So only a few hours ago, Showtime’s Homeland ended their first season, and (despite a few crafty suspense sequences) it ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. [Spoilers: By contrast, Showtime’s only other credible drama, Dexter, finally kicked things into high gear with the predictable death of the Doomsday Killer but at the not-so-predictable-moment of when Dexter’s adopted sister Deb was walking right into the room and finally discovered her brother is a killer…and also right when she realized she had developed romantic feelings for him. Damn…and I was rooting for those two crazy love birds.]
While all other serialized dramas around it are going for game-changing finales with enormous revelations or main character deaths (Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, American Horror Story…hell even Once Upon a Time killed off somebody), Homeland opted for a Sons of Anarchy-esque cop out. No one that important died, no terror plot was either completely foiled or completely successful, and Claire Danes’s Carrie was right on the verge of figuring out everything when she underwent shock treatments for bi-polar disorder and (likely) will forget everything she just learned. So we end in a stalemate…an all too predictable one that seemed to come more from Homeland being renewed for a second season than where the narrative would really go. Frankly, it feels a little like cowardice. [By contrast, I respect HBO’s Boardwalk Empire for having the guts to follow their season’s conflict to its logical but still-sad conclusion with a lead character’s death.]
As for what kind-of show Homeland was before the finale, I have to say I’m a bit mixed on that as well. While other critics have practically done backflips with the show’s more nuanced portrayal of the war on terror, I’m not so sure I see it that way. While early episodes of Homeland seemed to care about questions of security vs. freedom and if giving up your civil rights is really worth being free, we quickly learned that was just a ruse to get us involved in a show that thinks ultra-security and no privacy is freedom. Homeland perpetuates the myth that Al-Qaeda is a powerful, ingenious threat, capable of organizing vast, shadowy conspiracies and that they can be prevented if only everyone is spied on more. It also isn’t a great message that anyone on the show that’s a Muslim is a terrorist and anyone who even understands the motives of the terrorists is also a terrorist.
While Homeland pretends to be a thoughtful drama with a lot of big ideas on its mind, you can feel the generic action show just underneath the surface, itching to get out. [The show’s creative team used to work on 24, and it shows in dozens of subtle ways and not so subtle ways.] On occassion that hidden danger really works (like the season finale’s excellently staged assassination attempt that was the real highlight of the episode) but too often it cheapens the realism the show strives for, and short changes the characters. Then there’s the problem of the show’s central character: Carrie.
She’s bi-polar and everyone more or less thinks she’s crazy for doggedly pursuing an Iraq POW-turned-closet terrorist. Now of course it turns out that he actually is working for Al Qaeda, and Carrie really isn’t crazy despite everyone looking at her like she’s from Mars and her generally having the composure of a wolverine. I really don’t think it’s such a great message that a single person who is paranoid to the point of unpopular and obviously crazy is really the only sane person in the room (I can imagine Homeland being a big hit with the CB radio crowd). Plus, Carrie is very annoying. I know that Homeland is supposed to be Claire Danes’s return to television and really showcase what a great actress she is but I find myself uninvolved with her character and I think that probably stems directly from some of the choices Danes makes as an actress as well as the fact the script has essentially asked her to play a female Jack Bauer as Carrie is unrealistically, single-mindedly devoted to pursuing terrorism.
I find Damian Lewis as that conflicted Iraq Vet/traitor vastly more interesting. His Marine sergeant is ambiguous even to himself, and every scene he’s in pulsates with a sense of dangerous mystery as he tries to juggle the roles of suburban family man, haunted POW, icy killer, and vulnerable, closeted Muslim. Only an actor of Lewis’s skill could let you inside the skin of a guy who keeps you guessing in every episode. While Carrie feels about as mysterious as a Burger King (everything she’s thinking is so viscerally on the surface) yet somehow not fully fleshed out, Lewis never keeps you too detached from his confusion.
Supporting Scene Stealers: As I’ve mentioned above, Damian Lewis’s Nicolas Brodie is a great character (he wound up as number 7 on my 2011 Best Characters List) and so in a way I’m glad we’ll be seeing him next year even if it does feel like a cheat. Also, Mandy Patinkin does excellent, subtle work as a seasoned spy mentor.