What's new

Homeland Season 2 (1 Viewer)

mattCR

Reviewer
HW Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
10,897
Location
Lee Summit, Missouri
Real Name
Matt
Originally Posted by Joe_H /t/323092/homeland-season-2/90#post_4011765
I didn't mind last week's episode so much, but I personally thought last night was the worst of the series with the exception of a few key scenes (the car thing, Brody crying over Nazir's death, etc.)
The actual killing of Nazir felt pretty anti-climactic too, but I wonder if that was intentional as to mirror Carrie's feeling now that they got this giant presence that she'd been tracking for something like a decade.
I have no idea where next week's episode is heading either, but in my case, that concerns me slightly. There don't seem to be enough threads still left for them to fill a 50 minute episode. While I've enjoyed this season more than many, I do hope something huge happens that will force a shakeup in the third season.

I'm silently hoping for them to move to nominate Brody for VP in place of the VP who just passed away
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
It's amazing the way this show tweaks the audience's allegiances. With Nazir out of the picture and all of his top in-country lieutenants in custody, ending the external threat to the American public, the game shifts to the surviving players on the American side. And on that front, I'm rooting for the mentally ill, unprofessional CIA cast out and the domestic terrorist that just murdered the vice president to take down the deputy director of the CIA, under whose leadership the number one Islamic terrorist cell has just been brought to justice.
Because as an audience member the macropolitics and my personal patriotism don't come into it. What I'm watching for is the human beings. And on the human being level, Walden was a total schmuck and Estes is a total schmuck. Carrie and Brody, for all their multitude of other flaws, operate from a place on integrity. They answer to themselves in a way that Walden and Estes never have.
The interesting pivot point is Quinn: over the course of the season, he's come to respect the hell out of what Carrie is uniquely able to accomplish. He admires her, and on certain things he trusts her judgment implicitly. He also knows that Estes is a self-serving d-bag who's assassinating Brody to cover his own ass. Quinn has no love of Brody, and presumably agrees with the mission's endgame even if he doesn't agree with the motivation. He was put in the position he's in because he gets it done. But unlike Estes, he's not a d-bag. Will he risk harming Carrie to take out Brody? Will he decide the whole thing's become too big of a fucking mess and go over Estes's head? A lot depends on what he decides.
mattCR said:
The scene in the car tonight was fantastic.   I admit, I kept waiting for a bullet to wiz in and kill his wife, and I'm glad that didn't happen that way.   But I really liked everything they said back and forth to each other; her feeling horrible that she just couldn't relate to him and didn't know how to handle her feelings, him feeling the same.. I thought that was a great bit of writing.
That was the stand out scene of the season for me. Because even though it was basically them acknowledging that their marriage is finished, it was also the first step toward them being okay again. Brody was ready to come clean to her. He wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already put together. And while at one point she would have been appalled, probably on some level still is appalled, there's been a lot of mileage between them since then. She knows that's a part of who Brody is, that he walked right up to the brink of that precipice. But she also knows that it's not all he is.
I think for the kids, seeing him break down in the hotel was the first time that it really clicked with them that this wasn't a joke and that he was going through something horrific, all over again.
The thing that sold me on that was Dana's reaction. Only a few scenes before, she basically told Brody that she wished he'd died over in Iraq and that Mike was a way better dad than he was. She just had so much (not unjustified) anger toward him, and it drowned out everything else. At that moment, he wasn't the man lying to her or the man who'd fucked up her life or the man who was cheating on her mom or the man who stopped her from doing the right thing. He was just her dad, a man broken by things so horrific that they're pretty much inconceivable to her. And for that moment, the anger was gone.
Part of why Dana got so much material this season, some would argue too much material, is because Morgan Saylor acts the crap out of every scene she's in. One of the best, if not the best teen actress working in television today. If both Dana and Brody survive the season finale, I hope we get lots of material between them next season. One of my favorite on-screen father/daughter relationships, because it's so fraught with all of the baggage.
I have NO idea where this goes from here.  None at all.  Best way to enter a finale.
Me neither. On any other show, this would have qualified as a season finale.
Joe_H said:
The actual killing of Nazir felt pretty anti-climactic too, but I wonder if that was intentional as to mirror Carrie's feeling now that they got this giant presence that she'd been tracking for something like a decade.
I thought it tracked pretty well with the real world terrorist captures. We build these guys up into myths and legends, and then it's anticlimactic when they go down like ordinary men. Finding Sadaam in a hole in the ground was anticlimactic. Finding Osama in a Kennedy-style compound in the middle of a populous Pakistani urban area instead of some sort of Bond villain style fortress hidden in the caves of Afghanistan was anticlimactic. That was a detail I thought was exactly right. I also appreciated that the trained professionals took Nazir out, and Carrie didn't singlehandedly execute him. I don't know why every other show/movie needs the protagonist to personally kill the villain.
mattCR said:
I'm silently hoping for them to move to nominate Brody for VP in place of the VP who just passed away
That would create a great WTF moment, but I think it's more interesting if Brody survives in the margins. But I don't know if they can resist the opportunity to put a terrorist in the White House. If they head in that direction, Estes and Quinn will have to be nuetralized. Saul, too, probably.
 

