steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Although I like Saul, I find the way they portrayed him as the acting chief of the CIA somewhat implausible
Homeland Season 3 Official Trailer
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Although I like Saul, I find the way they portrayed him as the acting chief of the CIA somewhat implausible
I am getting more and more tired by Carrie's actions this season. I don't know who would put up with her in any business let alone the CIA or military.
Actually, last night's episode was killer. More action (which I usually don't seek, i'm tired of the same well-worn cliches in action movies); the tension between what was happening with the team on the ground in the Middle East and the drama in the 'drone room' back in DC was great.
Javadi is a very loose canon. Killing his ex-wife and sister in law, and now, shooting a SEAL just like that. And Saul is banking on him for his plan on Tehran.
I figured he did the SEAL guy to avoid any 'loose ends' in connection with Brody's mission; whether Saul actually told him that the head guy of Iran's intelligence agency was gonna get whacked, or Javadi just figured it out for himself, I saw that as a calculated move. As to killing his ex-wife, I gathered that was like an 'honor' thing for him.
Fantastic ending on Episode 11. Setting up the last episode of the season. Now it's really thrilling! This is what Homeland is all about.
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Last nights episode created tension similar to some in season 1. I wonder what surprises are in store for the season finale and if it sets us up for Season 4.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
All I can say about the season finale is "meh"
A shocker but an absolute disappointment.
Saul is gone, Brody is gone all the episodes with Dana were for nothing
The show is on it ways out. They've run out of ideas and good writers
A shocker but an absolute disappointment.
Saul is gone, Brody is gone all the episodes with Dana were for nothing
The show is on it ways out. They've run out of ideas and good writers
I feel the same way, Steve. Maybe even worse. This is one ending of a season that cuts you out in the middle of the hour. I never would have guessed Carrie and Brody would end this way. Such a downer of a feeling watching Carrie watch Brody go out like that. So Saul got screwed back for the interest of national security. I now begin to understand why the early episodes where about Carrie in a mental institute and Dana and his boyfriend. Without those dragging episodes, the series would have been over mid-season. And agreed, there is nothing to write about for a next season. Frankly, I liked the ending of Dexter a lot more than this.
The finale was just as disappointing as the entire season. Out of 12 episodes there was about 2.5 hours of good drama.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
It's off my list for next year.
FWIW, Homeland was completely shut out on all nominations from the Golden Globes.
It absolutely sucked the ending to last night and then to bore us with another 15 minutes of "Four months later" as they try to explain everything
FWIW, Homeland was completely shut out on all nominations from the Golden Globes.
It absolutely sucked the ending to last night and then to bore us with another 15 minutes of "Four months later" as they try to explain everything
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
'Homeland' Finale: A Hung Jury
By Kimberly Potts | Yahoo TV
SPOILER ALERT: This recap contains storyline and character spoilers.
It was an ending that slowly built across the season, and the “Homeland” season finale proved so satisfying, that it could have, maybe should have, been the series finale.
A season full of painful personal sacrifices on the parts of Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody ended with what they both had been fighting for, sort of: his redemption. At the CIA’s insistence, Brody successfully murdered Iranian intelligence chief Akbari, leading to the installation of Javadi, the American-turned Iranian agent, as the new head of the Revolutionary Guard.
Brody managed to escape Akbari’s office and meet up with Carrie, and a quick call to Saul ended with him agreeing to send an extraction team to lift the lovers out of an Iranian safehouse and return them back home to… what? What kind of life could the two have together with his past?
It didn’t matter. Dar Adal and Senator Lockhart overruled Saul and tipped off Javadi to Brody’s whereabouts. And with the backing of everyone but Saul — including the President — Javadi publicly hung Brody, thus strengthening his position as the new Iranian chief, and the CIA’s power to negotiate with the country.
Carrie made a last-ditch call to Saul to try to save Brody, who had accepted his fate, and in a goodbye call, asked Carrie not to be at the hanging. She refused to honor the request, and climbed a fence to scream out the name of her baby’s father as a crowd cheered and he was lifted off the ground to his death.
Flash-forward four months: Lockhart is the new CIA director, Dar Adal continues to work with him, Saul and Mira are still very much together and are moving to New York for his new, high-paying private sector job, and Carrie accepts Lockhart’s offer to move to Istanbul and become the new CIA station chief. She’s also at least eight months pregnant, and is panicking about her abilities to be a good mother. Her father and sister are trying to support her and her impending mommyhood, as is co-worker/pal Quinn, but Carrie considers giving the baby up for adoption, or to her father.
In “a stunning move,” as Mira reads the story from a newspaper, Iranian diplomats have agreed to give the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to investigate the country’s nuclear sites in exchange for the dropping of economic sanctions against Iran. Saul’s big plan, his plotted installation of Javadi as the new Iranian security honcho, worked.
Meanwhile, Carrie has two requests of Lockhart: that she be allowed to choose her own staff in Istanbul, which he mostly agrees to; and that Brody be given a star on the memorial wall in the CIA offices. He acknowledges Brody’s key role in the major new deal with Iran, but tells Carrie, “No one’s judging him. I’m just not memorializing him on the walls of this building. That’s where I draw the line.”
