Quin and Saul call the shots on Homeland
A review of tonight’s Homeland as soon as I talk trash about
America on TV…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had the chance to review
Homeland (things came up apologies) which is too bad because for the last few episodes
I haven’t been minding the show, all ridiculousness included. The show has felt
more focused and that it led to an actual goal instead of hopping around for episodes
upon episode. I especially enjoyed last week’s episode, one that focused
entirely on Brody’s move towards the Iranian border as it had both, focus and energy.
“Big Man in Tehran” is less successful than last week’s outing, but still
managed to engage and entertain, as it, all issues aside, managed to stay
largely on target in terms of cutting out what hadn’t been working in the early
episodes, and provided a decently tense ride through a key point of the
operation.
Probably the biggest problem with “Big Man in Tehran” was
the pacing. It seemed like what went down in this episode should have at least
been stretched over the course of two episodes, sans time jump in the middle.
It would have been better to draw out the tension of both, the initial meet up
plan and the transition towards the final play especially the latter as it felt
we didn’t have enough build up, and thus the episode felt a tad rushed. It
would have been nicer to have the time to examine Brody’s extended time to
Tehran as we didn’t get to see either his refusal to be extracted or his rise
to stardom in the circles of Tehran. All we get is a brief glimpse of him immediately
after meeting with Nazir’s widow, and then we cut ahead 6 days later in order
to cram everything that was needed to make this final hour work. It feels at
this point that there should have been a reduced amount of time put on Saul and
Carrie’s master ruse at the beginning of the season, most of which after the
stupid twist felt meaningless (actually it might have made the twist more bearable
just cut out all the shots of Carrie trying to act insane towards no one but
the audience, and end up cutting out one of the episodes, maybe in the
Carrie/Brody parallel episode instead of making us think that both can’t escape
their predicaments get Carrie out of there during that episode make it counter parallel
and cut out the episode after and we’d have more time here and maybe I could
feel better about the twist as a whole) and place the emphasis on what’s
working here which is drawing out the Brody mission in the name of good
suspense. The result we get ultimately is a little rushed and as a result both
tension and logic at times follow by the wayside in “Big Man in Tehran”
something that could have been ratified with more time.
Most of the logic that goes by the wayside involve Brody’s
plan at the end of the episode, and Carrie as an active player in this plot.
Brody’s plan didn’t seem ridiculous (unlike every other plan on this show) per say
ultimately but it felt a little less sensible then it could have been with more
patience and time devoted to it. It all felt like the plan came off way to
quickly for such a grand idea. It makes little sense to me within the given
time that Brody could look desperate enough, or is ultimately trusted enough,
to get in to see Akbari, who we’re told time and time again is a super private
man. With a little more time though this could be established and that it would
ultimately feel more organic than it appears in this episode. I certainly
wouldn’t mind talking time away from things that didn’t work in the beginning of
the season (like less time with Dana and her murderer boyfriend) to make the
things that actually have me engaged in the show a little better.
The last thing that could ultimately be clarified is how
Carrie actually works on this show any way shape or form. At this time she
seems so shrill, and so disobedient that I’m surprised that the CIA hasn’t pulled
the plug on her entirely. She just seems to get in the way of the operation all
in the name of hunches that while right, are by no means probable in any way
shape or form. She’s been doing this all along and we’re suppose to accept her
still as the heroine of this show. It makes very little sense and, at this point
I would rather live without Carrie than Brody, and that’s saying something because
I’m still in the belief that Brody needs to die at the end of this season.
That being said I did like this episode as I’m much more
invested in how this turns out than I was with anything at the beginning of
this season. With all this talk of redemption this episode maybe the Homeland
finale can keep pushing us towards an ending that can partially redeem all the
bad things the show has tried throughout the season. It may not be perfect by
any stretch of the imagination but at least it’s a decent step in the right
direction.
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?
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