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

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?

I'm just assuming it has to be a dirty bomb or small nuke or something?

we need a uk thread and a us thread.

this one week time lapse is seriously fucking with me.

and spoiling the big reveals ..

i have avoided this thread so much, but after sundays uk airing i had to drop in, and now i feel like i have betrayed a friend as i know more than i should ..

that thing was prob a small nuke i'd guess yeah. once again i like how hilarious it is that just as quinn starts tapping at the fake wall elite commando team comes in and drops them. the time frame in which things happen on this show is a source of great fun to me. also it's a testament to the show's wtf-factor that an episode where several CIA/FBI operatives are killed by terrorist commando team, in gettysburg, to retrieve a nuke/dirty bomb is considered a slow episode, a breather.

pretty sure it was C4? at least that's what was used in the vest brody wore

well that would make sense... but would the terrorists really send in an elite team for "just" C4 ? also, come on there's no way the homeland screenwriters are missing out on a chance to introduce a nuke/dirty bomb to the story

also i been wondering -- since the episode where roya had brodie steal the target list from estes' office, she had ensured him he would be able to draw estes away, and it was galvez who interrupted & pulled estes' away, so i've had suspicions about galvez being a possible mole for a while. but now he's dead(?) so idk what to think.

also you don't need a coffin-sized lead-lined case for c4. You can carry c4 in your pocket without setting it off; you can hide that amount of c4 under your bed.

oh also can they please get rid of the whole mike and sidekick with crutches storyline ? it sucks and omg that dude jumps to conclusion so easily. mmm there's one bullet missing in the ammo box and walker was killed with a single bullet - boom! case solved ! didn't brody use the gun to shoot a deer, in front of mike, in a previous episode btw or am i misremembering ?

::backs cautiously away from Clay::

Ha, I think I have this information from watching... mythbusters.

i'm trying to imagine how mythbusters demonstrated this... did they put like 3kgs of c4 in a barrel and then had at it with a flamethrower and then admit with a disappointed look on their faces that this wasn't gonna explode that easily ?

didn't brody use the gun to shoot a deer

That's what I thought too. In fact I think he shot it twice. So the real mystery is where did he get the extra bullet? (Also I'm vaugue on this but I thought that Tom guy got shot with his own gun anyway)

Brody snatched Walker's gun away right before he shot him but Brody had his own gun too I think

oh also can they please get rid of the whole mike and sidekick with crutches storyline ? it sucks

otm

i'm trying to imagine how mythbusters demonstrated this... did they put like 3kgs of c4 in a barrel and then had at it with a flamethrower and then admit with a disappointed look on their faces that this wasn't gonna explode that easily ?

m/l this is exactly what happened.

this was the first week i didn't hate the Detective Mike storyline, just because it led to those scenes where it felt like Saul was bewildered that they were on the same TV show

so i've had suspicions about galvez being a possible mole for a while. but now he's dead(?) so idk what to think.

been sort of thinking this since late season 1, and this is the first time i've seen anybody else say it. really doubt it now

every time brody gets all indignant its like man try not being a terrorist next time u baby

btw this happened: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/homeland/1423664/

kinda lol to think ppl thought last week's ep was a breather before return to full on craziness... and then we get this episode.

also i guess galvez might still be a mole considering how many times they made sure to mention that he was not doing well in this ep. and quinn is hilarious, all "i'm checking myself out" and then getting naked in front of carrie and his lol reply to her surprise.

last week was nuts, terrorists assassinated that whole crew

why am I still watching this

a question i ask myself after every episode

btw this happened: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/homeland/1423664/

― Gukbe, Monday, November 12, 2012 2:20 AM (19 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha "oh no, she's having one of her jazz freakouts"

just gonna leave this here...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mde1urvjYO1qzsj1oo1_500.gif

snl parody was weaksauce imo - well, except for the "small mouth" bit

cut to mandy with his head in his hands listening to sexxin is utterly hilarious.

I just started watching this

omg so good! love it already, only 2 eps in

latest episode was really solid

look out caries got a wrench

that was awesome how they killed the vp and brody was so into it

i'm not really sure why & how pacemakers can be wirelessly accessed to kill the people using them but hey i'm all for creative deaths. question now is whether carrie's got more love for brody or the usa, will she rat him out ?

also, unless i missed something, wasn't brody's phone being monitored all the time by quinn & friends ? sure, they got abu nazir's team but they still don't have the main target and brody was their main link to nazir so it's pretty unfortunate that they stop surveillance just when abu nazir calls brody.

seemed like carrie already decided not to tell abt brody murking the vp otherwise she prob wouldve said something to saul on the phone

xp - <3 this show, but it really does reveal itself to be quite a house of cards plot-wise when you start to ask questions like that.

seems like itd be p easy to figure out brody did it w/some minimal investigating even if they werent monitoring his phone

the impt message to send out to saul was that abu nazir was hiding out in an abandoned factory (i'm hoping for a robocop style season finale) and maybe she felt trying to explain the pacemaker thing on the phone would have made her sound like (even more of) a crazy person. ok, yeah i guess she has sided with brody.
anyways yeah, questioning this show's plot points leads to a lot of eye rolling

feel like 'abu nazir is abt to assassinate the vice president right now' could be considered a p important message

yeah but vp was a dick so it's ok not to tell saul.

ha yeah i was kinda thinking everyones just whistling pretending they didnt see anything because that guys so awful