Some of the most dramatic moments in Homeland occur through the actions and perceptions of Carrie Mathison. During season 1, viewers were witness to Carrie's attempts to uncover the truth behind her suspicions of Nicholas Brody. Carrie's concerns about Brody go unheardby many of those in the CIA, including Saul, and by Jessica Brodyand this exacerbates Carrie's paranoia and her various mental struggles. Even when she does close in on Brody and gradually exposes the truth about him, it is only the dumb luck of a faulty suicide vest that prevents Brody's first assassination attempt on the Vice President. The universe of Homeland, it seems, expresses a nihilistic truththe many efforts of ours are left unrewarded. For those of the fictional and real worlds of the CIA, this is, very likely, a normal state of affairs. When intelligence successes are realized, the public can never know about them and when tragedies occur (as in the real-world 911 and the fictional attack on thr CIA headquarters) the public is all too aware of these failures. Another nihilistic component of the show that more closely resonates with our lives is illustrated in the actions of Carrie and Brody. In the case of Brody, his accomplishments as a war hero and, at times, the care and love that he expresses for his family and for Carrie are negated by strings of bad decisions. Likewise, Carrie's efforts to stop Brody are always negated by similar bad decisionsthe most notable being shacking up with Brody and allowing him to escape across the Canadian border. For us, it is perhaps terrifying to think that heroes and people with good intentions could do things that cause their worlds to spiral out of control. In this sense we might recall many other popular media that have ruminated on this topic. In the film The Watchmen we get one of the most vivid portrayals of the theme of the "heroes" doing wrong, in The Dark Knight we discover the theme of masculine escalation and its negative effect on others, and in the HBO drama The Wire, we realize that forces on all sidesfrom the drug dealers to the noble police officersmake a mess of the world that falls under their purview. Homeland works on a different register than these other media but it similarly emphasizes the existential notion that our good efforts to do the right thing will, for one reason or another, likely end in negative outcomes.