Divided on Homeland

By Adam Zimmerman and Marshall Weber

Why Homeland Still Works

Adam Zimmerman 

(Column contains SPOILERS, obviously)

Homeland Season 1 won over the hearts and eyeballs of Americans by focusing on the central questions: Where does Nicholas Brody's loyalty lie? and Can Carrie Matheson protect America?

These questions were answered when Brody strapped a bomb to his chest and nearly blew up a bunker containing the Vice President of the United States among other important people but Carrie was able to toe the line between batshit crazy and Wonder Woman and prevent the nation's biggest tragedy since 9/11.

Carrie was a hit with viewers because the premise of the show established her competency as a CIA agent while also exposing her vulnerability as a woman with Bipolar disorder. We bought into the notion that she could work in the CIA even with this condition (which, in the real world, is as likely as the CIA hiring Casey Anthony to run their daycare) because she had kept it hidden and because she was right about Brody.

And then Season 2 happened.

Coming off its upset Emmy win, the highly anticipated sophomore year of Homeland infuriated Americans by once again asking, Where does Brody's loyalty lie? and then pushed viewers away by asking Can Carrie protect America while also fucking Brody?

That's right, even though super agent Carrie had successfully outed Brody (after being forced to undergo shock therapy and then being more or less shunned by the CIA) viewers were supposed to believe that she was still in love with him?? I'm sorry, I know not all TV is supposed to be realistic, but this wasn't even remotely believable. And yet the writers let this mind numbing drama drag down the entire second season. It couldn't even pull an emotional reaction from viewers when Brody (or was he framed? Either way I don't care) blew up the CIA headquarters. And the season ends with Carrie helping Brody escape to Canada because she loves him (again, she is the one who outed him as a terrorist) and then returning to the CIA to help Saul pick up the pieces.

This is the corner the writers wrote themselves into. What's next? They'd managed to turn the viewers against the protagonist (Carrie) and refused to do the right thing and kill Brody because Damien Lewis won an Emmy for his portrayal of the ginger Marine/POW/Hero/Terrorist/Congressman/Terrorist/Double-Agent even though any use for him on the show had ceased to exist. How do you convince the viewers to root for Carrie again (after she let her lover pull off 'the next 9/11' and then helped him escape) and what do you do with Brody, Saul, Jessica and of course Dana?

My thoughts exactly Mandy

In the first 4 episodes of this 3rd season, viewers' wills were tested by an inordinate amount of batshit crazy Carrie and Dana being Dana. While the 3rd episode allowed us to catch up with Brody (now living in Venezuela as a heroin addicted prisoner in the world's largest slum) I doubt that I was alone in coming close to permanently changing the channel away from this show like most everyone did with Showtime series Weeds and Californication after their great starts also ran into brick walls in their latter seasons. The writers had failed to make me care about this lunatic CIA agent. I was on the side of the evil Senator, GET RID OF THE CIA! Saul was an impotent dinosaur, a grandpa trying to learn how to text. Dana's story line was filling up probably 20-35 minutes of each episode which is about 19-34 more minutes than it deserved and we had set to see a naked Jessica Brody despite her prominence in the season so far. 

I mean, come on. Even Jessica is pissed off by this - but to be fair, everything pisses Jessica off

Then the end of Episode 4, Game On, happened. 

It - Carrie being painted as the scapegoat, Saul throwing Carrie under the us, Carrie in the mental hospital, Carrie losing her mind in the mental hospital, Saul making sure Carrie stayed in the hospital, and Carrie accepting the deal offered by the Iranians - was all a plan. The last two great spies - Saul and Carrie - had launched into one final deep undercover operation to bring the man responsible for the attack on the CIA to justice. Saul didn't just want to go for the drone strike or the kill-6-high-level-targets-at-the-same-time to get his revenge, he wanted to go back to his Cold War roots and extract as much information and unearth as many conspirators as he could. 

Finally, I felt like I could root for Saul and Carrie again. No longer were they the bumbling, stumbling, old man past his prime or the horny, bipolar young girl who have no business protecting the, well, homeland. We were out of the mental hospital and back to playing Spy Games. 

Did this solve everything? No. Excuse the recent (and homer) analogy but I would liken it to Texas beating OU. Was it unexpected and awesome? Yes. But did it mean the season was saved and that Texas would win out? No. There is still a lot of work to do. Homeland is at its best (as are all TV shows, really) when it is able to raise the stakes for its central characters in a way that makes the audience deeply care about the outcome - how a show goes about achieving this is what can make it wonderfully unique or frustratingly unoriginal. The stakes can be personal (Carrie's battle with her bipolar disorder) or global (Saul, Carrie and Quinn protecting the country from Iran) but they need to make sense for the universe in which the show exists. I don't buy that a CIA agent who has trained and fought her way to the top would risk everything for another romp in the bed with a known terrorist. I do buy that spending a month or more in a mental institution, even as part of an elaborate plan, would totally mind-fuck even the most stable person. I don't buy that the President/Congress would let the man who was in charge of the operation that was supposed to prevent the bombing of the CIA, run the CIA - even as an interim director. I do buy that that man would still have the wherewithal to come up with a plan to avenge said attack.

