Homeland on Showtime

I've seen the first three episodes of Homeland, thanks to a top-secret, crumpled envelope with a screener disk sent to me by Showtime.   It looks to be a wrenchingly powerful series, about POW US Marine Sgt Brody, who returns home to his wife and kids after nearly a decade in captivity.

Not, necessarily, great news, since CIA Officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has just been told by an informant that an American has been turned by the Middle Eastern terrorist.  Is Brody that man?

He's certainly not completely comfortable with his family - especially his beautiful wife, Jessica (played by Morena Baccarin of V fame!), who's been having a serious affair with Brody's friend.   But that's likely not the reason Brody is acting weird, because we also see him looking at products for who knows exactly what in a home supply store, and getting up in the middle of the night for prayer - Islamic.

Meanwhile, Carrie has a drug problem, and her superiors are less than convinced of her acumen in any case.  Saul (Mandy Patinkin) is at least willing to have an open mind, and Patinkin puts in his customarily fine performance in the role.

Homeland of course has been compared to The Manchurian Candidate, but it's not clear at this point whether he's aware that he's been turned, or if it's all unconscious, as in The Manchurian Candidate.  I suppose there's also an outside chance that Brody is really a double agent - he really hasn't done any damage as of the end of the 3rd episode.

Showtime tried its hand with terrorist drama in Sleeper Cell a few years ago, which I actually thought was very good, especially in the first of its two seasons.  Homeland looks to be at least as good - with solid acting, action, story line, nudity, and a beat on current events that even mentions bin Laden is dead.   The series premiers right after Dexter on October 2, and I'll be back with more reviews later that month.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Olivia Benford at Harvard in FlashForward 1.10

FlashFoward 1.10 - the finale episode in the first part of the season, with the series to resume in March 2010 - was as fine as the series premiere back in September, which is to say, packed full of action, surprise, paradox, emotion, and scientifically implausible but maybe not impossible possibilities - or science fiction on television at its best.

1. Olivia and Lloyd talk about Harvard and alternate universes. Lloyd was a student there, Olivia almost was, but got entwined with Mark instead. Lloyd met his wife in a building next door - which is where Olivia would have stayed had she gone to Harvard. The implication: perhaps love conquers all, including alternate realities or universes. What Olivia and Lloyd may be just beginning to feel about each other here, now, in "our" universe, may be an expression of a transcendent love which prevailed a little earlier in the Olivia-at-Harvard world. The kidnapping of Lloyd in the last scene (which I did see coming - something about the manner of the ambulance guys - but it was powerful nonetheless) leaves Olivia with Dylan, which is a big step closer to Lloyd, wherever his kidnappers may be taking him.

2. Mark and Demetri defy Stan and go to Hong Kong to find the woman who told Demetri of his death. I think of her as Behrooz's mother, after Shohreh Aghdashloo's memorable performance in 24, but her name in FlashForward is Nhadra Udaya, and she tells Mark and Demetri the astonishing, unbelievable: Demetri's assassin is Mark, who will shoot Demetri three times with Mark's gun (Nhadra knows its serial number). Mark vows not to let this happen, and I believe him, but .... what significance do vows to prevent the future from happening have in this, our, flashforward universe? Mark says to Nhadra, "this isn't over". She replies, "it never is". But the only evidence we have that the future can be changed is Gough's suicide - not very reassuring. (Good, by the way, to see Michael Eealy of Sleeper Cell in the Hong Kong business as a CIA agent.)

3. But back to the recalcitrant future: Perhaps the biggest payoff in fatality tonight was Zoey's realization that she was not at Demetri's and her wedding in her flashforward, she was at his funeral. Lots of fans had been suggesting this as an explanation. I'm still wondering why she didn't feel herself being profoundly sad in her flashforward - not an emotion she would likely be feeling at her wedding - but ok, at least this resolves the conflict between her vision and Demetri's lack of vision. And with the testimony of Behrooz's mother in Hong Kong, this is tightening the vise of future death around Demetri ever more convincingly ...

4. Still, there are grounds for hope. Demetri is now in possession of Mark's gun - after Stan removes Mark from service - which means that gun is at least one person removed from firing at Demetri. And Simon is revealing himself as maybe not the worst character in the world, and indeed someone who can actually help the good guys get to the bottom of this. For example, he's the inventor of the strange device we saw in that 1991 photo of facilities in Africa - except Simon says he didn't invent the device until 1992. Explanations wrapped in paradox, or maybe just time travel ...