Life moves on for everyone, except Brody, who made the biggest sacrifice of all, and is honored with nothing more than a star on the wall… drawn on, secretly, by Carrie with a marker.
Great end to the season… but should the series have ended with this episode? “Homeland” has been renewed for a fourth season, but should “The Star” have ended not just Brody’s arc, but the entire show? Do we want to spend more (prime)time with these characters, or should “Homeland” leave on a high note?
"Homeland" Intel:
* While we’re pretty firmly on Team End It Now, we are curious what decision Carrie will make about her baby. We’re also curious about how she would have felt about raising the child if she had been able to get Lockhart to agree to a public acknowledgement of Brody’s redemptive act.
Is her new panic about having the baby not just a result of Brody’s death, but of the knowledge of how Dana’s life has been so adversely affected by Brody’s deeds? In hindsight, and despite how annoying many viewers found Dana to be, the Dana angst from earlier in the season resonates more now, as Carrie faces raising a child not just while dealing with her own issues, but the many issues left behind with Brody’s reputation.
* After the incredibly tense opening scene in which Brody narrowly escapes from Akbari’s office, the second best, more powerful, scene of the episode is Javadi’s speech to Carrie, explaining to her why he must make sure Brody is publicly punished for killing Akbari.
“The plan is a success. You and Brody pulled it off… more so if he dies. I asked myself over and over, from the moment I knew what you’ve gone through, the hardships… to lure me in. ‘Why? Why would anyone do that to themselves?’ Why would you? And I think I know now,” Javadi says. “It was always about him. That’s what you care about. Maybe the only thing. Who Brody is… that’s for Allah to know. But what he did, there can be no debate. It was astonishing and undeniable, and what you wanted, which was for everyone to see in him what you see... that has happened. Everyone sees him through your eyes now. Saul, Lockhart, the President of the United States, even me.”
* The hanging scene: brutal, and all the more so because it wasn’t the usual, dropped-from-the-gallows kind of hanging. Brody was hung, from a crane, but his cause of death is probably more accurately described as strangulation. And because we know this is going to spark a debate, this, from Brody’s safehouse conversation with Carrie:
“There was this man in Caracas… he was a doctor. He called me a cockroach, unkillable, bringing misery wherever I go,” Brody said.
“Harsh,” replied Carrie.
“But accurate,” said Brody.
Let the theories begin: Is this a hint that, somehow, Brody may not really be dead? Carrie watched him be lifted up by that crane, she saw his body twitch, and she saw him seemingly die. But did he? We got no specific details on his body, or a burial.
Could he be a part of some bigger plan: one that will involve Saul, Javadi, and Carrie in Season 4? Remember this season’s seventh episode, “Gerontion,” a reference to a T.S. Eliot poem that contains the phrase “wilderness of mirrors,” a description of double-agent spy activities that have been a hallmark of the series, especially in Season 3...
Sounds like a whole mess of bad writing to us, but is it at all possible that Brody survived that hanging, and will make a daytime soap opera-ish return from the dead in Season 4?
Nah, we don’t think so, either.
By Kimberly Potts | Yahoo TV
SPOILER ALERT: This recap contains storyline and character spoilers.
It was an ending that slowly built across the season, and the “Homeland” season finale proved so satisfying, that it could have, maybe should have, been the series finale.
A season full of painful personal sacrifices on the parts of Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody ended with what they both had been fighting for, sort of: his redemption. At the CIA’s insistence, Brody successfully murdered Iranian intelligence chief Akbari, leading to the installation of Javadi, the American-turned Iranian agent, as the new head of the Revolutionary Guard.
Brody managed to escape Akbari’s office and meet up with Carrie, and a quick call to Saul ended with him agreeing to send an extraction team to lift the lovers out of an Iranian safehouse and return them back home to… what? What kind of life could the two have together with his past?
It didn’t matter. Dar Adal and Senator Lockhart overruled Saul and tipped off Javadi to Brody’s whereabouts. And with the backing of everyone but Saul — including the President — Javadi publicly hung Brody, thus strengthening his position as the new Iranian chief, and the CIA’s power to negotiate with the country.
Carrie made a last-ditch call to Saul to try to save Brody, who had accepted his fate, and in a goodbye call, asked Carrie not to be at the hanging. She refused to honor the request, and climbed a fence to scream out the name of her baby’s father as a crowd cheered and he was lifted off the ground to his death.
Flash-forward four months: Lockhart is the new CIA director, Dar Adal continues to work with him, Saul and Mira are still very much together and are moving to New York for his new, high-paying private sector job, and Carrie accepts Lockhart’s offer to move to Istanbul and become the new CIA station chief. She’s also at least eight months pregnant, and is panicking about her abilities to be a good mother. Her father and sister are trying to support her and her impending mommyhood, as is co-worker/pal Quinn, but Carrie considers giving the baby up for adoption, or to her father.
