Not to come over all Vetarnias, but that could be your Western bias showing. Beirut and The Leb have changed a lot since the civil war. There's still some political instability, and the dick-waving between Hezbollah and Israel doesn't help, but I've read that Beirut is a popular destination for tourists from other parts of the Middle East and some Europeans are touring there as well. Then again, I know people who have holidayed in Syria and Iran and had nothing but good things to say about both experiences, which just goes to show that what you know about places and the reality of those places doesn't always gel.
Yeah, I know. I guess I should apologize for that, it was meant as a joke, but given the Western bias (which I certainly have) that was in no way obvious. I gave in to temptation. I haven't been to Lebanon myself, but I have friends who have been there on vacation. I hear it's nice. So the real real news is that the minister for tourism in Lebanon watches Homeland.
Sorry, I didn't realise you were joking! Damn this text-based medium, it's only good for being snarky and filthy SMS.
Wow, they're moving things along way faster than I'd anticipated. Brody being taken to some rendition site! Now that I think about it it makes sense; the sequence two weeks ago where we had his wacky hijinks was easily the worst part of the season so far; the writers are undoubtedly aware of that so they're moving on. My guess? They'll try and turn Brody at this point, use him to flush Abu Nasir out. Estes has to be suspecting that Brody was the one who tipped Nasir off in the second episode. Or am I misremembering; I thought Estes was in the room with the VP when they dragged Brody in to watch the strike...
I'm pretty sure Estes was with the other CIA guys running the operation during that scene, not in with the join chiefs or whoever that was supposed to be.
I think you're right jeffd--they'll try to turn Brodie into a double (triple?) agent to flush out the bigger threat--which is why they introduced his old buddies finally catching on to the whole thing, which means not only will they have to worry about Brodie becoming a triple (quadruple?) agent, but that his old buddies will out the whole thing with Brodie being a traitor in the first place.
Seriously. Where can they go with a third season? They're already blowing pass their premises in season 2. But I suppose we can see where this season takes us.
If they can keep the writing at the quality it's at at the moment then I think they might be able to get a third season out of the premise. The third season has to end with Abu Nazir getting whacked though.
Not to be a broken record, but this show is substantially composed of 24 people, so it's entirely possible that there is no plan beyond the next episode or two. Granted, at the rate it's going it'll be on the air forever, but 24 ran out of ways to have Jack Bauer get yanked back into the whole mess after a while too. I'm happy to be surprised, but I'm not going to expect much out of them for the time being. Alternately, if the show more successfully does what 24 attempted, it could easily jump to a new character (24 had a teensy problem with nobody in the universe ever liking any of the new guys they tried to bring in to Lebouf things). If I were this show, however, I wouldn't mention the ECT so much, because that just reminds me that Carrie's supposed to have forgotten....hell, something. I mean, the finale played that up as some sort of a big deal. I'd also like a little bit of an indication how the Dana B-plot from the episode is supposed to ultimately come into play, as right now she's effectively in a different show. On the plus side, I quite enjoyed Lewis's chance to switch gears in that last scene to go from lying horny dumbass to supercriminal. Allegedly (based on the one person I have heard from who saw it in advance because stupid critics get their stupid screeners stupid early) next week's episode is apparently the best.
That Brody knew Nazir's kid's name, which meant he lied about not knowing him. I'm going to go out there and say that doesn't matter now!
I wonder if the show will provide any contras - explicit or otherwise - between Brody's eight years as a captive and his experience as a detainee.
What, no comments on that last episode? I think during that whole interrogation scene I wanted him to say yes more than Carrie did. Jesus Christ that was intense.
Fucking Jericho broke me. Brody's sitting there, trying to have a heartbreaking moment in which his life is crashing down around him, and all I can think is how convenient it is that all those CIA laptops are hardened against the pulse. I'm not supposed to be laughing at that. That's on you, Jericho. I must admit, though, that I don't understand the point of Abu Nazir targeting the United States in direct response to Israel attacking Iran's nuclear installations. You can be sure that America wouldn't have any obvious fingerprints on that act, and you've got a whole nation of people that are closer and more directly related to your beef, and, moreover, it would take longer than immediately to put something in motion, I would assume. I think it would have been better not to float that as some sort of inciting cause, particularly when you could have just had a scene in the fashion of that one season of 24 (I don't remember which) where some rendered guy tells a completely different CIA group that there's an imminent attack on America planned. Also, "He gave you a boy to love" quite nearly derailed that scene for me. It sucks being terrible. I would have gone for "He gave you something to love" myself just to make sure to give a wide berth. It was, indeed, an excellent episode, though. I'm not 100% sold on the direction the Dana subplot is going (though I think that the only other option was to have her get Kim Bauered, which nobody wants) and how it will ever manage to link up with the central story, but I'll give it some rope, and this was clearly the show's Emmy submission episode, and maybe also Damien Lewis's (and, given Emmy patterns, they've got a pretty strong shot next year if Breaking Bad doesn't completely knock it out of the park). Stupid observation of the night: I'm surprised that somebody who goes through as much wine as she does doesn't have a cork. I mean, I don't drink that much of the stuff and I've got an ugly ass rooster with a chain on it just because it's that much easier to get into the bottle and out.
