Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; American Rust; Bosch: Legacy; Citadel; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outer Range; Outlander; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Diplomat, Last of Us, Lazarus Project, Orville, Way Home; Tokyo Vice; True Detective; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Homeland 5.10: Homeland and Homeland

As my wife aptly pointed out earlier this evening, we were going to see two Homelands tonight. That would be Homeland for real, with Obama's 8pm address to the nation, and Homeland on Showtime, at 9pm tonight.

Here's my review of the first: Obama's speech was ok, but could have been stronger and with more specifics, in the first part, about what we would do to fight terrorism. It was excellent in the second part, about what we shouldn't be doing, and who were as Americans.

Here's my review of Homeland on Showtime - dynamite, easily the best in this season, which has so far been not the greatest.

But kudos to the show for having Allison actually saying we don't want "another Paris" - her back was to the camera, so that was dubbed in. I have to hand it to Showtime and the producers of Homeland for having the guts to put that into tonight's show.

The rest was outstanding too. Claire Danes gave one of the strongest performances in the series - finally reminiscent of what we saw in the first few seasons - as Carrie reacting to what she thought was Quinn's death. And Miranda Otto as Allison was excellent, too.

The plot was suitably tense with some nice twists - the best being the guy who saved Quinn being saved, surprisingly, by his cousin. This gives the forces of good a continued possible hand on the inside, and it looks as if we'll need all the help we can get.

And that's true in real Homeland as well, where the convergence of what we see in drama on our screens and what we in news on that same screen is all too close. Indeed, Homeland on Showtime had an especially frightening clout tonight because, so far, in our real world, an attack by chemical weapons is about the one thing we have not been subject to in the past few months.