Published on September 9th, 2012 | by greg

Homeland: The Complete First Season:: Review

Homeland is an uneven game of cat and mouse. Worse yet, Homeland is somewhat dull and contrived. A series that focuses on espionage should be riveting television, but apparently the writers of Homeland didn’t get that message. The storyline of Homeland focuses on CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and her investigation of a potentially Al Qaeda turned Marine Sergeant named Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis). Aided by her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), Mathison sets out to unravel Brody’s terrorist connections in Afghanistan and his current suspicious intentions. This alone would have been enough to base a series but the writers thought they would include a superficial twist.

The twist is that Mathison is also bi-polar and has some serious OCD tendencies. Could it be that Mathison is exaggerating everything that Brody does? Is Brody more than he seems? Will Danes drive co-workers away with her ever present whining or the running gag where she keeps an almost empty refrigerator in her spy base? You see, Danes is a bit of a waif and it’s funny that there’s no food…I’ll digress but suffice it to say that despite the possibility for interesting developments, none occur. Characters remain flat and one dimensional while secondary characters aren’t given much to do other than stand about. Exposition is key to a spy tale and Homeland runs at a snail’s pace. Homeland suffers from pacing issues and scenes where dialog is repeated ad nausea so that the audience picks up on clues or crucial plot points that a third grader could easily identify. That alone wouldn’t be so bad but it feels like nothing significant happens because the writers were too busy rehashing the remaining plot from previous episodes. Throw in excessive product placement and you have a mind-numbing overly commercial time waster with right wing tendencies.

Whether or not Brody is a sleeper agent or Mathison recovers isn’t my concern as I won’t be turning into Season 2 on Showtime to find out.

Rating:
Run Time:
664 Minutes
MPAA Rating (USA):
NR (Not Rated)
Genre:
Drama
Audio:
English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Language:
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen: 1.78:1