5. Simon also throws of little light on D. Gibbons, one of the mysterious men wide awake during the blackout. And we see him near the end with Nahdra (Behrooz's mother), which to some degree throws everything she's told Mark and Demetri into doubt ... So, maybe that's good, too...

Hey, if you don't like complicated, watch Heroes - though, come to think of it, that's pretty complicated too. All good and great irresistible television is. And tonight's FlashForward was up there with the best. It was written by David S. Goyer (co-creator of the series) and Scott M. Gimple. Can the show keep up this level of story telling in 2010?

I'm betting it will even be better. The compelling story told so far demands it.

8-min podcast review of FlashForward


See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures and 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6 ... FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be... ... FlashForward 1.8: The Nightie as a Grain of Sand ... FlashForward 1.9: Shelter from the Storm

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Only Idiots Don't Watch Television...

"Only Idiots Don't Watch Television" was my original title for the following op-ed that I wrote for Newsday this past July, 2006. They changed it to the more dignified title you see below - taken from the next-to-last line of my op-ed - but that's ok, because I do indeed believe that we're seeing a new golden age of television (I say so in the op-ed) - indeed, I've taken to calling our era television's platinum age.

Because, if anything, television has gotten even better since the summer. The first half of the third season of Battlestar Galactica, just concluded last week, was the best science-fiction I've ever seen on television (or at least, the first part of it was - as good as the best Star Trek episodes, and better than most). The Wire concluded a low-key but outstanding season. Kidnapped, foolishly cancelled by NBC, just concluded last night on nbc.com, and it was a superb series - intelligent, stylish, suspenseful. NBC does, at least, deserve credit for fielding it in the first place. Dexter, which I wrote about in a blog post here last week, is a marvelously unusual cop show. Brotherhood is an excellent new political drama. Sleeper Cell, which I also wrote about last week, offered an excellent second season. All three were on Showtime.

And in January, new seasons of Rome (on HBO) and 24 (on Fox) begin. I can hardly wait. In the meantime, as the cold winds of late December blow, here's another look at the view from this past summer...

Newsday
Editorials
IDEAS
TV's new golden age
BY PAUL LEVINSON

Paul Levinson is professor and chairman of communication and media studies at Fordham University. His latest novel is "The Plot to Save Socrates."

July 23, 2006

It used to be called the "idiot box." Critics have been muttering for years that we're a nation of "videots," that television's been rotting our brains. But who are the idiots now?

People who saw "Rome" on HBO this fall? The opening credits alone were a masterpiece of music and animation. Or perhaps the video dopes are those who just finished watching the next-to-concluding season of "The Sopranos" or watched the past three seasons of "The Wire," or I forget how many seasons of "Da Ali G Show," all also on HBO, or the new "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci-Fi Channel.

All of these shows have been lionized by critics. Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Chronicle called the acting in "The Wire" both "virtuoso" and "phenomenal." David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said of "The Sopranos": "If this isn't art, then neither is Mozart." The series won four Emmys in 2004 and has been nominated for many more. "Ali G" has been nominated dozens of times. "Rome" boasts Jonathan Stamp, former BBC executive producer for history and archaeology, as its history consultant. "Battlestar Galactica" has lifted science-fiction on television to a new level of political sophistiction, sensuality and style.

Awards in themselves are certainly no sure indication of quality. But, combined with the raves of critics and cinema-level writing, acting, and production, the achievements of this new age of television are unmistakable.

Who are the nitwits, now? People who saw or missed those shows?

It's not all cable - the networks have been enjoying a golden age, too. "Lost" on ABC and "24" on Fox are two prime examples - "24" led the pack in Emmy nominations announced earlier this month. And in all cases, the availability of these series on DVD, which allows the viewer to see multiple episodes of a series without commercial interruption, is fueling the new excellence of television.

But it's not entirely new, either. There have been great programs throughout TV's history, ranging from "Have Gun, Will Travel" to "Star Trek" to "All in the Family" to "Hill Street Blues" to "ER," to name just a representative sampling over the decades.

