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Homeland (2 Viewers)

I actually vastly preferred this ep to the first two and I think it earned two more.

No Jessica Brody was of vast assistance. Didn't miss Saul and the doofus CIA "drama" either.

 
El Floppo said:
Officer Pete Malloy said:
pantherclub said:
SlaX said:
Officer Pete Malloy said:
SlaX said:
I must be the only one that hears the phrase "24-esque" and thinks that's a good thing.
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You probably are.
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:shrug: I still think 24 was one of the best shows in the past 10-15 years. I know I'm not alone in that. Plus, you have writers from the show on this one. Of course, some parts are going to feel like 24. Also, it seems that every TV show thread in the FFA is critical of the show. If you go by the threads, no show is a good one.
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I literally laughed out loud when I read this because I know you serious.
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:goodposting:
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mountain lion. :goodposting:
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You're seriously using something that happened for 5 total minutes of a 194 hour series as your gripe? Yep, you've convinced me. At least go with Teri Bauer getting random amnesia in season one. That was the worst plot from the entire series.

 
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I am at least somewhat interested in where Carrie and Saul's little game is heading.

The Dana storyline, meanwhile, is positively baffling. Why would/does ANYONE give a #### about her? I fast-forward through every scene she's in, and it already makes for a better viewing experience.

 
Raider Nation said:
I am at least somewhat interested in where Carrie and Saul's little game is heading.

The Dana storyline, meanwhile, is positively baffling. Why would/does ANYONE give a #### about her? I fast-forward through every scene she's in, and it already makes for a better viewing experience.
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Normally I wouldn't complain about seeing more Morena Baccarin, but the Dana storyline changed that in a hurry.

 
Pretty good little twist there....didn't see that coming. Interested again.

Also, it looks like the kid from Dexter is the mountain lion. Rawr.

 
Homer J Simpson said:
Pretty good little twist there....didn't see that coming. Interested again.

Also, it looks like the kid from Dexter is the mountain lion. Rawr.
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I'm trying to reconcile this latest twist to Carrie turning to Saul in the hospital and giving him the FU. Lots of creative license here, but I'll roll with it.

 
johnnycakes said:
Homer J Simpson said:
Pretty good little twist there....didn't see that coming. Interested again.

Also, it looks like the kid from Dexter is the mountain lion. Rawr.
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I'm trying to reconcile this latest twist to Carrie turning to Saul in the hospital and giving him the FU. Lots of creative license here, but I'll roll with it.
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I took it she was just angry at how extreme the lengths he was pushing her to sell the ploy.

Thought it was a great twist. Nice to be surprised.

 
The daughter and the rehab kid running away...UGH, I just fast forward that ####. Morena needs to be naked more if she is going to have this much air time.

 
johnnycakes said:
Homer J Simpson said:
Pretty good little twist there....didn't see that coming. Interested again.

Also, it looks like the kid from Dexter is the mountain lion. Rawr.
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I'm trying to reconcile this latest twist to Carrie turning to Saul in the hospital and giving him the FU. Lots of creative license here, but I'll roll with it.
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I have no problem with that. You never know what type of due diligence the law firm would put into the decision to try and recruit Carrie.

 
SHIZNITTTT said:
The daughter and the rehab kid running away...UGH, I just fast forward that ####. Morena needs to be naked more if she is going to have this much air time.
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I think she was/is pregnant, so you can nix that plan. I've also frankly seen enough of her bod. (I realize that she's conventionally attractive with big bewbs, but she is totally unappealing to me.)

I wish I had posted here that Saul and Carrie were running a long con. The problem is that it doesn't make any sense. Not only that, but the new archvillain is some faceless Iranian dood about whom we don't care.

So the CIA knows about the law firm, but hasn't had the FBI arrest all of its members? Right.

The DanaDrivel is just unbelievable.

Welcome back, Mike! Glad he got to cash a paycheck for this awful episode.

Back to one and done for me. I'm hoping that this next week's will be bad so I can dump this crap once and for all.

 
Couldn't agree more about Brody's family. No one cares and I am certain the writers are aware of that and they are going to somehow clumsily shoehorn them into the overarching plot ala Elisha Cuthbert in every season of 24 but the first.

 
Chaka said:
johnnycakes said:
Homer J Simpson said:
Pretty good little twist there....didn't see that coming. Interested again.

Also, it looks like the kid from Dexter is the mountain lion. Rawr.
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I'm trying to reconcile this latest twist to Carrie turning to Saul in the hospital and giving him the FU. Lots of creative license here, but I'll roll with it.
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I have no problem with that. You never know what type of due diligence the law firm would put into the decision to try and recruit Carrie.
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Like hacking the security cameras, placing fake patients there, bribing the employees . . . you're right, that part does make sense. Plus, Carrie adorably says "#### you" to just about everyone. She's starting to border on extremely unlikable, which is #457 on this show's growing list of issues.

