Homeland, Season 1 Episode 6 – "The Good Soldier"

Review of Homeland's sixth episode, "The Good Soldier," behind the cut. No lie.

Homeland, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Blind Spot"

Observe closely as I interrogate Homeland's fifth episode, "Blind Spot," behind the cut.

Best TV Episodes, October 2011

I've decided to kick off a new feature wherein, on the first day of each month, I go through and rank and give some brief (spoiler-free) thoughts on my ten favorite television episodes that aired over the last month, plus pick a few runners-up. I can't watch everything, so I make no claim of this being any kind of definitive guide, but I thought it would be a fun way to organize my thoughts and share them at the same time, and maybe even talk a little about some shows I otherwise don't much.

Keep in mind that there's no "only one episode per show" rule in effect, so it's entirely possible that a few shows may dominate the top ten any given month. I may be a liberal, but the Tea Party should approve of this feature: there is no sharing the wealth here.

Runners-Up:

17. The Vampire Diaries, Season 3 Episode 5 – "The Reckoning" 16. Parks and Recreation, Season 4 Episode 5 – "Meet 'N' Greet" 15. Revenge, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Guilt" 14. Boardwalk Empire, Season 2 Episode 2 – "Ourselves Alone" 13. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 4 – "Semper I" 12. Parenthood, Season 3 Episode 4 – "Clear Skies From Here on Out" 11. Community, Season 3 Episode 5 – "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps"

Top Ten:

10. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Blind Spot"

Last Sunday's Homeland did a great job further cementing the show as, as I labeled it in my pilot review, the thinking man's 24. It excels at depicting espionage, intelligence gathering, interrogation, and other anti-terrorism activities in a way that adheres a million times more closely to reality, and continues to move the plot quickly yet patiently forward. I plan a full review of this episode in a day or two, so I'll leave it at that.

9. Breaking Bad, Season 4 Episode 12 – "End Times"

I mentioned in my Breaking Bad season four review that I found this episode arguably the weakest of the final act of the season, with a closing scene that seemed to take a certain character from smart to psychic. But, just as your favorite food slightly misprepared is still probably preferable to most anything else, problematic Breaking Bad is still Breaking Bad.

8. Parks and Recreation, Season 4 Episode 3 – "Born & Raised"

Joan Callamezzo is one of Parks and Recreation's great secret weapons, always hilarious but never overused and made stale (her talk show also anchored one of the funniest scenes of one of the funniest episodes of the series, "Media Blitz"), and she makes her season four debut to huge laughs and a really well-structured, interconnected plot. An all-around great episode for Leslie's character development and Ben being hilarious, because Adam Scott is always hilarious.

7. Parenthood, Season 3 Episode 5 – "Nora"

Parenthood is one of the most difficult shows on TV to define my enjoyment of, because the show is, at its heart, about decently well-off people having mostly small-scale, quickly resolved first world problems that have no impact whatsoever on the world at large. But showrunner Jason Katims (also behind Friday Night Lights) has a deft, borderline-magic touch for making these people so likable and their issues so compelling regardless that I end pretty much every episode with a goofy grin on my face. "Nora" was simply the goofy grinniest of October.

6. Boss, Season 1 Episode 1 – "Listen"

The second-best pilot of the fall and one of the best of year, Boss, the story of a fictitious Chicago mayor and the machinations surrounding the office, is dense, brainy, literate television, hugely stylish and theatrical but with a thick undercurrent of realpolitik running through it. At showing the corrupting power of politics it excels far beyond the recent George Clooney film The Ides of March, and Kelsey Grammer is so ferocious as the titular boss that he damn near scrubbed the residual nightmares of his recent sitcom Hank from my mind.

5. Boardwalk Empire, Season 2 Episode 5 – "Gimcrack and Bunkum"

Long-simmering tensions between two characters come to a perfect boil, series dark horse Richard Harrow gets an awesome, actor-friendly showcase, and there's not one but two scenes of gruesome, beyond-the-pale violence. Hands down the best episode of the season, and one of the best of the series since the pilot; a sweaty, heart-pounding episode of a show that can occasionally feel cold and detached.

4. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 3 – "Clean Skin"

Effectively the third act and climax of the first act of Homeland's debut season, "Clean Skin" may be in certain ways the least cerebral Homeland yet, but it's also the most tense and thrilling, with one particularly shocking moment that will make almost anyone watching jump. It's the episode of Homeland where it's most evident the show is run by two of the same guys as 24, but without ever giving into that show's baser instincts.

3. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 1 – "Pilot"

Homeland's pilot, for my money, jumps ahead of the (both now deceased, the former more tragically than the latter) The Chicago Code and Lights Out and stands behind only Game of Thrones as having the best pilot of the year. While it does a great job laying the show's groundwork as a terrorism thriller, its true accomplishment is building its two key figures, Claire Danes' Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis's Nicholas Brody, into startlingly rich, compelling, three-dimensional characters within the space of one hour. Watching Danes in this episode was the first time I was riveted watching an actor in a new series this fall.

2. Breaking Bad, Season 4 Episode 13 – "Face Off"

As perfect a fourth season finale as I think any of us could have hoped for a few months back, "Face Off" is explosively tense, violent, satisfying, and just plain climactic television, bringing tons of plot threads to their conclusions and showing an awesome, wicked delight at sending the show's premise spinning in a wildly new direction. (The episode is also surprisingly funny at points, particularly when Hector is spelling things out with his bell.) It doesn't necessarily contain Bryan Cranston's greatest performance of the season, but it does take the character into fascinating new territory, one where they now might as well go ahead and retitle the show Broke Bad. The stage is well set for a terrific fifth and final season next year.

1. Community, Season 3 Episode 4 – "Remedial Chaos Theory"

The first two seasons of Community each have a pair of episodes that loom tall and monstrously above the rest as little 22-minute comedy masterpieces among the best television has ever seen. Season one had "Modern Warfare" and "Contemporary American Poultry." Season two had "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design." And now season three is halfway to the same place with "Remedial Chaos Theory," a blast of dizzyingly clever comedic brilliance that singlehandedly makes almost all of the tens of thousands of sitcom episodes that have come before look lethargic and unambitious in comparison.

It has a hugely clever and perfectly-executed central gimmick, does terrific character work spanning the entire cast, is loaded with uproarious jokes, and has as heartwarming an ending as anyone could hope for, one that filled me with warm fuzzies that even Parks and Recreation at its best struggles to measure up to. If Community gives us just two or three more episodes on the level of this and the other four I mentioned before series' end, Dan Harmon can look back on a life's work and consider himself one of comedy's great architects.

Homeland, Season 1 Episode 4 — "Semper I"

I've decided to, in addition to my NBC Thursday night sitcom roundups, start doing episode-by-episode reviews of a few other shows. For now I'm starting with Homeland and Chuck and adding Spartacus and Game of Thrones when they return next year. I toyed with also doing Parenthood, but, although I really like Parenthood (more than Homeland and Chuck, even), I'm worried there wouldn't be much to say after each episode other than "Yep, that was pleasant." But I could always change my mind, and could always opt to add other new shows as well. I'm volatile as fuck!

But for now let's focus in on Homeland's fourth episode, "Semper I." Review behind the cut, lest the uninitiated be callously spoiled.

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Homeland

The show: Homeland, Sundays on Showtime

The premise in ten words or less? CIA agent believes rescued American POW may have been turned.

Any good? Homeland is really, really good, something I was worried I wouldn't have the pleasure of saying about any new series this fall. It doesn't have an obscene budget or do anything particularly flashy to achieve its goodness, it just plain puts in the work, delivering a complex, fascinating story, well-defined and very well-acted characters, real stakes, real thrills, real edge, real mystery, and striking contemporary sociopolitical relevance in what it says about the invasion of privacy in the post-9/11 era.

The show is primarily about two people who only very briefly interact in the pilot: CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, and U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, played by Band of Brothers' Damian Lewis, who has just been rescued after eight years of captivity in Iraq. Problem is that, while on site in Iraq before getting benched in Langley for her erratic behavior, Carrie got a tip that an American prisoner of war had been turned by Al-Qaeda, and Brody is the only American POW who has been found since then.

