Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Black Doves; Bosch; Citadel; Criminal Minds; Dark Matter; Dexter: Original Sin; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Way Home; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

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

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Homeland series finale: Continuity

Well, it was a thoroughly satisfying series finale for Homeland, just finished on Showtime.

First, I knew Carrie could never kill Saul, even to stave off a nuclear war, as I said in my review of last week's show. But tonight's finale had me faked out, cursing at Carrie, until it became clear that she had tried to make Saul believe that she would kill him, which entailed making the viewers believe the same, all to apply maximum pressure to get Saul to give up his beloved Russian agent. And when that failed, Carrie got what she wanted, anyway, with a Plan B that worked like a charm. That's what I call a nice piece of writing in this series.

But the very ending was even better, and I sort of guessed it the moment I saw Carrie two years later in Moscow with Yevgeny. Wouldn't it be cool, I said to my wife, if Carrie redeemed herself by replacing the Russian agent she had handed to Yevgeny on a deadly silver platter? That would be just like Carrie. And sure enough, that's exactly what she did. With all the trimmings Saul could expect, down to the message inside the spine of a conveyed book, the same way information had flowed from the previous Russian agent to Saul.

And this opens up all kinds of possibilities for movie and television sequels. Saul, though he's for the most out of the CIA now, now has golden agent in Moscow, someone he can trust, well, at least with his life. And it will take a long time before Yevgeny and the Russians catch on,

Saul says, earlier in this finale, that the Russians have already tried to chew up our democracy. The world seems very different now, in the pandemic age. The Coronavirus now is much more of an enemy than Russia. But the world will prevail over the virus, and that will leave Russia and its hacking still in play as a despoiler of our democracy. And I'm glad to know that Carrie will be there, on our side with her brilliance and passion.