i don't give a damn if i'm your villain;
03 | they are the worst possible thing to happen to each other
You and me, this was love.
This post will be a short one because (1) I expect Live Journal to choke on its interior mechanics and die, and (2) full disclosure: I... technically don't actually ship this anymore? My interest sadly fizzled out towards the end of the second season around the time the ship became bafflingly epic and starcrossed and one-true-love. I do still have some residual feelings about the Claire/Damien chemistry, but the pairing doesn't grab me like it used to. Which is a real shame, because in season one (and parts of season two), the Brody/Carrie relationship was probably the most compelling thing about the show for me -- and also one of the most gloriously destructive trainwrecks I've had the pleasure of witnessing, like, ever. I mean, does it actually get more fucked up than a terrorist and a CIA agent having an illicit affair? This is a relationship that started with her spying on him as part of the job, including watching his every private move on camera, before initiating a sexual relationship as a cover to (ostensibly) expose him; and when said exposing went awry he (and the rest of the world) basically gas-lit her into shock treatment. Now that is what I call fucking grade-A trainwrecking.
And the thing that made Brody/Carrie work (despite lbr, the sheer ludicrousness of the storyline) was the ambiguity of the entire affair. It wasn't romance, it was mutual manipulation -- except that it was romance, in some moments, when the cover slipped. Yet it was never a love story. It was never about the two being together; it was about simply asking what their relationship really was. It was about having everything you believed to be real called into question -- she the loyal officer protecting her country, he the devout traitor -- to the extent that a union entailing total betrayal of your firmest principles turns out unexpectedly to be your most emotionally intimate experience.
So, it's a shame the writers seemed to lose that thread in S2. I don't watch the show to see if Romeo and Juliet will make it work; I watch it to understand why two people on such drastically opposing sides would even be drawn to each other at all. In conclusion: I want to ship it again, and may S3 work with me.