In “a stunning move,” as Mira reads the story from a newspaper, Iranian diplomats have agreed to give the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to investigate the country’s nuclear sites in exchange for the dropping of economic sanctions against Iran. Saul’s big plan, his plotted installation of Javadi as the new Iranian security honcho, worked.
Meanwhile, Carrie has two requests of Lockhart: that she be allowed to choose her own staff in Istanbul, which he mostly agrees to; and that Brody be given a star on the memorial wall in the CIA offices. He acknowledges Brody’s key role in the major new deal with Iran, but tells Carrie, “No one’s judging him. I’m just not memorializing him on the walls of this building. That’s where I draw the line.”
Life moves on for everyone, except Brody, who made the biggest sacrifice of all, and is honored with nothing more than a star on the wall… drawn on, secretly, by Carrie with a marker.
Great end to the season… but should the series have ended with this episode? “Homeland” has been renewed for a fourth season, but should “The Star” have ended not just Brody’s arc, but the entire show? Do we want to spend more (prime)time with these characters, or should “Homeland” leave on a high note?
"Homeland" Intel:
* While we’re pretty firmly on Team End It Now, we are curious what decision Carrie will make about her baby. We’re also curious about how she would have felt about raising the child if she had been able to get Lockhart to agree to a public acknowledgement of Brody’s redemptive act.
Is her new panic about having the baby not just a result of Brody’s death, but of the knowledge of how Dana’s life has been so adversely affected by Brody’s deeds? In hindsight, and despite how annoying many viewers found Dana to be, the Dana angst from earlier in the season resonates more now, as Carrie faces raising a child not just while dealing with her own issues, but the many issues left behind with Brody’s reputation.
* After the incredibly tense opening scene in which Brody narrowly escapes from Akbari’s office, the second best, more powerful, scene of the episode is Javadi’s speech to Carrie, explaining to her why he must make sure Brody is publicly punished for killing Akbari.
“The plan is a success. You and Brody pulled it off… more so if he dies. I asked myself over and over, from the moment I knew what you’ve gone through, the hardships… to lure me in. ‘Why? Why would anyone do that to themselves?’ Why would you? And I think I know now,” Javadi says. “It was always about him. That’s what you care about. Maybe the only thing. Who Brody is… that’s for Allah to know. But what he did, there can be no debate. It was astonishing and undeniable, and what you wanted, which was for everyone to see in him what you see... that has happened. Everyone sees him through your eyes now. Saul, Lockhart, the President of the United States, even me.”
* The hanging scene: brutal, and all the more so because it wasn’t the usual, dropped-from-the-gallows kind of hanging. Brody was hung, from a crane, but his cause of death is probably more accurately described as strangulation. And because we know this is going to spark a debate, this, from Brody’s safehouse conversation with Carrie:
“There was this man in Caracas… he was a doctor. He called me a cockroach, unkillable, bringing misery wherever I go,” Brody said.
“Harsh,” replied Carrie.
“But accurate,” said Brody.
Let the theories begin: Is this a hint that, somehow, Brody may not really be dead? Carrie watched him be lifted up by that crane, she saw his body twitch, and she saw him seemingly die. But did he? We got no specific details on his body, or a burial.
Could he be a part of some bigger plan: one that will involve Saul, Javadi, and Carrie in Season 4? Remember this season’s seventh episode, “Gerontion,” a reference to a T.S. Eliot poem that contains the phrase “wilderness of mirrors,” a description of double-agent spy activities that have been a hallmark of the series, especially in Season 3...
Sounds like a whole mess of bad writing to us, but is it at all possible that Brody survived that hanging, and will make a daytime soap opera-ish return from the dead in Season 4?
Nah, we don’t think so, either.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
No thank goodness apparently both Dana and her mother are off the show next year. They have left it open where they could make a small appearance similar to how Mike showed up maybe once this year.
According to reports, Morena Baccarin, who plays Jessica Brody, and Morgan Saylor, a.k.a. Dana Brody a.k.a. the most hated teenager on cable TV, will only be in Season 4 sparingly.
Unless the really bring Brody back from the dead, which is only possible in these kinds of series, there will be not much interest in a Season 4. I'm picturing 24 without Jack Bauer. Zzzz...
I begin to think about Brody's character. He didn't do the Langley bombing. If I remember correctly, he contributed to Abu Nasir's whereabouts that led to the latter's killing. He killed Akbari and finished the final mission. Yet, he was left to hang in a brutal way, sanctioned by his fellowmen above. And Carrie, being almost mentally ill due to her job, watched Brody hang, and went back to the bosses who had Brody killed and then accepted a good assignment from the same boss who ordered Brody to be arrested and then killed. The whole thing feels so gloomy and sad.
I begin to think about Brody's character. He didn't do the Langley bombing. If I remember correctly, he contributed to Abu Nasir's whereabouts that led to the latter's killing. He killed Akbari and finished the final mission. Yet, he was left to hang in a brutal way, sanctioned by his fellowmen above. And Carrie, being almost mentally ill due to her job, watched Brody hang, and went back to the bosses who had Brody killed and then accepted a good assignment from the same boss who ordered Brody to be arrested and then killed. The whole thing feels so gloomy and sad.
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
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