showtime's Homeland =[a tolerable claire danes, mandy patinkin & that girl from firefly naked]

otm have crushed on him since Band of Brothers. Will be impressed if they managed to keep him on somehow.

i feel bad for dana already

is wife going to get naked again?

i dunno dude that's why they call it a 'cliffhanger'

turning any TV thread into "but is it as good as Breaking Bad?" is like bringing up Radiohead on random ILM threads imo, check your sacred cows at the door and focus on the subject at hand

yeah. so it is good as The Wire?

i can't imagine Brody ever getting written out of the show, at this point he's too essential

i don't know if i've repped for Life on ilx before. it was a really fun procedural, with some great, odd bits that were just a collision of noir and pop-zen. Funny and either fake-deep or fake-real-deep or real-fake-deep or something at times. so of course it got cancelled. Lewis was perfect for the title role also. does inscrutable really well.

yeah. so it is good as The Wire?

― Mansplains Drifter (Gukbe), Wednesday, October 24, 2012 9:22 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

The Guardian thinks so

Claire Danes is glowering at me through a subway window with a look in her eyes that makes me want to confess to crimes I never committed. That face – the surly set jaw and stony scowl – is all over New York's subway walls right now. And below it, in big letters, the words "IT HITS HOME" and "9/30". This is the date that Homeland, the drama threatening to trump The Wire as the crowning show of this television "golden age", returns with a second series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwEqA_x5qF8

Really liked Life. Lost it's way when lead actress got pregnant irl and they had to sideline her. Lewis ending Roman was a p sweet ending tho. Lewis was great

This is the date that Homeland, the drama threatening to trump The Wire as the crowning show of this television "golden age", returns with a second series.

No. Really, just...no.

literally no one else thinks that. Not even this show's biggest fans

Was that Guardian piece written by Sam Wollaston? Because he is terrible.

Hermione Hobby

I still think it's very overrated. It's decent but doesn't come near the top echelon of current TV drama.

^^^^ While a lot of the plot points are total eye-rollers, the least convincing thing about the show to me is Brody as ascendant political star. I know you guys dig this guy's acting, I don't get it. It's implausible to me that anyone this devoid of charisma would be fast-tracked like that. The guy walks around like a serial killer. Wld be way more interesting if he demonstrated some political chops or was somehow more likeable/charming.

Yeah, i totally agree with that. He's sort of reptilian (although that's possibly an advantage in politics)

Well, it's not like his political career is going to pan out anyway.

Cos Romney and Ryan absolutely drip with charisma.

Well, this was about the only way they could keep everything moving indefinitely. I worry that it will spiral out with alias-like levels of 'spy' twists tho.

Cos Romney and Ryan absolutely drip with charisma.

Come on you know what I mean. However bad at it, they do what politicians must: smile, slap backs, kiss babies, make dad jokes etc.

kids hitting the person is just ugh.

i don't know if i've repped for Life on ilx before. it was a really fun procedural, with some great, odd bits that were just a collision of noir and pop-zen. Funny and either fake-deep or fake-real-deep or real-fake-deep or something at times. so of course it got cancelled. Lewis was perfect for the title role also. does inscrutable really well.

― s.clover

this is accurate, omits to mention excessive car-driving soundtrack scenes tho.

and sarah shahi, sigh.

serious lolz at the knife in hand bit. like how was that a good idea at all ? and his "every good cop needs a bad cop" reply to saul was just as hilarious & stupid.

heh, i can't say it wasn't over the top but it was a pretty effective plot point in the interrogation

Yeah I didn't mind that, it was dumb but fun. Weird point for the show though I guess - original plot now all fully wrapped up and finished with, and the direction they're going next can't help but be completely different to everything that's gone before. Hopeful it'll still hold up but it could easily sharkjump too.

The tricky part will be that the obvious drama relates to whether the CIA can trust Brody. And yet, so far, we've always been shown Brody's perspective - so we'll always know whether they can or not...

I hope they dispatch with Brody, CIA Super Hero pretty soon and just take up a new villain/storyline.

oh and can i just say that i knew shit was gonna go south for dana as soon as she said "let's have some fun" jesus that was kinda brutal

lol yeah Quinn could have made his point without punching a hole through Brody's hand. Just... punching him would probably have been enough.

didn't really mind though, because the following interrogation scenes between Carrie and Brody were amazing and probably just bagged them both a couple more Emmys.

I'm done with the show as of last week. Loved it! Awesome! But it's a slow show and I feel like I've been shown all that I'm interested in seeing.

That's probably the right answer and this time next year I expect I'll be kicking myself for not doing the same.

i kinda feel like it could be ~more interesting~, in some ways, w/o the veil of the increasingly ludicrous suspense thing, because what was so good about the interrogation scenes was trying to assess our broader inability to separate different sides of ourselves, to recognise ourselves, to play other people or make choices without playing ourselves. & so there's so much potential pathos in carrie's honesty & then so much potential for her being triumphantly guileful if she's using it strategically. ditto brodes, obviously. but idk if a thriller that hooked the post-24 crowd is gonna be satisfied at cruising into introspective 1970s cinema territory.

This is the first time I've ever seen Homeland described as "slow."

