Thoughts On Season One Of Homeland

By Isaac Butler

This has been the year of infuriating-but-compulsive TV viewing in the Butler/Love household.  First there was Game Of Thrones, which alternated between beautifully acted, brilliantly rendered moments and sexposition set in cheaply built rooms that would look more at home in the BBC I, Claudius. And then came Showtime's Homeland.

Homeland, if you don't know by now, was a new espionage thriller about a secretly-manic-depressive CIA agent named Carrie (played by Claire Danes) who becomes convinced based on somewhat ambiguous information that a newly rescued POW and Marine Sniper named Brodie (played by Damien Lewis) was "turned" by an Al Qaeda muckety much named Abu Nazir during his eight year captivity.  The show follows both Carrie's attempts to thwart whatever Nazir may be up to (with the guidance of Mandy Patinkin's Saul Berenson, her mentor) and Brodie's attempts to reintegrate himself into his life with his wife (played by Firefly's Morena Baccarin) and his newfound celebrity.  

The show has a number of things going for it. As an extended metaphor for Bush-and-post-Bush America, having an actually unhinged CIA agent trying to bust a clearly-damaged veteran is rife with possibility. And Claire Danes is-- as My So Called Life fans know-- incredibly good at crying, which she has to do at least once an episode. And as Danes begins illegally spying on Brodie (this isn't a spoiler, it happens twenty minutes into the first episode) the show has some fun with the narrative possibilities of you watching a scene and watching someone watching a scene. 

The show's secret weapon, however, is definitely Mandy Patinkin who seems to have decided that this project is the one where he's going to prove he's one of the greatest actors alive.  I don't know exactly what happened, but something in this show has freed Patinkin from the competent shtick of his Criminal Minds work.  In every single episode Patinkin surprises with some little nuance, whether it's the smallest shift of facial expression or vocal pitch, the furrowing of a brow, or (most effective) his I'm-going-to-murder-you smile. It's terrifying. And given that every other actor in the show is working through pure (and generally effective) brute force, the delicacy of his performance is a welcome shift.

That said, the show is not without its problems, however. It's got racial representation problems out the wazoo. It's got shoe-horned in nudity that's even funnier and more pointless than Game of Thrones. Everyone seems to have forgotten until about the tenth episode that the CIA is legally forbidden from domestic spying. It takes place inside of a suburban-Washington that bears no resemblance to the real place (there aren't roadhouses filled with Neo-Nazis in Northern Virginia, it's the Democratic stronghold of the State and a tech corridor). 

And it's got a serious weak link in Damien Lewis. Given his good work in shows like Life and Band of Brothers, this is shocking, but Lewis seems to have decided that, as we're supposed to not be able to tell whether Brodie is telling the truth or not, he'll deliver most lines with all of the authenticity of a game show host. Particualrly embarrasing is a scene set in Gettysburg where Brodie explains to his son The True Meaning of Christmas Bravery with a monologue that makes you beg for an Aaron Sorkin rewrite.

And yet... and yet... the show is very, very compelling.  Given that it's a thriller, and it's goal is to make you watch until the next episode, and that most television thrillers are pretty bad at doing this without resorting to the cheapest kind of button pushing, this is no small feat.  The mystery at the core of Homeland-- which, it turns out, is not the mystery you think it is-- is genuinely interesting.  And the turns the show takes are surprising. The writers plant a lot of seeds early on in the show that pay off in unpredictable and thrilling ways (none of which, obviously, I'll spoil for you here).

In fact, I was completely on board and prepared to write this show a qualified-rave review, until its finale.  I won't say that much about it here, except to say that it's a textbook case of what happens when writers are unwilling to make difficult decisions about their material, or to follow through on the choices they've made. As a result, the show's final ninety minutes reloes heavily on deus ex machina to set up a second season where the premise of the first doesn't have to be too radically changed. Having seen shows like Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad and The Wire embrace the difficult positions their stories have put them in, the ending just feels like one giant cop out.

 Many reviewers have praised the finale, saying that Homeland did a great job of navigating the hurdles that having to continue the show for a second season presented it.  But if narrative choices are making you think about business realities, how good a job did the show really do?

Comments

[Simon Crowe]

(SPOILERS FOLLOW!) I'm curious to know what you think the writers were supposed to do after killing off Damian Lewis. I'm of the opinion that having to come up with an entirely new "Big Bad" (I hate that expression) in Season 2 would have sent the show down the road to becoming some kind of combination of 24 and Dexter, relying on increasingly baroque plot reversals and villains each season in an effort to stay fresh. As we learn more about Abu Nazir's network in America it's possible Sgt Brody may not be around for the life of the show, but we're far from done with him.

The problem with the "deus ex machina" is that it was unnecessary; Brody's decision not to set off the bomb finally came from the conversation with his daughter. That relationship turned into something very late in the season and holds great potential. I'm surprised you didn't call out what I thought was the show's biggest howler: having Carrie fall in love with Brody. This situation would have played as ludicrous if the gender roles had been reversed and really bogged down the middle of the season.

[Isaac]

Simon.

(all spoilers!)

I was willing to go ahead with the love angle for two reasons: First, I thought Carrie and Brodie getting involved lead to some of the most interesting writing on the show (The whole cabin episode is really strange and interesting) and second, it's clear to me that it's not love, but rather psychotic obsession. It's the same obsession that fuels the first half of the series.

This is my problem with the final episode... I agree with you about the big bads, that would've gotten very annoying. But the problem is, the plot they'd constructed up until that point pretty much demands it. They made certain decisions and then weren't willing to follow those decisions through to what they require. Had they made the decision to have Brodie decide before hand not to go through with it (for the same reasons he eventually decides not to go through with it in the show itself) I wouldn't've had a problem with it. Instead they get this having their cake and eating it too of not really having to do anything of consequence in the finale while goosing the nothing for maximum suspense value. Its cheap. I loved the last ten minutes, tho, even if I could predict everything that was going to happen in them.