ScottH

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2001
Messages
3,410
Real Name
Scott Hanson
Originally Posted by mattCR /t/323092/homeland-season-2/90#post_4011627
The scene in the car tonight was fantastic. I admit, I kept waiting for a bullet to wiz in and kill his wife, and I'm glad that didn't happen that way. But I really liked everything they said back and forth to each other; her feeling horrible that she just couldn't relate to him and didn't know how to handle her feelings, him feeling the same.. I thought that was a great bit of writing.

That's what makes this show so frustrating. You have great writing like that, and then in the very same episode some terrible writing like Carrie going into the warehouse with a tact team, and suddenly the entire team except one guy disappears...and Nazir seemingly emerges from the actual walls to kill the one guy.
 

mattCR

Reviewer
HW Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
10,897
Location
Lee Summit, Missouri
Real Name
Matt
I imagine a lot of people are going to hate this season finale. But I loved it. I have no idea how Carrie will explain the time lag or where she dissapeared to.
 

Joe_H

Screenwriter
Joined
Jun 17, 2001
Messages
1,787
I loved it as well, despite being a little concerned during the first half, only to be proven entirely wrong during the second half.
In my mind, the larger plan here does help to explain away some of the leaps in logic, like the fact that all of a sudden Nazir wanted to kill the VP in secret which as Carrie explained in Season 1, just didn't fit his MO.
 

