TV Asshole of the Week: Dana Brody

Once every so often, there comes along a character so infuriating it induces paralysis, so thoroughly unlikable you cannot focus on anything else but your hatred of this specimen, so poorly written that even graphene, the thinnest substance in the known universe, has more depth than they.  Our generation did not have to suffer through the introduction of Scrappy Doo but we did have to suffer the mind numbing inanity of Homeland’s Dana Fucking Brody.

Even the camera cannot focus on her for more than 3 seconds at a time

A lot of female characters on serial dramas get a lot of hate e.g Skylar White, Marie Schrader, Betty Draper, Margaret Schroder, Janice Soprano, the list goes on. So let me be perfectly clear, I do not hate Dana Brody because she is of the female persuasion, nor do I hate her because she is a teenager, the most annoying period of a person’s life second only to the toddler tantrum phase. I hate her because a) she is so poorly written her character gave me stomach ulcers, and b) her main plot of the third season is so utterly irrelevant to the overall story arc that I almost gave up on the show completely.

Before I go on and on about how insignificant and enraging Dana Brody is, let me applaud first the actress who plays her, Morgan Saylor.  Her performance throughout is excellent and Saylor is making the best out of such a shitty character.  She is a professional actress through and through and a fine one at that.

It is also fair to say that Dana Brody is misunderstood.  At least half of the population have no idea of the traumas of being teenage girl, okay, that’s fair enough. Even fewer of us have experienced suicidal tendencies also.  And I think it’s fair to say that hardly any of us have a father who is an on-again-off-again terrorist.  All this makes Dana somewhat hard to relate to: I get that, I really do.  HOWEVER, despite all of these huge issues she has to deal with none of her motivations or actions are even remotely excusable nor even make sense.

Let me swiftly walk you through Dana’s plot of season 3 as it is a perfect example that illustrates why she is such an insufferable cunt.

• Dana tried to commit suicide and whilst she is recovering, in the hospitals rehabilitation clinic, she starts fucking Leo, one of the other patients there.  That’s not particularly cuntish but it’s not a smart move either.

• Even though her mother, Jessica Brody, is being as caring and loving and supportive as she can possibly be Dana still opposes her on every little thing.  While it is typical for teenagers to be rebellious and contrary Dana takes it to the nth degree and with each and every vacuous syllable that leaves her whiny little mouth, you just want to smash it shut with a breezeblock.

• It seems all the genuine love, affection and support is too much for Dana and she must flee so she and Leo decide to run off together.  Not only do they steal her mother’s car but also ALL HER MONEY, of which she has very little.

• These two worthless, idiotic, adolescent tadpoles then lead their families AND THE POLICE on a state wide man-hunt that lasts a near-unwatchable hour.

• The whole thing culminates when Dana finds out that Leo accidentally killed his brother and is distraught by the fact that some kid she met in a mental ward wasn’t telling the whole truth.  She then flags down a cop car and returns home like nothing had ever happened.

• Again, Jessica handles this with all the mindless love and support of a battered housewife and how does Dana reward her?  She decides to move out.  Actually that is probably the single nicest thing she could do for her mother.

So, why did this whole ridiculous plot occur?  It’s so Dana would have to work some dead end cleaning job so they could show Nicholas Brody (her father and terrorist/CIA agent) what has become of her and use her shitty position in life as leverage against him.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?  We had to suffer though all this unbearable, teen angst ridden bullshit for that minor plot detail?  Are you fucking serious?  Is that the BEST the writers could come up with?  They could have made the Brody family broke so the kids HAVE to work to provide for the family!  Dana could have wanted to move countries to escape and needed money to do so!  For fucks sake, they could have even had it as something as mundane as Dana’s after school job. Quite literally ANYTHING would have been better than the pile of rancid shit we were fed during season 3 of homeland.

Dana was pretty fucking irritating in season 2 too (she hooked up with some politician’s kid and they killed someone in a hit and run leading to a fair bit of teen-angst) but season 3 Dana went into overdrive on the annoyance front.

Never before have I been so angry at a character and this includes the cast of How I Met Your Mother.  Season 4 of Homeland starts next week and I hope Dana has actually offed herself for good this time because if I have to suffer through yet another season of bullshit teenage drama I, along with the entire viewership, will just give up on the show completely.