Homeland: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Review
Homeland insecurity.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 17, 2013
Note: If you haven't watched the first season of
Homeland yet, you probably don't want to read this
review, as it discusses several major plot points in that season, including at least one major spoiler, and how they ripple
into the current season.
There was an old Clairol hair coloring ad campaign that made the phrase "Does she or doesn't she?" instantly
recognizable. Fans of Showtime's
Homeland might be forgiven if they slightly tweaked that tagline, asking "Is he
or isn't he?" as the series played out its first season in a tantalizing tease surrounding long lost (and presumed dead)
POW Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis), who is found after close to a decade, and who is ostensibly rematriculated into a
picture perfect American life. Of course as anyone might be able to guess, the picture is in fact far from perfect, and FBI
Agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) thinks she knows why: Brody has been "turned" by his Al Qaeda captors and is in
fact now a kind of Fifth Columnist, or post-modern
Manchurian Candidate. But
Homeland played its first season cards
very
close to its vest, not giving up solid answers about Brody's true motivations easily, and further muddying the waters by
revealing that Carrie herself suffers from mental issues, something that may be clouding her judgment. The first season
of
Homeland gave us a rather artful, and ultimately
incredibly tense, cat and mouse game between
Carrie and Brody, as they became romantically involved while also warily circling each other in an ever increasing arc of
paranoia and duplicity. When the actual truth was revealed well into the season, it was further colored by some
typically smart irony, something this series tends to exploit with fair regularity. Carrie had spent most of the season
unsuccessfully trying to convince everyone who would listen that Brody was a terrorist, ultimately only seemingly proving
that she was bat
guano crazy. When we finally realize that Brody is in fact an Al Qaeda operative, the
knowledge comes too late to help Carrie, who has checked herself into a mental hospital to have her memory erased
with electroconvulsive shock therapy.
The second season begins with both Carrie and Brody being pressured in unexpected ways, finding themselves
seemingly unable to fight some inexorable forces of fate. Carrie seems to be mentally balanced, even on the chipper
side, living with her father and sister and tending to her late mother's garden. That illusion comes to a crashing halt
when an operative she used to mentor turns up on Saul's (Mandy Patinkin) watch, saying she has valuable information
but that she won't talk to anyone but Carrie. That sets Carrie off on a mad scramble to Beirut for 72 hours, in a rather
unlikely but nonetheless exciting sequence that sees her regaining some of her mojo as an agent who has to think (and
run) on her feet.
Brody, meanwhile, is now a member of Congress and has been short listed to be the Vice Presidential candidate for the
upcoming Presidential elections, where current Vice President Walden (Jamey Sheridan), who got Brody his
Congressional seat, now thinks Brody would be the perfect running mate. Brody is still receiving instructions from his Al
Qaeda handlers, including Washington reporter Roya Hammid (Zuleikha Robinson), a woman whose family has long ties
with Brody's terrorist mentor, Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban). Brody has already been tested rather dramatically, as fans
of the first season will well remember, but Nazir has more plans for his plant, and despite what appear to be Brody's
pangs of conscience, he repeatedly gives in, especially when he's reminded of his ties to Nazir and especially Nazir's late
son.
Homeland continues to be an incredibly exciting and well written series, one which builds to its various boiling
points rather slowly but surely. There are some aspects to this second season which tend to strain credulity. It goes
without saying that the whole gambit of getting Carrie out of the CIA is a temporary artifice and, while dramatically
effective, seems overly calculated and even trite. What
really tends to chafe—if only slightly—in this second
season is the frankly incredible plot developments surrounding Brody, machinations which assume that a potential Vice
Presidential candidate wouldn't have been more thoroughly vetted or, at the very least, been put under more
authoritative surveillance (Brody's late night assignations with contacts and in fact with Carrie herself are numerous).
The performances continue to be uniformly excellent here. Danes doesn't quite have the eye popping "looney tunes"
moments here that she did in the first season, but she manages to convey Carrie's sense of desperation and often
roiling emotional substratum with incredible authenticity. Lewis' Brody is increasingly tamped down as this season
progresses, something that's kind of at odds with his vulnerability
vis a vis Carrie. The supporting cast is
fantastic all around here, with Mandy Patinkin especially moving as Saul in the season finale, which has a rather
shocking event that ironically binds Saul to Brody's once secret recitation of prayers in his suburban garage. Morgan
Saylor is another standout this season as Brody's petulant daugher Dana, who has discovered at least some of her
father's secrets and is attempting to wend her way through both her family's dysfunction as well as a new school
environment.
I have to be honest and state openly that I have a couple of fears as
Homeland moves into its third season.
One of the neat twists of the first two seasons is that the premiere year ended with the viewers convinced that, yes,
Brody's a terrorist, while the second season ends with a somewhat more ambivalent conclusion. But now we have a
situation where Brody's been
identified as a terrorist, putting him on the lam while Carrie, now devoted to
proving his innocence, is left behind to clean up the mess. The series has at least the danger of tipping into soap
operatic territory. The good news here is that
Homeland has managed to continually surprise and even
confound expectations so far in its first two seasons. Hopefully the third year will continue that tradition.
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