Started watching this a few nights ago. I’m 4 episodes in to the first season and I have to say I am pretty unimpressed so far. It really doesn’t live up to the hype for me. A lot of the characters seem to be run of the mill stereotypes…from the angry black boss who is only out for his career, to Mandy Patinkin’s Obi-Wan wise old sage, to the rebel CIA officer who bucks the system to follow her own hunches. Morena Baccarin is downright awful as the wife and I am so far not as impressed with claire danes as a lot of other people have been. I will say Damian Lewis is really good, Patinkin as well even with the limitations of the character.
I am willing to stick it out for a few more episodes though. Hopefully this gets a little better. Maybe I am just tv’ed out from binge watching a lot of stuff lately; but I’m so far disapointed with this.
I felt like it did get better…and by the end of the first season, you’ll see why Claire Danes keeps getting Leading Actress nominations. I started watching this a couple years ago after their second season which won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama beating out Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and Breaking Bad. Although I have stuck with it as I do find the show entertaining, I have never once believed it was on par with Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones and I still think Downtown Abbey is better.
I just thought that adding a dog and a stoner to the cast, and moving the focus of the series to ghost hunting was an odd move on the part of the show’s creators.
I have 3 episodes left in Season 3, and it has been a pretty good season so far. I didn’t know where they were going at the end of Season 2 with that new bombing and radically changing the show, which is pretty par for the course overall for season 2 (they kept changing the show a lot during that whole season). But Season 3 has been pretty even keel so far. They still throw some Islamophobic things in there that make me uncomfortable, but at least now I know it’s on purpose. It’s to depict the realisim of Islamophobia within the Agency (I think), instead of it expressing something the show-makers feel. That makes all the difference.
(I had the day off work today for the first time in a loong time. I used it to watch a lot of Homeland).
Finished Season 3. Wow. Now that’s how you end a series. That was really great. I’m glad they didn’t pussy out and pull their punches just to keep the status quo or anything like that.
What an amazing season overall. It’s almost as if the whole thing was leading up to this. If Seasons 1 and 2 were the Carrie and Brodie show, Season 3 was Saul Berensen and the CIA’s show. And it was much better for it. Throughout the season Saul had to make tough call after tough call, and sometimes I hated him for it. The show didn’t sugarcoat how the CIA can really fuck things up and make them worse sometimes. Even to the last episode, I loved that this was still the focus of the Season: operating in the moral gray, do the end justify the means. Great, great show.
Totally worth watching Seasons 1 and 2 just so you can get to the excellent Season 3, I’d say.
I just checked, and the internet says there is. I wouldn’t have known it from watching the show though. It felt like a series finale. Some people died, other people retired. Yet other people moved on. Everything was tied up. But I suppose they can tell another story featuring the CIA in Season 4 with new people.