What's different now, though, are the wings of new media that, rather than flying away from television, are lifting it to new heights. Not only cable and DVDs, but iPODs, which offer downloadable episodes, are making television easier to watch - and better. Why better? Because when people were obligated to watch television on inflexible schedules dictated by the networks, many shows were pitched to the lowest common denominator. The cardinal rule of that first, now bygone, age of television was "thou shalt not offend or confuse." But when people can see television on their own schedules - whether via on-demand cable, DVD, TiVo or iPODs - television can take chances. It can hire topnotch character actors like Ciaran Hinds, who last year played a supporting role in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated "Munich" and starred splendidly as Caesar in "Rome."

TV can now cater to more individual tastes. Its programs must still live or die based on their rating shares, but the pie is now split so many ways that a smaller piece can go a lot further than in decades past.

Like books and movies, TV can now take real risks to achieve excellence. It can try a prime-time show on polygamy, such as HBO's "Big Love," or a sitcom about a suburban school mom who sells marijuana, like Showtime's "Weeds."

Back in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan applied the term "rear-view mirror" to help explain our perception of new media. He meant that we see new technology through lenses ground in the past. The automobile was first called "the horseless carriage" and radio "the wireless" before they broke free of their pasts, attained names in their own right and claimed their destiny.

How many people who still think TV is only for dullards and laggards are seeing it through a rear-view mirror, looking at it backward, focused on network domination and stick-figure characterization? Was that what Harper's editor Thomas de Zengotita had in mind when he called cable TV - along with the Internet and DVDs - a "vast goo of meaningless stimulation"? Maybe TV needs a new name.

But, by television or any other name, the much-maligned tube is finally achieving its potential not only to entertain but inspire.

It used to be thought that watching television distracted us from more noble intellectual pursuits like reading. But, to the contrary, it seems that an intellect charged by any medium is all the more hungry for new adventures of the mind. Literacy is on the rise. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy found an 8 percent increase in reading abilities in the past decade. "Harry Potter" and "The Da Vinci Code" are happening in this new golden age of television. Its rising tide will likely be lifting many more boats to come.

Relevant links:

• Defending TV, Again - This Time, Because It's Too Good! 31 March 2007
  
• The Goldplated Globes: What They Missed On TV 18-minute podcast
  
• TV Roundup: The Field in Mid-November 21-minute podcast
  
• first place for Dexter 3-minute podcast
  
• Weep Not for Kidnapped 3-minute podcast
  
• Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium by Paul Levinson

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The Plot to Save Socrates "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News "Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Wide Awake for Sleeper Cell

[updated Dec 17 with finale of Season 2; what follows gives away plot details]

Just finished watching the complete 8-hour new season of Sleeper Cell on Showtime - pretty much all in one sitting.

That in itself is extraordinary and indicative of one of the new ways of seeing a television series - as a long movie of eight hours (or, in the case of 24, of 24 hours - which you usually need two or three sessions of viewing to see).

Showtime deserves credit for putting the whole series up On-Demand right away. This certainly beats waiting for the regular showing to be over before you can see the whole series - which in the case of Sleeper Cell would have been eight days, as this series is being shown daily - or waiting for the DVD, which of course means you have to wait much longer.

The series itself had some excellent moments - and three outstanding episodes - the third, the seventh, and the eighth, if you'd like to know. They had some jolting twists, and one major, very interesting and original innovation in the pacing - a thoughtful and provocative departure from what you would expect of a finale.

Indeed, the story for this season could well have ended with Episode 7 - the single best episode - which featured the determent of the major terrorist plot (a dirty radioactive bomb in the Hollywood Bowl), but the success of another (suicide bomber in Las Vegas), as well as the heroic death of Gail, Darwyn's love. This was one of the more breathtaking episodes I've seen on television.

But Sleeper Cell continued with Episode 8, which was really a coda to the first seven episodes. Darwyn and Farik have a final but inconclusive confrontation overseas - which felt for all the world like Darwyn confronting Osama. And if this episode wasn't quite as strong as Episode 7, Sleeper Cell nonetheless deserves praise for going there, and ending this season with a thoughtful portrait of the eternal, never-ending contest between good and evil.

The acting was fine - Michael Ealy put in a strong performance as Darwyn the undercover agent, and Odeh Fehr was powerful and chilling as Farik the terrorist leader - same as in the first season. There were a few soft episodes in the middle - meaning, they could have been cut or reduced with no real harm to the story - but all in all the story was gripping on a variety of social and personal levels.

Highly recommended - especially in this usually lean time for worthwhile tv viewing.

Listen to the podcast of this review at Levinson news clips