So that is where we are now. Will Carrie and Saul (and the writers) be able to make up for their lackluster performances during season 2? Can they pull the CIA (and the show) from the depths of obscurity and restore its legitimacy? I'm not going to say that these questions are as intriguing as What will happen to Walter White and Jessie? or Who is Don Draper, really? or even Are the Starks ever going to catch a break? but in the Fall of 2013, they are all we have right now, and it could definitely be worse. 

What The Hell Happened To Homeland?

Dad? Dad? Dad...Dad?

Marshall Weber 

Just about two years ago, Homeland aired its first episode on Showtime. The ten year anniversary of 9/11 had just occurred, Occupy Wall Street was at its peak, people still cared about Foster The People, and Homeland was an exciting, brilliant new show that rivaled everything else on television.

How the world changes.

Since winning an Emmy for Best Drama series, Homeland has spiraled out of control and what was once a fantastic spy thriller that was Showtime’s marquee show, has since become a laughable, nearly procedural, drama that gets lost in the rest of Showtime’s mediocrity.

But the fall’s been coming since the middle of last season.

At one point, it seemed Homeland would save Showtime. Dexter was struggling, people were tired of seeing the same Hank Moody storyline every year on Californication, and one of their better shows, Shameless, seemed like an excuse to show Emmy Rossum naked every other week.

But then came Homeland. Like in any great alien invasion movie, Homeland came out of nowhere and took over the world. I mean who couldn’t like it? It was a more Americana Jason Bourne, as the All-American solider and National Hero had been brainwashed into becoming an Islamic Extremist.

The way it unfolded was perfect. Like a knife in the back that slowly twists, the relationship between CIA agent Carrie and Hero-turned-Terrorist, Brody (does he have a first name?) captivated us. Claire Danes and Damien Lewis had the most interesting dynamic on television. There was no argument that they were two absolutely superb actors on top of their game and were the key reasons why this show was so perfect in its first season.

Why am I like, on a rock? Dad? 

Homeland started its Second Season off wonderfully. But after the season premier, it became quite clear we were quickly losing this show. The show became too much of a far-fetched fantasy...just like when you’re flying a helicopter in Grand Theft Auto, it’s all smooth sailing until you graze a building and spin to your fiery death. 

Not to say implausible things make bad television…because they don’t. If anything, it’s the opposite. Can a man dying of cancer really become a meth kingpin and pull off the most elaborate train robbery of all time? Highly doubt it. I hate to shatter dreams, but Westeros doesn’t exist, the world isn’t run by zombies, life doesn’t exist in perfect noir segments like it does for Rayland Givens and even in the world of Don Draper and Peggy Olson are the boundaries of realism stretched. 

So how does Homeland make it look so bad?

One of Homeland’s main problems is its female characters. The brilliant acting of Claire Danes can’t even save what’s going on in the writer’s room. All the women on the show are now depicted as manic, lesser-beings that have trouble controlling their emotions. Granted, they’ve been through hell and back, but there’s nothing to balance it out. Even the new, CIA analyst, that we’ve just met is depicted as emotionally weak. 

Dad...Dad? This is my Instagram face, Dad. #DadsaFuckingTerrorist

It’s not to say mental illness or hardships shouldn’t be the focus of the show...but why make it all women? It feels like they're saying that only women can manic. Give Chris Brody the screen time we all know he deserves and let him cut his wrists and go to rehab. The writers have also tried, and failed greatly, to make Dana Brody the next Meadow Soprano, but with one hundred times the angst and 1/1000000000 the actor that Jamie-Lynn Sigler is.

I finally thought Homeland saved itself with a brilliant episode depicting Brody's life on the run in Central America. Love or hate Brody, he's infinitely more interesting than the rest of  his family, and may even be more interesting than Carrie. But whether you're on #TeamCarrie or #TeamBrody, there was no denying having him back was a breath of fresh air. The kind of fresh air that Walt smelled for the first time in the New Hampshire forrest after riding in the back of truck for two days...

but then, “the twist” from two weeks ago was in a word...terrible. 

Just like the majority of Newsroom episodes, it should’ve insulted your intelligence. I’m about 95% positive the writers wrote the first five or six episodes, realized it wasn’t working, and then added “the twist” at the last minute. As bad it was, it’s still the best thing the show’s done in almost two years…and that should tell you something. 

But this is just a piece of the much, much larger problem. And that is that we simply don't care anymore. Even if this "twist" was indeed plan, it would've been just as as ineffective. The culprits behind the bombing mean nothing to us, because we have nothing invested in them. 

The bottom line is that Showtime just isn’t a great network and Homeland is no longer a great show. It may not even be a good show. Still worth watching? Yes. But who knows for how long...

Showtime will never cancel Homeland, because it remains its bread and butter. But every season from here out, the network will basically be a doctor shocking back to life someone who’s in a vegetative state. 

For every year that a new Homeland season aires, Showtime will just be yelling “CLEAR”…