Homeland: Episode 3.1 Reviewed

Homeland's second season was a choppy affair - in several senses of the word. The quite brilliant first season had ended on a note that almost dared the creators to try and better it. The problem was, as with so many series today, that the fantastic context was stretching not to breaking point, but beyond it. The beauty of the first run was presuming that by sheer logic there had to be a conlusion, climax and denouement of some sort to make it all that tension worth it. To go beyond that artificial event horizon meant actively having to extend it beyond its organic  life-span. In other words... the remit of the day was: ignore the 'do not resusitate' aspect of the story and to breath new life into something that would have to change to allow it to continue but should stay the same to keep its viewers.

The result was mixed. Damian Lewis as compromised soldier Brody and Clare Danes as determined and insightful but fragile CIA Analyst Carrie Mathison are solid actors, able to emote on a dime and give their performances a raw intensity often missing from other shows. But the play's the thing and what they had to work with during 2012 often felt artifical. To make the extended plot work, the emphasis was changed.  Now the question wasn't whether Brody had been compromised, it was how he might redeem himself. The servant of two masters, he tilted at one then the other. Sometimes that tilting took him between the sheets with Carrie, sometimes it led to murder - it was sometimes hard to tell which produced the most trauma for either of them.

Carrie Mathison's bi-polar disorder was now not a serious and meaningful study of a condition that affects many in real life and often goes misdiagnosed or maligned, but was too often used as a fictional crutch for the script when the character had to go 'off-reservation' for the sake of providing the momentum of an episode. Many a drama has had viewers screaming at the screen 'Don't split up! Behind you! Call someone and tell them what you're dong!'  Here, the creators sometimes shrugged and nodded sagely about Carrie's mood-swings and irrational behaviour as if they were merely monthly women's problems that we don't discuss. 

By the time we left the second season of Homeland, our main characters had been put through the wringer and the supporting cast might well have wondered how long it would be before their scripts described bouts of amnesia and wild mountain cats. For a innovative show that proudly seemed to have inherited and improved upon the days of '24' it felt dangerously like the sub-plot driven spy-drama of a decade before. The season bowed out with an atrocity on American soil, the destuction of The George Bush Centre for Intelligence with Brady's previous actions being parlayed into framing him for this new terrorism. Carrie helps him escape and then returns to fend off and deny the inevitable questions about her own culpability.

Season Three opens  several months later for an hour with no sign of Brody in our crosshairs. The CIA headquarters has a massive hole in its modus operandi and the government has set up an official investigation as to the terrorist bomb, Brady's apparent betrayal and how it should have been avoided. They may well be looking for scapegoats, but there's no shortage of compromised people who have cut corners who might well find themsleves offered up. Carrie and  Saul (Mandy Patinkin) are both testifying, both attempting to tell the truth while obfuscating about aspects of the previous six months that saw them cross lines. Saul has no knowledge of the aid carrie gave to Brody but he has less and less reason to protect her when it's clear she's deceiving him. The fallout from the event is still being felt by the country and specifically Brody's family. Dana (Morgan Saylor) is in therapy (no kidding!) but looking like she'll further rebel amd explode herself if things don't take a turn for the better. Estranged wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) is equally aware that the press still see her as culpable of her husband's deeds.

The third season's premiere episode is talky more than walky, demonstrably showing (or rather, telling) us the emotional aftermath of a horrible event. The fractured cast are all good as expected, but once again, there's a nagging feeling about where this is all going and how familiar the scenery is beginning to look. A second season might have been an economic neccesity and magnet for ratings in the wake of the initial awards and critical success, but a third season feels more unnecessary and opportunistic. We might have had to suspend disbelief for dramatic purposes before, but, frankly, there is NO way, especially in the Homeland reality, where this can all end remotely well for anyone... and therefore we are likely going to be voyeurs for another season of spiralling emotions, dodgy behaviour, recriminations and general angst with a little added blood-shed for good measure - like watching a car crash in slow-motion and a relationship implode simultaneously. You can admire the grim beauty and irony of the frame , but the content simply sucks your energy.  

The first season was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on testosterone, the second the Romeo & Juliet of terrorist-bumps. Fifteen minutes into the third year and it seems as if there's an ambivalent attitude to medication that makes Breaking Bad seem positively well-adjusted. The main drama, with Brody AWOL, comes from Carrie being off her meds (again) and wider-eyed than ever. If I want this level of dramatic hysteria and emotional flipping, there's always The X-Factor.

I'm liable to stick with the third season of Homeland for a while because, in previous chapters, the good has eventually outweighed the bad and I like the ensemble cast.  24 glossed over long-term consequences (even an LA-based nuclear explosion) because there were always more arms to break shake and bad guys to torture question with extreme methods. Here, the pilot feels stuck in neutral, deciding what lessons it has learned from the second outing and wondering how to implement them.  It could still rise again... the talent is there ready to soar -  or it could sink with an apathetic shrug into a twenty-four-news-network quagmire. But there's a nagging feeling that unless the series makes up its mind and then gives me an offer I can't refuse, I may yet defect before the season's done.    

Homeland: Season Three begins Sunday 29th September in the US and returns to UK screens via Channel Four on Sunday 6th October...