10/21/13
View Logs: Homeland S3 Pilot
Episode Title: Tin Man is DownI'll be honest here. Brody was quite the dead weight towards the end of Season 2. I mentioned in an old view log that Homeland started out as a modernized version of The Manchurian Candidate (I can elaborate on that in the future just... believe me on that for now) and the moment that the show dropped that is the moment the show dropped off of a cliff.
Homeland Season 2... was a soap opera. It suddenly shifted from being about paranoia and espionage to Brody and Carrie's "love" (not sure I'm comfortable accepting their love at the moment). I get that Carrie is lonely and it'd make sense that she'd look for some companionship. That bit in Season 1 where Carrie mentioned to Saul that she realized she'll probably be alone forever was good. Carrie boning Brody was... weird but I was able to accept it as well. Especially since it was well incorporated into the story of Season 1. But Season 2 suddenly just became about them. It reminded me of the bad moments of 24 when the writer started running out of ideas on how to move the story so he just focused on the romance between certain characters. 24 is actually pretty notorious for forcing romance actually.
The pilot of Season 3 gave me a huge smile on my face when I saw the focus shifted back to the actual politics of the CIA and their operations. This episode was great. It was nice to see a lot more of Saul and his own personal struggles within the job. We definitely didn't get enough of that in the previous two seasons. We were always told how good Saul is and how mindful he is of the situation and it's nice to see that in play for once.
Carrie is... still Carrie. Gradually her mental issues are getting a little too over the top for me. I can accept that Carrie has a strong mental condition. My issue is that it's gradually becoming too consistent of a problem. It's starting to make me question how effective she was as an agent before Homeland. I understand that the situations she's finding herself in is making her condition worse. But the problem is, Alex Gansa is relying on her flaw so much that it's gradually making her one dimensional. Honestly, this is actually a pretty rare problem in modern screen fiction. Most of the time, writers don't put enough flaws and that results in one dimensional characters. This is just the exact opposite with the same result. Weird.
I'm going to hope Carrie's character develops more because her development in Season 1 was one of the highlights of Homeland's premiere.
