The first season of Homeland was smart, sharp, and objectively good television. One small tweak to the season finale would have made it an extremely memorable miniseries with a dark ending and a nearly flawless run. But, this being a series on Showtime - the same network that pushed both Dexter and Weeds through eight seasons long after either show had anything relevant left to say or do - Homeland had to continue. Of course, nothing gold can stay, and sure enough, Homeland has fallen pretty steadily in two increasingly sloppy and silly seasons since then. I'm here right now to talk about the second of those seasons, which I've just re-watched on Blu-ray.
In short, it was bigger, bolder, and sometimes better. But its start-to-finish plotting relied on about half a dozen completely implausible coincidences, and the character relationships by season's end - one relationship, in particular - felt completely absurd given all previous characterization groundwork laid by previous episodes. Carrie Mathison has always been a little schizophrenic and reckless, but she was the one lone individual who had properly pegged Nicholas Brody's motivations in Season 1; Brody has always been a bit indecisive and mysteriously motivated, but he's been able to retain his cover and conceal his true intentions from everyone around him including his entire family, except for Carrie; why, why, why would either one of them ever come to seek the friendship of the other? Let alone engage in a romantic and trusting companionship? It makes no sense for either individual, and seems to exist solely for the audience. And how did Saul just stumble upon that thumb drive with Brody's confession tape from Season 1 in some desk drawer somewhere on the streets of the Middle East? And Abu Nazir just kind of took Brody's word that he would do something at one point - and then Brody did it. And how about the fate of the Vice President? There were just a few too many leaps of faith taken this season to constitute that same "quality television" label. Homeland was still good, still entertaining, and still tense as hell, but nowhere near as smart as it was a season ago. And it gets so much worse in Season 3, but we'll get there eventually here on this blog, I'm sure.
Lastly, I want to stand up a little bit for the character of Dana Brody, who took way too much undue flak from fans for being irritating and insufferable. Guess what. Teenagers can be irritating and insufferable! And perhaps some slack is due when a teenager has all the daddy issues Dana's dealt with these past few years. I actually thought she was a decent person, all in all, this season, especially considering the drastic difference between her reaction to that night time joyriding incident and the reaction of the rich little shit head who shared the experience with her.
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