Homeland

Yeah, really wish it had felt at least a little more impactful. Or perhaps it could have just ended with his death and picked up four months later at the beginning of next season.

Why would anyone want to work for these bureaucratic idiots? I was hoping Carrie would have grown some balls and quit.

Carrie and Saul reformed the agency and prevented Senator Whatshisface from completely moving away from the human intelligence mission. Why wouldn't she stay around? She won, effectively. The story of this season was a story of pragmatism winning over bureaucratic bullshit.

At some point during the hanging, I thought there would be an uprising. I mean the show established his popularity in Iran and when a popular hero is suddenly labeled a murderous enemy of the state and in the span of three days is arrested, judged and executed, it sounds seriously fishy. It can be argued though that the people who were a fan of his are likely to also be fan of their government and as such less likely to find their actions fishy. That and opposition in Iran does not want to appear like US-loving traitors, so they would probably not prevent the execution of an american agent.

Anyway: very good season even (and maybe because) it was not on the same tempo as the previous two. I am very curious to see what will be at the core of the 4th season.

I enjoyed the episode, but couldn't help but feel let down by the end. Yes, I know what happened had to happen and I have no problems with that. The only thing I didn't like was the incredibly slow pacing of the last 1/2 of the episode.
Yes, everything important had all been covered, but it just seemed to drag on.

Hey look, Saul is having breakfast with his wife... And Carrie's talking to the new head guy with a sour plum look on her face.

Anyway, on to a question from earlier in the season. During one of the season 3 trailers, I clearly saw Dana (Brody's kid) using his Muslim payer mat. Yet I don't recall actually seeing that scene happen in the real show. I remember thinking that she was going to flop over, but her entire story arc was finished a while ago.

Did she end up using the mat? If so, what was the point of that scene?

The pregnant bipolar agent who never listens to orders and was fucking the most wanted guy in the world...let's promote her now that he's dead (and is kind of our fault, especially after our botched assassination attempt on him) and give her control of a crucial overseas bureau.
The guy who runs the agency and came up with some cool plans, and cares about his country, the agency, and the people he works with...let's get rid of him.

I can't help but think that there's some kind of commentary there.

it would have topped 24 if senator lockhart has suddenly shouted allahu akbar and blown himself and the CIA up in the middle of his speech

all the little touches were great and realistic. brody never got a break, fucked up till the end and the average american probably still thinks he is a traitor and turncoat. saul still deep in his heart wants to work for the cia, and still views dar as a "friend" (whatever that word means to them).

the one place I sort of dreaded them going, but also feel like its a lesser show for them NOT going there, is javadi keeping carrie and torturing the fuck out of her to show saul/CIA that he is his own guy and not a puppet. saul and quinn would have flipped out but ultimately the americans would have preferred javadi the ally to burning him. would have made for an insane season 4 and a much, much, much sadder brody ending if his last images were the woman he loves getting messed over by javadi, and been a more dramatic impact on how meaningless saul's little games are.

So I skipped reading all the thread to avoid spoilers. I just downloaded the whole season so I could binge watch it, but here's my problem. I'm 2 episodes in and am already annoyed with both the stupid daughter side-story AND how broken and dramatic carrie is. Show feels bad... real bad. Does it get better as the season goes on? Should I power through?

You should definitely power through it, it gets a lot better and has a satisfying ending that wraps up pretty much everything.

The Dana/family arc was bad, but it's short. You might have 1 or 2 more episodes to go.

The season ABSOLUTELY gets better. It was strong this year.

I don't even think it was bad, I think you ladies are overly sensitive to anything involving the family. But yeah, the family was the weakest part of the season.

Decado_sl said:

Season 3 is fucking terrible and i doubt it can be saved however if any writers are reading then try killing carrie and brodie's entire family, preferably very painfully and horribly. That may save this shitfest but i doubt it...

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Okay I watched the rest, mainly since I've been off work ill and had 20hrs a day to fucking waste.

It got better, mainly since the family crap disappeared and the ending was at least good. I wouldn't say i thought it was brilliant tv but it was decent. I'm glad that Brodie was killed, as a character he needed/deserved to die and fair play to them going through with it and not pussying out with some run away and live with Carrie in the outback somewhere nonsense.

My only major annoyance is that fucking Carrie wasn't gotten rid of somehow. She blows ops, disobeys orders and generally is a fucked up explosion waiting to happen every minute of the day and she gets what? promoted? Bleh.

I will definitely tune in for the next season mainly due to the exiting of the family cast members but i hope to god they don't give us a load of baby/bipolar story lines to ruin it.

chaos_sl said:

I don't even think it was bad, I think you ladies are overly sensitive to anything involving the family. But yeah, the family was the weakest part of the season.

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Was there an actual point to the family stuff this season? First half the season is the family BS while Saul is trying to figure out the Iranians/setting up Carrie. Then they just abandon the family and go gung-ho with the rest.

Are we going to get half of season 4 being the family dealing with Brody's death before anything CIA ops/next threat occurs? Just have the friend banging the mom when the daughter gets the phone call saying he's for-sure for-real dead this time. She walks in on them already crying - Fade away to Langley and never bother with them again (Or have Saul reading a paper with a headline of Brody's daughter commits murder/suicide).

Thoughts on Season 4? I wouldn't mind seeing a plot where some sleepers are activated sort of like the episodes with the terrorist girl and her husband and they could be planning some infrastructure destroying or maybe a mole-hunt in the agency that Saul gets called in to help with. It would also keep the show "Homeland" and not "Middle East" - You could use Javadi feeding intel to help advance the story when needed but otherwise stay out of Iran.

The whole point was showing the impact of Brody's actions after the curtain was pulled back. And giving Brody motivation to get involved in this bullshit again. Juxtaposing the actions both the terrorists and the CIA/government take against the impact it has to relatively normal people who are outside the scope of the operations.

Decado_sl said:

My only major annoyance is that fucking Carrie wasn't gotten rid of somehow. She blows ops, disobeys orders and generally is a fucked up explosion waiting to happen every minute of the day and she gets what? promoted? Bleh.

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The thing that keeps saving Carrie's ass is that she's always right in the end. The CIA was going to have the Mossad agents kill Brody, but Carrie screwed that up by informing him, which led to Brody actually finishing his mission. She consistently proves to have insight to things other people miss... which is becoming a little tiresome. It gets to the point where anyone who disagrees with Carrie or gets pissed when she flagrantly disobeys order is beginning to look like Sculley doubting the existence of the supernatural after repeated encounters with it. It's not hard to see why Carrie gets away with some of the things she does, but the more you inch that way, the less easy it becomes to see why everyone constantly questions her.

That's one of the reasons I'm glad they killed off Brody. One of the constant themes between Brody and Carrie was that she understood him better than anyone else. She knew what he was thinking and prioritized that over everything else and was always either right or able to push him in the right direction proving herself in the process. With Brody out of the picture, I'm hopeful that that means Carrie will be put into more situations where she can't be so brazenly confident about her assessment of a situation. It'd also help the drama in the show if she could be returned to a position where even the audience isn't sure of her, something that really hasn't been possible since before she was proven right about Brody being a sleeper agent.