1x10 - "Representative Brody" Episode Discussion

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Discuss Representative Brody here.

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The A.V. Club: How did you build the story of them trying to turn the diplomat?

Alex Gansa: Here’s another example of a scene that everybody’s seen a thousand times, and the question was, “What spin do you put on it? How do you make it different? How do you make it interesting?” The way we chose to make this interesting was, the very thing Saul and Carrie think that they have over this guy, and that’s going to be the trump card, doesn’t work. That’s what turned the scene on its head all of a sudden. To me, that’s the best moment in the scene, is when the diplomat says that great Henry Bromell line [“Yes, I like sucking cock… Yummy, yummy, yummy.”], which I’ll never forget, and gets up and walks out of the room. And Saul, who has been completely quiet at that point, worries that Carrie has failed and starts to talk to the diplomat himself, and Carrie shuts him down and calls the diplomat out and turns the tables on the diplomat.

If you have more than one thing going on, a scene is always better, so what’s going on in this scene is that Saul has turned over the interrogation to Carrie and trusted her to do it. Carrie fails. Saul tries to now be the big guy, to step in and take charge of the situation, but Carrie’s not done yet. So the dynamics between Carrie and Saul are just as important as the dynamics between Carrie and the diplomat, and that’s what adds the richness and the complexity to the scene, and makes it feel different and unexpected. And always, whenever you’re writing a scene, whenever you can do something that comes purely from character but that is unexpected, that’s the gold. That’s when you’ve mined something that’s really worthwhile. We set it up, of course, with Carrie and Virgil earlier in that whole scene in which they’re prepping for the interrogation, in which Carrie learns everything she can about the diplomat, so she has something up her sleeve here to pull out and to save the day at the end.

AVC: Carrie pretty openly threatens the diplomat’s daughter here. How much did you want to play around with the idea that she is willing to push some slightly unethical buttons to get what she wants?

AG: Again, to me, speaking from just my own political perspective, there’s nothing unethical about what she does in this scene. And her putting the screws down on this guy, first of all, calling him on the carpet for his homosexuality, it’s gonna exert pressure on him, in terms of his culture, and that’s legitimate. In fact, that’s what these intelligence officers are trained to do: What is a human being’s weakness, and how can we prey on that to get what we want? So that’s where she first applies the pressure. That doesn’t work. Now, she’s got to go to something closer to home, and that’s the relationship this man has with his daughter.

She’s going to use everything she can short of putting the guy on the rack, or attaching electric currents to his testicles, or whatever we did in the past. She’s going to exert whatever pressure she can on this guy, and that’s what she chooses. Whether they would actually go through with it… I imagine they would. I imagine they would have the power to deport this guy. She’s gonna bring whatever advantage she has over this guy to bear in this scene, and that’s what she chooses to do to get what she wants.

AVC: You don’t use torture at all on the show, but it was used often on 24. What do you lose not having that as a storytelling go-to, and what do you gain?

AG: First of all, there was a little bit of coercion that went on in the Hamid thing, with the heavy metal and the changes in temperature, which, I understand they’re not doing that anymore. And the sleep deprivation, they’re not doing that anymore, either. So we may have crossed a line there on some level.

But I think ultimately, what you lose is—look, those torture scenes are the equivalent of pornography. They were on 24, anyway, these scenes where [Jack] Bauer cuts off somebody’s head or finger or whatever. They were the violent pornography of that show, and we were really trying not to be exploitative in that way on this series. And so we had to do things like figure out a more clever way for Carrie to break the diplomat than strapping him to a chair. And I think you lose the immediate visual horror of what torture means, but you gain something a lot more interesting, which is you see how very smart people are able to manipulate others.

AVC: As the title reflects, this is an episode that hinges a lot on Brody’s run for Congress. With Manchurian Candidate, that’s something people are aware of. How do you play in that arena without inviting direct comparison?

AG: First of all, I always thought this episode should be called, “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” [Laughs.] And not “Representative Brody.” But it was ultimately called “Representative Brody.”

Look, that’s where the show is going next year. Brody pitched to Nazir this idea that he’s going to be able to influence policy in a much more profound way as a Congressman, as a candidate, and we’re just going to have to deal with the fact that that’s going to be more of Brody’s trajectory. We’re never going to be able to top Brody with a suicide vest in a bunker. And I think to go that route again, to have Brody plan another violent attack against America, is just going to feel repetitive. So we’ve got to give him a new mission, and this is his new mission.

AVC: Why would it only occur to Abu Nazir to try and do this after Brody pitches it to him in the finale? Why wouldn’t he already be moving Brody toward this in this episode?

AG: Again, I think it speaks to what Carrie tells Saul, which is, ultimately, that’s not Nazir’s M.O. Nazir’s about explosions and big publicity moves and explosions in markets and suicide bombers and taking out a lot of lives. That’s how he’s prosecuted his war against America, and probably in Iraq, and maybe Israel. So that’s how he’s learned to prosecute the war against his enemies, and not so much in this long game. Not so much the Manchurian Candidate model.

Alex Sansa talks about Representative Brody - Read more here: www.avclub.com/articles/alex-gansa-walks-us-through-homelands-first-season,68370/