Homeland: When Returning Back Home Turns into a Drama

All of us enjoy watching TV series! And so, the one I am currently enjoying is the recent American drama series ‘Homeland’, which is considered to be a great success, winning both Golden Globe and Emmy awards. The reason I am bringing it up here is that apart from being exciting and entertaining in itself, the series also sparked my professional interest.

In short, this TV drama revolves around two main characters, namely Nicholas Brody, a U.S. Marine Sergeant, and Carrie Mathison, a CIA operations officer. The story unfolds when Brody returns back home after 8 years of being held captive by Al-Qaeda as a prisoner of war, and considered dead all these years by his family. While perceived a war hero by many, CIA officer Mathison has reasons to believe that while in captivity Brody has been ‘turned’, and that now he poses a significant risk to the nation. ‘Is Brody a terrorist?’ is one important question that keeps the story developing and the viewer hooked to the series. However, apart from this terrorism-related theme, another story line also touches upon the readjustment difficulties of the repatriated soldier Brody.

In spite of the meaningful series name ‘homeland’, for Brody returning to the U.S. resembles the feeling of home to the least possible extent. Everything has changed: believing Brody dead, his wife starts a relationship with his best friend; and his kids struggle to connect with the father, whom the younger child barely remembers. Brody himself is also different now, with the biggest change being his conversion to Muslim religion, which he cannot reveal or share with his family. Moreover, Brody is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experiencing nightmares and episodes of uncontrolled aggression. The life upon returning home becomes an unexpected drama.

As such, the series quite well depicts the problems of repatriation, especially after such extreme contexts as military assignments – a topic I wrote about some weeks ago. As mentioned in my other post, the PTSD cases of returned military expats are far from cases of civilian expatriates. At the same time, we can also expect that military personnel receives much more profound mental preparation compared to business expatriates, which even in the absence of traumatic experiences abroad makes the latter quite vulnerable to readjustment difficulties. Moreover, it is often those who have adjusted very successfully abroad who have the most difficulty returning home.

To draw a few parallels with the series let me illustrate one example. Let’s say our business expatriate ‘Brody’ spent three years in a foreign subsidiary on a split family assignment (i.e., relocating without his family) and is now repatriated from the assignment. Upon returning home ‘Brody’ may find his close colleague and friend having occupied his old position, and some of employees struggling to re-connect with the repatriated manager. Besides, new strategic plans and ideas that ‘Brody’ has come to develop and believe in don’t seem to link with the values and beliefs of his co-workers, who even start suspecting ‘Brody’ of being overly inclined towards subsidiary matters. Finally, at home the new food recipes, customs and other habits our ‘Brody’ got used to abroad are not appreciated and understood by his family members. As a result, the repatriated ‘Brody’ feels misplaced, alienated and struggles to feel comfortable and fully readjusted to being back home. Here we go: it turns into a drama.

Sounds exaggerated and a bit comic? Maybe, but there is also a lot of truth in this examples. In the end, as much as a drama can be exciting to follow on TV, as employees or employers we are less likely to enjoy experiencing it in reality.