 
Raider Nation said:
I am at least somewhat interested in where Carrie and Saul's little game is heading.

The Dana storyline, meanwhile, is positively baffling. Why would/does ANYONE give a #### about her? I fast-forward through every scene she's in, and it already makes for a better viewing experience.
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Yeah, pretty much all of this.

 
Chaka said:
Couldn't agree more about Brody's family. No one cares and I am certain the writers are aware of that and they are going to somehow clumsily shoehorn them into the overarching plot ala Elisha Cuthbert in every season of 24 but the first.
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:goodposting: I'm fast-forwarding anything that has to do with Brody's family from now on...unless his wife takes off her shirt.

 
Like the little twist as well.

I guess the whole scene with Carrie calling Virgil for help was just in case people, i.e. the attorneys for the Iranians, were watching her?

Echo the Dana comments...hate her and everything she does on the show. I hope it's more than filler as the season moves on but it's just ####### annoying right now.

 
Seppy's review might answer a few questions.

The other day, I was talking with Mo Ryan about how even the great showrunners often have blind spots, giving some undeserving character or storyline way too much burn, and either not realizing or caring about how they actually play. "Mad Men," for instance, has Betty; "The Wire" season 5 had the newspaper. It happens, and usually the shows are otherwise so great that you learn to ignore the part that the creative team can't or won't fix.

But as we pass the one-third mark of "Homeland" season 3, I'm beginning to fear that we have a show made up of nothing but blind spots.

If it was just that the creative team loved Morgan Saylor's performance as Dana and didn't understand that viewers don't care about Dana outside her interactions with her father, it would be a difficult problem, but a survivable one. There is absolutely no reason we need to be spending any time in an episode, let alone this much, on Dana's overwrought, poetry-reciting escapades with Leo(*) — who, like her father, isn't exactly who he claims to be, and has a past and possible future of suicidal behavior — but if the show around her was strong, I would just roll my eyes and move on.

(*) I just realized this week that the actor, Sam Underwood, is the same one who played Dexter's would-be protege Zach Hamilton in that show's final season. The Showtime casting people are more impressed with Underwood than I am.

But there's also the continued survival of Brody, which we talked about last week. There's more time spent with Jessica, who was one of the series' most interesting characters in its first few episodes and has become progressively less so, which necessitates the return from "The Blacklist" of Diego Klattenhoff as Mike.(**) There's a lot of time spent on forensic accounting of the new Iranian villains, which isn't that tough to follow, but has so far just played as a massive info dump.

(**) The same episode also brings back David Marciano for a brief appearance as Virgil. "Homeland" giveth with the returning actors, and "Homeland" taketh away.

And then there's Carrie Matheson. Claire Danes now has two Emmys for this role. She is great in it, and given the design of the series, she's theoretically its best bet as a star for the long haul. (Much as I love Mandy Patinkin, and I'll be talking about him more in a moment, Showtime isn't doing 8 seasons of "Saul the Bear.") But as I talked about last week, they've put Carrie in such a bad place — covering up Brody's assassination of Walden (and not even trying to stop it once she escaped from Nazir), helping Brody go fugitive, being wildly out of control and self-indulgent — that it's amazing to remember how sympathetic she once was.

The twist at the end of "Game On" — revealing that Saul was using Carrie as bait for the Iranians, and that Carrie was in on the plan — feels like a Hail Mary pass by the writers to solve the Carrie problem in a single move. Carrie's not out of control! She's in cahoots with our man Saul! She's still on the side of the angels, and always has been! Like her! Please!

Mostly, though, the revelation just left me scratching my head about what exactly was real over the last four episodes — and not in a pleased "Usual Suspects"/"Sixth Sense" way that made me eager to revisit what I'd already seen, but a much more annoyed mode. Perhaps we'll find out next week exactly what happened, and when, but right now my guess is that when Saul visited Carrie at the end of the season's second episode, he responded to her drugged "#### you, Saul" with an explanation of his plan. For all of Carrie's behavior this season to be acting defies credulity, and even if she became aware of the plan at that late date, there's too much behavior from the two most recent episodes for it to entirely work. There are too many moments where she's entirely alone, or in contexts where it doesn't matter who's observing her — except for us in the audience, and we should not factor into this equation — where she acts like this is all real. I can understand, perhaps, why she might try to go fugitive after getting Franklin's offer — it's all a show for the people she knows are watching her — but why is she so concerned about her father and Maggie blowing off the hearing? Why is she near tears at the thought of betraying her country for cash when her back is to bad guy lawyer Leland Bennett? Who are the guys in Virgil's office?

UPDATE: Alex Gansa told EW that Carrie and Saul hatched the plan shortly after the CIA bombing, which means this entire thing has been an elaborate play. Don't buy it. Sorry. And it cheapens a lot of what we've previously seen (like ending episode 2 on "#### you, Saul"). Also, Linda Holmes does an excellent job of articulating the difference between concealing Brody's motivations in season 1 and Carrie's here.

