RIP Homeland: 2011-2013
Spoilers about this dumb ass show after the jump. So if you’re not caught up and wanna torture yourself with the last episodes of this season – which should have just been the final episodes of the series – stop reading here
The Gold Standard for “shows that were once good but started to completely suck but you just couldn’t quit them” is obviously Dexter. Strictly because it was 8 goddam seasons long. But right behind that is Homeland. A show that pretty much everyone unanimously agrees should have been a 1 season mini-series ending with Brody’s suicide bomb. Instead season 2 was 13 episodes of impossible love stories and uninteresting family drama. And season 3 was just a sloppy piece of shit completely made up on the fly. Halfway through I gave up on it, but I watched the final 5 or 6 episodes just because. Because Sunday nights are just reserved for Showtime and HBO shows at this point and I’m a loyal guy, but that was really the only reason. Now that Brody is dead and Saul is gone and Carrie is going to be a mom the show is over. Whatever happens in season 4 will basically just be an entirely different series. At this point, a Quinn spin off would be more appealing to me. Maybe people like Carrie and Saul are bit characters making cameo appearances and its basically an entire new show with season 3’s only interesting character. That would be more appealing then yet another season that feels like writers were making shit up as they went along.
That was the problem with season 3. It was all made the fuck up. The first like 4 episodes of Carrie freaking out in the hospital was all wiped away and made completely confusing and irrelevant when it turned out Saul and Carrie had some super double secret behind the scenes operation. I remember tons of Stoolies telling me “Homeland is back” after the moment, when I couldn’t disagree more. That just felt like something pulled out of the writer’s asses which basically made the last 4 weeks I spent watching and getting engrossed in this Carrie-is-all-alone-in-the-hospital story a complete waste of time. After that, the show took a sharp turn to snoozeville with all the Dana episodes. Like an elephant dart to the public’s face. That was basically the second third of the season, with Brody living in some fucking abandoned sky scraper in South America for like 3 episodes literally doing nothing. And the final third of the season was probably the most unrealistic, haphazard storyline I’ve ever seen. Especially for a show that during season 1 seemed so realistic and plausible and made logical sense. The Javadi Storyline at least brought us back to CIA action but it was so absurd I just spent half the time laughing to myself and rolling my eyes. Culminating with Brody and Carrie both running around Tehran assassinating people and escaping to safety like it ain’t no thang. Bro I saw Argo. Those white people couldn’t even step outside for a split second without almost dying. Carrie running around the park while Brody sneaks into the palace and quietly murders some dude and they both drive off to the safe house made me wanna throw the remote at the TV.
The only scene I can appreciate from this last debacle of a season was Brody’s death. It was dark, cold, slow, and painful. No dramatic last words. No unrealistic goodbye. No hugs and kisses. Spit to the face and hung by a crane. The whole time I watched that hanging I had season 1 in mind, when I thought Damian Lewis as Nick Brody was one of the best TV characters ever. That was the only reason I thought it was a poignant scene. Because to be perfectly honest the death of the season 2 and season 3 Brody – when he was even in the show – just didn’t really matter to me. It should have been a suicide vest, instead we got a public hanging in the Middle East. The death scene itself was well done, it just came 2 seasons too late.
At the end of the day, Homeland is gonna go down in history as the posterchild for a series that was ruined when producers and execs demanded they stretch more episodes out of a story arc that the writers clearly meant to end much much earlier. They got 26 more episodes out of the Brody-Carrie storyline, but effectively ruined the show at the same time. Oh well. We’ll all always have Season 1. They can never take that away from us.