Patrick Sun

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 30, 1999
Messages
39,660
The lovey-dovey stuff was killing me in the first half, but boom! they flipped the table over, and Brodie is in deep doo-doo once more.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
Patrick Sun said:
The lovey-dovey stuff was killing me in the first half, but boom! they flipped the table over, and Brodie is in deep doo-doo once more.
What I love is the symmetry between the seasons; the first season ended with Brody ascendant and Carrie about as low as she could get. The second season ended with Carrie basically the second in command to the acting director of the CIA, while Brody's about as low as he could get. A bullet to the back of the head would have been so much easier for him.
I loved that conversation in the bedroom between Brody and Dana. On one hand, she now knows he was on the verge of being a suicide bomber. On the other hand, the very fact that he was honest about that then makes it implausible that he'd go and do this. I really hope she finds out he's alive early in the third season.
mattCR said:
I have no idea how Carrie will explain the time lag or where she dissapeared to.
Given the situation, it'd be easier to explain than you might think; despite eating up a significant chunk of screen time, we know that they got the fake IDs mere hours after the attack. If they were headed to the I-87 border crossing, it's under a nine hour drive from D.C.. If they were headed to the I-81 border crossing, it's under seven and a half hours. If they crossed near Buffalo, it's about seven hours even.
It's entirely possible that the scene where she walks in and joins Saul in the morning after the attack.
Michael_K_Sr said:
Great...now we have another nine months to guess who the mole was that moved the SUV.
The beauty of the plan is that there doesn't have to be a mole. They plant the explosives on his vehicle before he drives to the CIA, word gets passed to move his vehicle by any number of contacts involved with the ceremony. There has to be a government mole, but he or she doesn't necessarily have to be inside the CIA.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
Patrick Sun said:
The lovey-dovey stuff was killing me in the first half, but boom! they flipped the table over, and Brodie is in deep doo-doo once more.
What I love is the symmetry between the seasons; the first season ended with Brody ascendant and Carrie about as low as she could get. The second season ended with Carrie basically the second in command to the acting director of the CIA, while Brody's about as low as he could get. A bullet to the back of the head would have been so much easier for him.
I loved that conversation in the bedroom between Brody and Dana. On one hand, she now knows he was on the verge of being a suicide bomber. On the other hand, the very fact that he was honest about that then makes it implausible that he'd go and do this. I really hope she finds out he's alive early in the third season.
mattCR said:
I have no idea how Carrie will explain the time lag or where she dissapeared to.
Given the situation, it'd be easier to explain than you might think; despite eating up a significant chunk of screen time, we know that they got the fake IDs mere hours after the attack. If they were headed to the I-87 border crossing, it's under a nine hour drive from D.C.. If they were headed to the I-81 border crossing, it's under seven and a half hours. If they crossed near Buffalo, it's about seven hours even.
It's entirely possible that the scene where she walks in and joins Saul in the morning after the attack.
Michael_K_Sr said:
Great...now we have another nine months to guess who the mole was that moved the SUV.
The beauty of the plan is that there doesn't have to be a mole. They plant the explosives on his vehicle before he drives to the CIA, word gets passed to move his vehicle by any number of contacts involved with the ceremony. There has to be a government mole, but he or she doesn't necessarily have to be inside the CIA.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
Patrick Sun said:
The lovey-dovey stuff was killing me in the first half, but boom! they flipped the table over, and Brodie is in deep doo-doo once more.
What I love is the symmetry between the seasons; the first season ended with Brody ascendant and Carrie about as low as she could get. The second season ended with Carrie basically the second in command to the acting director of the CIA, while Brody's about as low as he could get. A bullet to the back of the head would have been so much easier for him.
I loved that conversation in the bedroom between Brody and Dana. On one hand, she now knows he was on the verge of being a suicide bomber. On the other hand, the very fact that he was honest about that then makes it implausible that he'd go and do this. I really hope she finds out he's alive early in the third season.
mattCR said:
I have no idea how Carrie will explain the time lag or where she dissapeared to.
Given the situation, it'd be easier to explain than you might think; despite eating up a significant chunk of screen time, we know that they got the fake IDs mere hours after the attack. If they were headed to the I-87 border crossing, it's under a nine hour drive from D.C.. If they were headed to the I-81 border crossing, it's under seven and a half hours. If they crossed near Buffalo, it's about seven hours even.
It's entirely possible that the scene where she walks in and joins Saul in the morning after the attack.
Michael_K_Sr said:
Great...now we have another nine months to guess who the mole was that moved the SUV.
The beauty of the plan is that there doesn't have to be a mole. They plant the explosives on his vehicle before he drives to the CIA, word gets passed to move his vehicle by any number of contacts involved with the ceremony. There has to be a government mole, but he or she doesn't necessarily have to be inside the CIA.
 

ScottH

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2001
Messages
3,410
Real Name
Scott Hanson
Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt /t/323092/homeland-season-2/90#post_4015032
What I love is the symmetry between the seasons; the first season ended with Brody ascendant and Carrie about as low as she could get. The second season ended with Carrie basically the second in command to the acting director of the CIA, while Brody's about as low as he could get.

I thought an even better symmetry is the fact that season 1 (and the beginning of season 2) was all about Carrie proving Brody was a terrorist. Now it seems she will be trying to prove he's not.