And why is "Homeland" playing this game with the audience? It was one thing to keep Brody's motives opaque during the first season, as that year was designed as a cat-and-mouse game where the biggest question was whether Carrie was right or crazy (or both). We're past that point now. We know Carrie. We know Saul. We know about their relationship. You build on that and you explore it; you don't do narrative sleight of hand that doesn't entirely make sense.

And yet I will say that despite my largely annoyed reaction to this twist, Mandy Patinkin's performance in the final scene was just so good — so warm and inviting in that beautifully understated way Patinkin plays Saul — that I came incredibly close to going along with it. Saul was happy with this turn of events, and therefore I should have been.

Which, I suppose, makes Saul my own "Homeland" blind spot.
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wadegarrett said:
Like the little twist as well.

I guess the whole scene with Carrie calling Virgil for help was just in case people, i.e. the attorneys for the Iranians, were watching her?

Echo the Dana comments...hate her and everything she does on the show. I hope it's more than filler as the season moves on but it's just ####### annoying right now.
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I don't hate her, she seems to be a good actress but her storyline is pointless and no one cares.

My prediction is that the Dexter kid is somehow working for the terrorists and they use the threat of him hurting Dana to get Brody back in the terrorizing game. Horrible but it sounds like something that would happen to Cuthbert in 24 so that's my guess.

 
I really hope all of this focus on Dana is to set her up for something bigger in the long haul. If she's just filler like most of the Kimberly Bauer adventures (hey, I said I love the show, not that it was a masterpiece), then I'm gonna be let down. Plus, unlike Cuthbert, Dana doesn't have the advantage of being drop dead gorgeous.

 
I'd really like to see what some of these FBGs are banging who turn their noses up at Dana. She may not be "hot" like a model, but to say she isn't even remotely attractive is tobo.

 
Officer Pete Malloy said:
johnnycakes said:
I'd really like to see what some of these FBGs are banging who turn their noses up at Dana. She may not be "hot" like a model, but to say she isn't even remotely attractive is tobo.
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For an actress she's not hot at all.
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She is supposed to have Jessica's genes. She looks to wear more of Brody's jeans.

Then again, we are questioning the hotness of a character that is not of legal consent age. :homer:

 
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Cute little twist but I don't buy it for a second. They would have left Carrie some disposable cash in her house so she could live for a day and Carrie wouldn't have cared if her father didn't show up.

 
Officer Pete Malloy said:
johnnycakes said:
Officer Pete Malloy said:
johnnycakes said:
I'd really like to see what some of these FBGs are banging who turn their noses up at Dana. She may not be "hot" like a model, but to say she isn't even remotely attractive is tobo.
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For an actress she's not hot at all.
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Says the guy who goes home to a size 14 missus and has a size 6 on the side. :rolleyes:
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Med check, Johnny. Med check.
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johnny finds a daughter hot. Go figure.

 
biggamer3 said:
Cute little twist but I don't buy it for a second. They would have left Carrie some disposable cash in her house so she could live for a day and Carrie wouldn't have cared if her father didn't show up.
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Why would they have left disposable cash and why would she have not cared? Seems reasonable for Carrie & Saul to believe that the law firm that could get a judge to release her, when the CIA didn't want her released, might have resources to tap the father's phone (and Carrie's too). Lacking cash presented her as all the more abandoned and desperate.

I have no problem with where this twist is going. My problem is that the Brody family story is boring and a waste of time. And I think I am going to have a problem when one of the CIA's most wanted ends up on US soil the same way that Nazir did.

 
Raider Nation said:
Chaka said:
Also reminded me that they never really had a plan for Brody's family.
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I believe the original script called for Brody's vest to indeed explode, but audiences liked him so they kept him (and by extension, his family) around for more nonsense.
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Would have been better if Dana accidentally detonated the vest in the house killing everybody while Brody was off in the cabin with Carrie.

 
Yeah, I don't have too much problem with the twist. Most every inconsistency can be explained away with super-diligence dealing with a far reaching organization.

My biggest issue was, why need to take cash from the waiter, but the lawyer could've gotten to him too for all we know (and were obviously somehow sitting on his house or followed Carrie there).

I would've been fine with treasonous Carrie (well, treasonous in a new way Carrie), but I'd think that'd be impossible to pull off past the initial meeting, as she won't really be able to get any new info.

I don't hate Dana as much as others. I'm fine with the soft spot (Greenwald, btw, brought this up after the season premiere. Clearly, Seppy's just copying his work).

Don't love it, but I don't FF either.

 
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I was absolutely ready to give up on this show thinking Carrie became a traitor and then they completely flipped the script! Awesome ending. How long has this been part of Sauls plan. When did they hatch this? Im back in baby!

Edit: and yeah i agree with everyone re the dana story, i FF that ####

 
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The Dana/BF thing needs to be killed off now. After she got popped, it's no longer interesting. The last episode was very good.

 
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