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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Homeland “The Star” Review: A Clean Slate



Saul goes to find information on Homeland

 A Quick review of Homeland’s third season finale as soon as I sharpie a star on a memorial wall…

“I want it to be over.”
-Brody

With “The Star” Homeland returned to trying to provide some emotional presence with its characters and the show as a whole. The finale finally took the time to reestablish the emotional connections to characters that were at many points this season hard to like. For once I began to like the idea of these characters again and what the future might have in store for them as we reset the pieces on the chess board…

…Too bad the path the show took to get there was filled with absolute ridiculousness.

Not that this surprised me at all I mean this has been happening all season long, but the way the show got from point A to point B almost made the good emotional moments to feel like cheats. Oh boy where to start… Oh so yeah after killing the head honcho of Iran, a place in that on this show has been made out to be completely unreachable, Brody just kind of gets out, without having a problem at all. Seriously he should have been dead as soon as he left the compound or at the very least there is, you know, security there. The whole opening sequence was a mess of logic, albeit not too far off from the ridiculousness the series has been displaying this season.

It’s disappointing too because it leads to a series of scenes between Carrie and Brody that actually work from an emotional standpoint. The moment where Carrie puts the pregnancy bomb on Brody is a beautiful moment that helps reestablish the relationship between two characters that at times on this show had began to get tired. Almost everything that happened in the safe house was very satisfying emotionally, but ultimately felt undermined by the stupidity of how the show had gotten to where it had.

Then came Brody’s death, which was another great emotional scene that was undermined by the plot surrounding it. First off, despite the fact that I will miss Damian Lewis a tremendous amount, it was a relief that the show finally got rid of Brody. It’s not like anything to do with Brody had been particularly bad this season but it was just time for the character to go. That being said turning Brody’s death into Javadi’s chance to turn Iran into a paradise is utterly ludicrous and completely false given the pretense of the whole show. Sure maybe improving relations with Iran or just having a guy on the inside making sure nothing bad happens to America might have worked, but pretty much turning the US and Iran into buddies in four mounts is one of the more ridiculous things that Homeland has asked me to believe. Mark the second great emotional moment undermined by Homeland’s plot.

The final one that really bugs me is comes after the four months later where Carrie gets to have some good emotional moments with the baby and her fear of the future. Where this one gets undermined is the fact that Saul gets let go and Carrie, someone who has had a history of not following orders, gets one of the highest positions in the CIA without batting an eyelash. It just doesn’t make much sense logistically and there solely for us to move from point A to point B.

That all being said I do like that we have a clean slate for the show. I hope where we go in season 4 is interesting as the writers can literally do anything at this point.

I just wish it didn’t have to be so ridiculous along the way.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think about the finale and the season as a whole?

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