Hitting the Wall With "Homeland"

This is my second attempt to start watching "Homeland," the much awarded, much praised Showtime drama that became a great big deal when it premiered two years ago. The first time around, I watched the free episode that was released when the show first premiered. Not impressed, I didn't give it another thought until all the accolades started rolling in and I started getting recommendations from friends. This time around, I got through another episode, but I still have no desire to go any further. To put it bluntly, the show bothers me on several levels.

Damian Lewis stars as Sergeant Nicholas Brody, a Marine who was held captive by Al Qaeda for eight years before being rescued and returned to the United States. Worried that Brody might have been compromised during his time as a POW, a CIA intelligence officer, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) begins a one-woman campaign to watch his every move with the help of the CIA's surveillance equipment. She spends much of the first two episodes installing and then utilizing all manner of hidden cameras and microphones to spy on Brody, his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin), and their two children. When she's not doing that, she's busy trying to justify her actions and the intense level fo scrutiny to her boss, David Estes (David Harewood) and her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). Carrie's ultimate goal is to track down the terrorist Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban), who Brody was in contact with during his imprisonment.

I don't have an issue with the basics of this premise. The subject matter is timely and the ideas are intriguing. However, I have no patience with the typical, unrealistic complications that have been included to add more drama. It's not enough that Carrie is an underdog at the CIA, obsessing over a threat that only she seems to believe is there. No, she has to be bipolar and emotionally unstable too, constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown. Sure, it's believable that Jessica Brody would have had an affair that now has to be kept under wraps since her husband has returned from the dead. But did the affair have to be with his very best friend Captain Faber (Diego Klattenhoff)? I found it difficult to watch these episodes of "Homeland" and not see all the seams and the structuring, all the little things designed to make the show more tense and exciting, while at the same time making it feel like generic Hollywood product, completely undermining its believability.

I think part of the problem is that I know that this isn't how intelligence gathering really works, and it's jarring to see the procedures being flaunted so flagrantly left and right. I have this problem with police and lawyer shows too, though my brain has learned to treat them as fantasy after years and years of exposure. "Homeland," however, makes many overtures toward being more realistic than other spy media, but it doesn't make quite enough of them. When I'm watching it, I'm stuck in this odd mental place between the starkly candid "Zero Dark Thirty" and the obviously fantastical James Bond movies, not clear on how much real world logic is applicable to the events I'm seeing unfold. The universe seems similar to the dodgy one that "24" used to inhabit, with more nudity and profanity because this is a premium cable show. I don't think the adult content helps much. It just makes the whole story feel more tawdry and salacious.

I can see how "Homeland" could get much, much better, and I'm sure that it does eventually. However, I find myself totally disinterested in what it's shaping up to be. To me, "Homeland" looks like another paranoid, gung-ho military fantasy about chasing down mysterious terrorist threats and unraveling plots set in motion by evil foreigners - and like so many other films and television shows in the same vein, it feels exploitative, reductive, fear-mongering, xenophobic, and downright distasteful at times. I find it very hard to get any entertainment value out of this as a result. There's too much focus on visceral thrills and emotional turmoil, to the point where the elevated tensions feel very artificial and contrived. Playing up and twisting real-world fears about terrorism like this makes me extremely uncomfortable, especially where there's no grounding context to speak of, and the subject matter is such sensitive stuff. I'm guessing the story will get more nuanced, but the terrible old cliches are killing it right now.

What's worse, I don't find a single character likeable or intriguing enough to want to see more of. Sure, I like all the actors involved here, and I'm thrilled for Claire Danes that she got to sink her teeth into such a substantial role at last. She's great as Carrie Mathison. However, I have no interest in watching Carrie Mathison continue to obsess about Sergeant Brody. I don't care what happens to him or his wife or the kids who look nothing like their mother. The only character I find sympathetic is one of Carrie's intelligence assets, who is almost certainly going to get herself killed off soon in a way that imparts the maximum amount of trauma and guilt on Carrie. And you know what? I don't particularly want to watch that happen. Maybe after I finish off a few more shows and I'm in the mood for something darker I can try to suck it up and tackle "Homeland" again.

But not today.
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