I was at the library the other day and found the first season of this series. Way to go library.
The overall premise for this show is interesting as it’s like a modern day reworking of The Manchurian Candidate: where a POW soldier is found eight years later and has been converted to the enemy’s side so he can subtly weave back into the government/military and preform an act of terror.
First of all this series is seriously saved by the acting of Damian Lewis and Mandy Patinkin. They alone are the reason to watch this series and elevate it to another level. Every time they are on screen it’s something to watch. Second, I don’t quit know what to make of this show as a whole because it was all over the place emotionally and politically.
There was nothing really to ground myself to anyone in this series despite what the writers tried to do. The main character I had no sympathy for, so everything that happened to her in this show I never once felt sorry for her even though I got the feeling the writers were wanting me to feel something for her. In the end I felt nothing for her at all and the only thought that went through my mind was, “You get what you deserve. “ Everything that happened to her was because of her own doing. Her storyline throughout the series (considering she’s the main character) I was never fully invested in. I think the writers tried to cover up this “craziness” of hers, by her being bi-polar, which the more I started thinking about it I felt was a gimmick that allowed them to justify her actions at the beginning, even though she was mediated the whole time.
But Damian Lewis’ characters storyline had a lot more emotional weight to it in about every scene and they really fleshed out his character to a great deal where you understood why he was doing the things he did. Even though I don’t fully believe he could have been as brainwashed as the writers claim, but I’m willing to put a lot of that aside because at least they did a good job of explaining his past and the brainwashing process he went through. So I mean it was no surprise at where the writers were placing most of their content towards: it was feeling sympathy for the terrorist and I did. But I’m not stupid, I still could never remove from my mind that this guy was working for a terrorist despite everything the show did to justify what he was doing. He was working for a guy who killed innocent people on a frequent basis, while this same guy was mad at our government for doing the same thing. Apparently the ends always justify the means. It was the snake eating its own tail metaphor and no on in the series ever once brought this up, if they had it would have been a much better and more fleshed out story line.
This lack of information, in my opinion, is the one of two failing errors in this show. The other being the main character I talked about above. But despite all of this the show was very well paced and had me compelled to watch it until the last episode. The fact this show beat Game of Thrones or Justified to the drama series at the Emmy’s is a crime, because those two shows are much better written with a lot more believable characters. When crazy things happen in those two shows I’m never scratching my head in confusion because the plot stays true to the characters whereas in Homeland I never fully felt it did. Some things that happen in Homeland that seemed to happen for the sake of dramatic or soap opera reasons, instead of character driven reasons that made sense. But then again this is from the producers of 24 where about everything that happened in that show was based on for dramatic reasons and a lot of times made no plot sense what-so-ever. In the end it was still one hell of ride as is Homeland.
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