I expected some sort of booby trap, not an episode of 24 to break out on premium cable. The show feels like it's starting to move away from being pushed forward by the characters to being pushed forward by plot conveniences. Hard to believe not a single person standing around that CIA project room thought to ask Brody where the safe house he was driving the tailor to was. Or that Quinn didn't think it important to watch the street. You mean beyond all that US made hardware being used in the act?
Had the exact same thought re: booby trap. You're examining a place where a terrorist bomb maker worked and you didn't involve a bomb squad? I'd be a lot more okay with characters being pushed forward by plot conveniences if they'd stick to the 'main' plot. Show, it's hard for me to get invested in the dating life of a 16 year old girl when you're showing me hit teams with automatic weapons gunning down CIA agents. I'm at the point where I almost just want to fast forward through the bits about Detective Backdoor Man and his wacky veteran sidekick. We just had all of this exposed and dealt with by the characters we actually care about. Carrie also seems a hell of a lot less competent this season. I assume it's her arc because of breakdown/treatment/whatever, but I'm definitely less fond of hysterical Carrie than I am damaged-but-functional Carrie.
The whole investigating sidekicks thing is only there because the main tension in the show--will people find out Brody is a terrorist--is gone. So they're trying to still string that along by now saying will the people he LOVE/the public find out that Brody is a terrorist since the government now knows. Or some of the government. I get that there's a mole but in how many ways can not telling more people about Brody come back and bite them in the ass? Except that doesn't work nearly as well, so it's kind of painful. I get why they're setting it up, but come on. Personally I'd like to know why Brody's wife doesn't just fucking divorce him. I don't really get her angle on making it work. What's the point? While I appreciate them showing her having a hard time with it, overall it's just made me think she's an incredibly weak female character and there's enough of that on this show. I love Carrie, but they're going to fall into the overshadowing the smart with the IN LUV thing this season AGAIN. I can deal with her being crazy. It's really well done. But fucking googly eyes? A female lead doesn't have to be in love with the male lead, god dammit!
I think it's a combination of trying to make things work for the kids, still caring enough about Brody that she doesn't want to ruin his chances of being VP and also the possibility that she could one day be the first lady. She doesn't know he's a terrorist, just that he's been lying about something so it's not that much of a stretch.
And he cheated on her. With a crazy woman that showed up at their house and "assaulted" their daughter. And he's been disappearing and freaking the kids out. And he killed that deer in front of everyone. And he's a secret Muslim. And all of this leads me to think that if her main goal is to keep her family together for the kids, she should get them the HELL away from Brody as fast as possible--regardless of terrorist status.
This has really gone off the rails now I think. Neither of the two episodes focusing on the tailor; the one were Brody drove him around or this one with the tailor shop, made much sense, and they are clearly central to the main plot. This is a pity, the season had a strong opening. I'll probably keep watching anyway, and I haven't lost all hope yet. Danes, Lewis and Patinkin are great. And the last episode, while stupid, was still an exhilarating ride. Maybe this can become a decent season of 24 at least?
It hasn't quite gone off the rails for me but it's walking a fine line. The premise was a bit nutty to begin with and they've upped the nuttiness as time has gone by. But I think they've also been fairly good about exploring the consequences of each revelation and the things that characters do in ways that are reasonable and not hand-wavy. I think my main problem is that it's not always clear to me what people are thinking - Carrie, for example: is she still in love with Brody or is she trying to play him, as he clearly thought in the car?
I assume both. She is crazy, which is one of the things I really like about the show, and she probably wonders the same thing herself.
I'll say this again, since apparently people haven't noticed - this show is brought to you by Howard Gordon, otherwise known as the guy who made 24. You really need to go into the show with the expectation that it's going to be somewhat like that other one, because there are a lot of the same minds at work here. That said, the terrorist swat thing was a little bit much, if only because the door that they came through was the one on the street, wasn't it? That's kind of the sort of thing that you notice in the middle of downtown Gettysburg. I'm also not liking how long it's taking the Dana story to even enter the same universe as the rest of the show. I assume that it will, and I believe it will start next week, but it's still doing so pretty slowly for a program that's got to finish up most of its story points for the season in twelve episodes. On the plus side, I think that Terrorist SWAT was a decent way to get the mole back into the mix, if the show decides to go that way (which it should). As for.....I think her name is Jessica, right, but I can't not think of her as Inara...I suspect that one of the primary reasons she's still with Brody at this point is a combination of not wanting to be pilloried in the press for leaving her superhero husband and a genuine enthusiasm for the prospoect of being some sort of super high profile political wife.
