This Is Probably Exactly What A Conversation Between Homeland’s Producers Sounds Like

Welcome to our Homeland recaps. This week’s episode was ‘The Yoga Play’. Spoilers and speculative fiction follow.

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INT. SHOWTIME BUILDING – BOARDROOM. NIGHT.

Two producers of Homeland sit at a boardroom table to discuss their third season’s fifth episode, ‘The Yoga Play’.

Producer 1: Last week we totally pulled off our best episode of the season… You know what would be rad?

Producer 2: What?

Producer 1: If we got Claire Danes to say: “You know how Romeo & Juliet ends, don’t you?”

Producer 2: Ha! Well, if I recall that time I got drunk and yelled at Baz Luhrmann through my TV set about John Leguizamo’s overacting and that stupid shirt Leo was wearing, the answer’s “Not well!”

Producer 1: How funny that we’d have the babe from Romeo & Juliet say that! It’d also get everyone wondering whether our show’s own star-crossed runaway lovers might meet a similar fate… But first, we should definitely make Claire Danes get naked.

Producer 2: Oh man, I dig it. And we could call the episode ‘The Yoga Play’. It sounds like that show your friend Heather’s Tuesday night amateur theatre/yoga group did.

Producer 1: It’d probably leave everyone wanting us to kill Dana amid a stream of nunchuck and flame-throwing badarsery… Something that would make a Kurt Russell movie look tame by comparison.

Producer 2: That would be so sweet, but let’s not: it’ll fuck with people way more. Hey, so we really underestimated how much people would hate Dana, huh?

Producer 1: Her impressive ability to turn anyone who watches Homeland against her is remarkable, I’ll give you that.

Producer 2: So, what should we do with Dana and her runaway beau Dreamy Psycho Emo Maybe Vampire Leo instead of giving people what they want? Maybe just let the whole thing peter out? We could do it very lamely, too, like have their runaway escapades come crashing down when Dana realises that Dreamy Psycho Emo Maybe Vampire Leo lied to her about how his brother died or something.

Producer 1: Oh, I get it. He lied to her. Like her dad!

Producer 2: Exactly.

Producer 1: I love it.

Producer 2: I can see the internet comments already: “Fuk Dana!”, “How our hearts weep for Dana!”, “Dana’s the werst LOL.”

Producer 1: But do you think they’ll realise that the ‘Dana On The Run’ scenario is just a set-up for the ‘Leo Selling Dana’s Naked Selfies’ fallout?

Producer 2: Nah… That we spent so much time with it, though, is almost unconscionable. Your idea to have Dreamy Psycho Emo Maybe Vampire Leo get a little loose and threaten a modified version of his usual murder-suicide pact — the one he likes to call “I’ll kill us both by driving this car into a tree if you leave me!” — was good, though. Pity we didn’t use it.

Producer 1: Yeah, then there would’ve been at least a hint of tension in Dana’s story arc.

Producer 2: We can’t have that.

Producer 1: No, so let’s just go with the ‘tedious realisation’ option instead; it’ll set up Dana’s boring-arse story for the rest of the season. So what do we do with Saul and Carrie?

Producer 2: Well, our biggest flaw is that every time we get away from the ‘CIA vs terrorists’ and ‘Brody vs Carrie’ things, we fall apart amid endless scenes of weeping from Jessica Brody and teenage emoting from Surly Dana… I know, let’s have Jessica talk to Carrie!

Producer 1: But that doesn’t make sense. Why would Jessica Brody ask Carrie — the woman who stole her husband — to help find her daughter?

Producer 2: Well, she wouldn’t. But it’ll tie Carrie to Dana, and then prompt Brody…

Producer 1: Who?

Producer 2: Our main character!

Producer 1: Oh, right. That red-headed guy who’s featured in only half-an-episode this season. Continue…

Producer 2: Once Carrie presumably gets to Venezuela and saves him, we’ll make it have something to do with Dana.

Producer 1: Cool. I like that. So how do we get her there?

Producer 2: Uh, we’ll kinda have her hang-out and do dumb shit for a while, like looking into some mirrors again, and then we’ll strip her naked and have her kidnapped to meet with terrorist mastermind Majid Javadi in a McMansion. Plus, we’ll make it real clear that terrorists just drive across the border into America and meet up with existing hit squads in Washington DC.

Producer 1: Also, have him eat a hamburger or something!

Producer 2: Yes! A hamburger! How American. I love it. Javadi will meet Carrie after she’s been STRIPPED NAKED AND KIDNAPPED — I can’t stress that enough — and in the next couple of episodes, we’ll get them to Venezuela.

Producer 1: This is going great. So, what do we do with Saul?

Producer 2: I dunno.

Producer 1: Well, Saul’s our best asset… How about a political power struggle with that guy we had in the first episode? Senator Whatshisname.

Producer 2: Oh, the guy who looks like the bad Senator guy from X-Men?

Producer 1: Yeah, him. We’ll make him the new director of the CIA and kick off a battle between the ethoses of old and new. Y’know, really stick it to them on the drone strikes thing and how Saul believes that it’s more about the personal touch of espionage. We’ll set him up as Saul’s ideological opposite, a bad guy for him to deal with while he’s also trying to sort out everything with Javadi.

Producer 2: Sweet story arc. That’ll fucken show those pricks at Sesame Street.

Producer 1: We’ll set it up so the Senator is all smooth-talking, honey-tongued and political, so people realise he’s super-different to gruff, rumpled Saul. Y’know, make it REALLY clear that they’re OPPOSITES. And then we’ll have their altercation take place when they go, like, duck hunti… — NO! Wait, geese hunting!

Producer 2: Geese hunting! That’s genius. Also, maybe make it look like Saul’s wife is cheating on him or something.

Producer 1: With a mysterious French guy! Who can resist those damn smooth mysterious French guys, being all handsome and suave all over the place?

Producer 1: Great, so all that’s sorted. What do we do in this episode about Brody?

Producer 2: Who?

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Jaymz is a New York-based writer (originally from Melbourne, and the former Editor of triple j magazine), super-yacht enthusiast, hi-tech jewel thief and Bengal tiger trainer. He enjoys wearing monocles, finely spiced rum, constructing pillow forts, and zip-lining from Hong Kong skyscrapers. You can find him on twitter via @jaymzclements

Follow the rest of his Homeland recaps here.