by UnregisteredGuyNamedEric Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:58 pm
It's interesting to have a show like Homeland that's basically a thriller, a high octane show. But it's slow burn, character-based stories, which are not at all heavy on spectacle, are so dense and mysterious (even while they try to stick to a naturalistic style). So when you get an episode that's actually distilled down to it's core conflicts, it's most tense and exciting elements, where characters outright state their philosophies or motivations, it feels wrong. To some people, it's a betrayal.
Basically, it's a show that teased big things for 21 episodes, then when it finally went big, everybody's like "WTF?" It's like the opposite of what you'd expect from a spy show, where an episode that's too slow or boring would piss people off.
I went back and forth while watching it. It was exciting, but felt on-the-nose. In the end, though, I'm happy with it as a potential transition from one set of plots into the next.
I don't think Homeland ought to be held to the same standards as, say, Breaking Bad, which attempts to have as perfect and impenetrable of a closed universe as possible, where chaotic situations never crack the claustrophobia and the central focus on a very small group of people as being the center of the show's universe. Homeland has a slightly more pulpy quality to it: it needs to be able to expand in unexpected directions, which are in theory kitschy or incongruous, then to contract again around it's main characters.