While it had it's problems, I really did enjoy the season. Probably much more than the first. Will be interesting to see where they take it.

So whatever happened to Quinn?
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
ScottH said:
I thought an even better symmetry is the fact that season 1 (and the beginning of season 2) was all about Carrie proving Brody was a terrorist.  Now it seems she will be trying to prove he's not.
Great point! Absolutely.
 

Lou Sytsma

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Nov 1, 1998
Messages
6,103
Real Name
Lou Sytsma
Enjoyed the character stuff this season but some of the execution to get there was pretty clunky. Especially when compared to the first season. As much as the show may want to continue with Carrie/Brody interaction - Brody as a character seems played out to me.
To bring him back him in the show would have to go even more 24 in its storylines.
 

ScottH

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2001
Messages
3,410
Real Name
Scott Hanson
Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt /t/323092/homeland-season-2/90#post_4015032
Given the situation, it'd be easier to explain than you might think; despite eating up a significant chunk of screen time, we know that they got the fake IDs mere hours after the attack. If they were headed to the I-87 border crossing, it's under a nine hour drive from D.C.. If they were headed to the I-81 border crossing, it's under seven and a half hours. If they crossed near Buffalo, it's about seven hours even.
It's entirely possible that the scene where she walks in and joins Saul in the morning after the attack.

So how is being gone for nearly 20 hours easy to explain?

Does anyone think there still lies the possibility that Brody DID set off the bomb or know it was gonna happen? Based on his reaction to his car being moved, I think it's unlikely, but he did seemingly "flip a switch" when the VP was dying.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
ScottH said:
So how is being gone for nearly 20 hours easy to explain?
"I was caught right at the edge of the blast, and it sent me reeling. I needed a night to collect myself and make sure I was up to tip-top shape and not going to relapse into mania before coming back in."
 

Paul D G

Screenwriter
Joined
Dec 25, 2001
Messages
1,914
Originally Posted by ScottH /t/323092/homeland-season-2/90#post_4015935
Does anyone think there still lies the possibility that Brody DID set off the bomb or know it was gonna happen? Based on his reaction to his car being moved, I think it's unlikely, but he did seemingly "flip a switch" when the VP was dying.
Anything is possible, of course, however, his goal was to go after the VP. He saw the VP as his enemy. When the VP was dying in front of him that rage came back. Everyone else, I would think, would be considered innocents.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,971
Location
Albany, NY
Season three trailer:


I'm probably in a very small minority on this one, but I'm glad the show's still following Brody's family even though he's on the run now. I think Morena Baccarin and Morgan Saylor put in incredible work on this show. That being said, I think that there's enough drama inherent in reacting to the widespread belief that your husband/father is the most wanted man since Osama Bin Laden. Jess and Dana's story this season should be solely about dealing with the fallout from the second season finale. Dana's storyline with the vice president's son was a major misfire last season. It just didn't connect to the rest of the show in a meaningful enough way. You could also tell that the showrunners second guessed themselves, that it was building towards something else before they got cold feet with the ultimate result that we got no worthwhile payoff from the time we invested in the build-up.
 

mattCR

Reviewer
HW Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
10,897
Location
Lee Summit, Missouri
Real Name
Matt
I think his family being part of the story is more important now that he's on the run.. and it makes it more interesting. I'm wondering if they are going to move toward some sort of redemptive angle on Brody.. ie, "he worked with us to try and stop.." or if he's just going down as the guy who killed the VP...
 

Josh Dial

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2000
Messages
4,504
Real Name
Josh Dial
After a tremendous first season, I thought the second season was merely "good." This trailer has given me heightened expectations for the third season--it looks very interesting.
 

Matt Hough

Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Messages
26,152
Location
Charlotte, NC
Real Name
Matt Hough
Overall, I thought the second season started like gangbusters for maybe 4-5 episodes and then went off the rails a bit. The ship was mostly righted by the end of the season, but those middle episodes had me rolling my eyes a bit.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,814
Messages
5,123,701
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top