I think that that was the point though, otherwise the baddies would have just worn their civvies. It wasn't a secret that the CIA (or some government agency) was investigating the tailor's shop - there were a handful of black cars and SUVs parked outside and some of the agents may have been wearing CIA so it's not like it was a clandestine operation. Also, Quinn requested a SWAT time as back up.
That's cute enough that I looked it up, but it's more accurate to say "a guy who worked on 24." The guy who invented 24 is called Joel Surnow, and he's not involved in Homeland. Additionally, Howard Gordon has produced a ton of shows; should we expect that Homeland will be like Awake? What about Angel or Buffy? The X-Files, maybe? The Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast? And I'm saying this as someone who isn't all bitchy about Homeland and who doesn't think it's anything at all like 24.
Thanks. I didn't think of that angle. It is possible that they should have done some clever editing to make it easier for the stupid viewers (like me) to see that. And as I said above; I haven't lost all hope. But, unlike last season, I think there is too much going on only because it is necessary for the plot, or to give some of the characters something to do, instead of because it actually makes sense in the world of the show.
I'm still watching. I am still entertained. The acting is mostly great, as is much of the photography and editing. I found the driving through the dark in the last episode really tense. I still think some of the central themes of the show, like why do we make the choices we do, are interesting, also in the context of the show. But I don't have much hope of the show being really good again. The show seemed real in the first season, but this season there have been too many plot advancing coincidences, and too many peripheral plots that seem bolted on. I get that Dana is a sort of mirror for Brody, but that part of the story seems forced to me. Things also seem to move too fast, which is what reminds me of 24; Brody is a contender for the VP post too quickly, Quinn is up and running a very short time after being shot, and Carrie is given too much leeway for a recently reinstated insane agent. I did not find the ending of the last episode convincing either: Is he personally in the US for any reason other than driving up the tension on the show? I don't think so. Will I keep watching? Yes.
It is faintly ridiculous when they lose Brody because they neglected to put a tracking device on his car. Even Walter White knows better than that.
Yeah, I mostly agree with that. I'm not sure how I feel about the Dana stuff - I'm sort of reserving judgement until I see where it goes and whether or not it dovetails with the main arc. As for the rest - season one was excellent and I never really expected season two to live up to that high standard, so I'm not too disappointed that it hasn't been as good. Note that I said as good, because I still think this is better than a lot of stuff that's out there. Oh, re: Carrie getting a lot of leeway - I think a lot of that is down to Saul arguing on her behalf and running interference for her.
This is how I feel. The first season was one of the best shows ever, and part of the reason for that is that it actually answered the questions it posed and resolved itself in a satisfying way. Given that, it's just not possible for the second season to be an extension of those themes, so yes it has become somewhat less interesting and a good deal less unique. It's still pretty exciting and well-executed though, I think, and it's still one of the best shows running even if it isn't blowing my mind with how awesome it is every week. On the subject of Dana, it has dovetailed with the main plot. It's the primary driver of Brody's family coming apart as a result of him working against Nazir just as surely as if he were still working with him. I admit that I was a little worried that she might be a Kim Bauer, but that hasn't happened imo. There's also that she's right when she says that Brody is their only lead, and she's their only real in with Brody. As much as she's gone against protocol and screwed things up she's also the only one who's accomplished anything re: Brody or Nazir in either season of this show.
Is Carrie officially reinstated? My impression is that the Brody op is an off the books thing and that she's basically a contractor, like those two guys in the van whose name I can never remember. As far as this season goes: I'm still watching, I enjoy it, but it's not as good as it was. One thing I will say it has over 24 is that the side plots (notably the Dana stuff) at least feeds back into the main plot. In 24 the B plots (especially when they involved Kim) were just random crap put in to waste time because Jack Bauer had to drive for forty minutes. At least here the Dana stuff is both thematically relevant and is feeding back into the Brody as double (or is it triple) agent plot.
Yeah, I agree with jeffd. I was under the impression this whole thing is totally under cover and only a small group knows what's going on--and that the majority of people definitely don't know Carrie is working for them. Saul made it very clear she'd never get reinstated, so she's got to just be on a contractor basis. And the Dana stuff I feel has a totally different side: bringing Mike back in. Mike did the right thing, Brody never did. We're going to see a big fatherhood issue come up, cause while Dana loves her dad, Mike has been more of a father to her her whole life. Especially now.
Gideon and Max - I wish they got more screentime, because they're great. Carrie hasn't been reinstated, she's effectively a contractor working off the books. The Dana stuff isn't terrible either and it's sort of cool that both Brodys are experiencing (or have experienced) the duplicitousness of Waldron and his family firsthand. Good points about the Dana sub-plot feeding into Brody's increasing instability.