I can't tell if you're being serious or not but I just picture the director ripping out pages from the teleplay to make room for "2-minute long shot of Claire Danes' face at end of episode"

Oh I love Claire Danes' face, I love the way it makes an X

totally serious! & i would totally love this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKTrR260rBI

tbh the last ep ended w/a through-the-doorway shot of danes silently refilling her glass, i don't think we are so far away from whole ten-minute-long between-ad-break segments tracking her expressions staring out of car windows, a long scene in which she attempts to buy groceries & is flustered, long, la rayon vert style overwhelmed-miscommunication sequences. her expressions are so great, & the convincing inextinguishable-hope vibe of the declarations she made to brodie were so heartbreaking. i just feel like if the rest of it rotates in us having to interrogate her capacity for delusion & self-delusion & deluding others, at the same time that we're thinking about brodie doing the same, then it would be into pretty rich cerebral thriller territory, if lamentably not quite in the chilly bergmanian drama zone

Oh no, I live for those shots! But it's a big investment, you know? My So-called Life did the exact same thing except with hilarious narration.

But yeah, if I run down the list of possible plot developments, there's nothing I can think of that will top what's already happened without being completely preposterous and unnecessary. I'm guessing that Dana or Jess will get kidnapped, maybe Jess or Mike will get killed, I'm guessing the boy will continue to look like a dog in every shot, I'm guessing that there'll be a lot of will he? or won't he? with Brody the CIA collaborator. My main hook w/this show was Carrie and her disorder and as far as I'm concerned they've covered an incredible breadth of character over the last seventeen hours, all the way from super-agent to sexy-weekender to suicide-attempt, I'm done! Loved it! Thanks! I'm gonna rewatch My So-called Life.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not

Dead serious! There may be a lot of pensive, character-centric scenes, but the show barrels through plot points like nobodoy's business. Most showrunners would have paced the developments we've already gotten over 3 or 4 seasons.

yeah i mean i really need to see that. i don't think i am watching homeland so analytically, really; i was half-propelled by its unfurling intrigue for the first season & kinda just tuned in for the second on the strength of its pervasive blog buzz (it still surprises me how warmly it's afforded an image of being super thoughtful on terrorism & post-24 tactics; it's in some good territory but it seldom seems like really incisive on this kinda thing, for me, more just it pays its dues with an occasional line about racial profiling).

i feel like they changed up the kids this season, relegating the boy to the puppiest child available, all sweater-vest & saucer-eyes, & upgrading dana, who is awesome & who yeah i guess there has to be some narrative significance to on account of the fairly close tracking in this series. i'm just curious, now, how it all rearranges itself, because most of what you expect to be continue points between episodes - that brodie will still be frustratingly elusive, that evidence will be hard to find, that brodie will be in government - seems to change up, & i can't work out where everything will settle.

xp Hmm. Re: pacing, I don't have a lot to compare it to, I don't really follow any other current shows except Game of Thrones and Mad Men. I have no problem with the show at all at all, and calling it slow was not meant to be a criticism, just an observation. Twenty-five consecutive minutes with Brody and the tailor, for example? A lot of character dev is packed into every shot and it's wonderful, but I guess...

...I guess I'm just not interested in any characters in the show except Brody and Carrie. Saul is cool but the Mira stuff was a snooze. I don't care about Dana-Finn-Xander. I don't care about Jess-Mike. I don't care about David Estes' divorce. Nor about the guy who was assigned to watch Carrie who later says "hey, good job!" Nor the new guy who suspiciously seems to have no backstory. I feel they're setting up for some big reveal (Estes is a double-agent!) but nothing compels me. The moment Brody announced to his wife that he's CIA now felt like the moment in Twin Peaks when the Bob transubstantiated and an owl flew at the camera. I hope I'm eating my words in a few months!

Huh just had a thought and checked, no, Lesli Linka Glatter didn't also direct that Twin Peaks episode, though that would've been interesting

Hey, they did have a four-minute, dialogue-less suicide attempt sequence a couple of episodes ago, which shockingly was only the second most notable thing that happened that episode.

Homeland's showrunners and writers are old network hands, and a lot of what they've accomplished here is pretty much the result of years spent writing serialised drama. Basically, they know what kind of action works for TV.

i do share your concerns about whether they've explored too much of Brody and Carrie's emotional dimensions for it to remain exciting in the future, though.

re: old TV hands, it was great seeing Henry Bromell credited for the teleplay on "Q&A"; it felt v much akin to the best of Rubicon.

This episode got broadcast last night in the UK. Post-knifing interrogation scene was awful. Assumed Dana and too-young-to-drive boy would crash, but hit-and-run will give her extra-poignant empathy for dad's badness and "is what we do really who we are?" existential questions. Boy-child Brodie kid appears to have hit puberty and grown a full foot between last episode and this.

Awful? I meant Awesome. Post-knifing interrogation scene was awesome.

last night's episode was pretty anticlimactic. felt like a filler episode in the series.

yeah agreed although the stuff at the tailor shop toward the end was fairly shocking. before that went down I was thinking not much had happened in the episode.

yeah that was kind of upsetting actually. Guessing Quinn made it, not so sure about Danny. :/

but apart from that, this show needed a breather anyway, after the past two or three episodes.

Quinn is the main dude? My impression was he was the only survivor. We'll see I guess. What the hell was in that box?