in order to end the criminal manhunt.

When he said that confessing was cathartic, it was easy to believe him. Carrie didn't understand, saying he wasn't the one who killed those women. Quinn didn't pull the trigger or swing the bottle, but he felt responsible all the same. Not just for them, but for so many that died as a result of his actions and inactions.

When Clark Johnson, playing the role of the disgusted detective forced to sweep a double homicide under the rug because of "national security," asked honestly what had ever been made better because of the intelligence services, it hit a gapping wound for Quinn. He's been asking himself those hard questions for a while without coming up with any sort of comforting answer.

The nature of this work is often a contradiction. It's easy to understand why covert agents and missions are needed. It's easy to understand, rationally, how a source like Javadi that's loyal to the United States would help make our nation as a whole safer. It's also hard to see a man like that get off free after committing a brutal crime. We're a nation that craves security and justice — and sometimes those two desires are at odds.

Peter Quinn is an effective covert agent. He's also a man with a conscience. That, as "Homeland" has shown, is sometimes an impossible combination.