The government intends to utilize Brody as a media-friendly symbolic hero, so Carrie, left out in the cold, conducts a one-woman operation to discover if he's truly gone bad or not. While Brody either readjusts to domestic life with his now-alien family (including a young son with no memory of him whatsoever) or pretends to do so while plotting terrorist action, Carrie has cameras installed all through his house and holes up in her ratty apartment obsessively watching everything that goes down in the Brody household, from meals to conversations to Brody fucking his wife, eyes peeled for any hint of terrorist sympathy or activity. And things only get more fucked up from there!

The best way I can sum up the series is as 24 meets The Conversation meets The Manchurian Candidate, or perhaps simply as the thinking man's 24. That isn't a slam on 24, exactly – I've seen every episode of 24 in existence – but simply acknowledgement that even at its best that series was more or less a cartoon that existed entirely for the immediate base thrill. Homeland shares much with 24, including showrunner Howard Gordon, writer / producer Alex Gansa, composer Sean Callery, and season-spanning anti-terrorism storylines, but it's a more patient, more subtle, more intelligent series, one that approaches homeland security in a realistic manner and has no reliance on weekly gunfights or car chases to be nervy and thrilling.

Now, if you've seen Damian Lewis as Dick Winters in Band of Brothers, you don't need me to tell you that he's really good (on the other hand, if you've only seen him in Dreamcatcher, you probably do), giving a performance that befits the uncertain, mysterious nature of his character's true intentions. Firefly's Morena Baccarin brings wounded cautiousness edged with hope as Brody's wife Jessica, while Mandy Patinkin is gravitastic as Carrie's CIA superior Saul Berenson, who is less than approving of her methods. The rest of the cast also does good work, even the Brody kids, but the show's true secret weapon is Claire Danes as Carrie.

When I mentioned above that things just get more fucked up, what I was alluding to is the pilot's eventual reveal that Carrie is crazy. And when I say crazy, I don't mean neurotic or even irrationally intense like Jack Bauer (although she is the latter to some extent), I mean the character is literally crazy; she requires daily anti-psychotic medication to function in society. While not a true villain protagonist in the manner of Tony Soprano or Breaking Bad's Walter White – she believes everything she's doing to be for the good of her country, and as we don't yet know the truth of Brody, it could well be – Carrie Mathison is a dark, disturbing, fascinating figure, probably my favorite new TV character of the fall, and Danes is a revelation in the part.

Everything about Danes' performance is brilliantly edgy and tense, and, while spying on the Brody household for long, silent stretches, she says more with her eyes and body language than most other TV actors could with pages of monologues. Little things like her looking up when someone says her name, the way she makes eye contact, and her vaguely erratic movement are disquieting in this wonderfully subtle way I can't even define. There is absolutely no trace of Danes' angsty high schooler from My So-Called Life or celestial princess from Stardust here. It's a transformation that should sweep Emmy off its feet.

Also, I really hope that at some point during the season Carrie runs out of her anti-psychotic meds at a crucial juncture and can't get more, because, much as I appreciate the subtle tightrope of Danes' performance now, there's definitely a side of me that wants to see her dial it up to eleven for at least an episode.

There's still other subplots I've barely touched on, including Jessica Brody trying to hit undo on various parts of the life she made after assuming her long-missing husband was dead and the CIA's hunt for the show's big bad (and Osama bin Laden stand-in) Abu Nazir. Needless to say, this show is heaving with content from the word go, yet it still manages to keep it all feeling sleek and streamlined. It's equal and equally skillfully part character drama, espionage thriller, conspiracy thriller, and terrorism thriller. And in case you need some of that lowest common denominator good stuff to give you a final push, there's f-words, nudity, and a guy gets beaten to death.

I do have some concern about the future of Homeland, namely how and if they can sustain the show into a second season and beyond. They could resolve the stories of Brody and Abu Nazir and have Carrie confront a new terrorist threat ala 24, but that could get generic. Alternately, they could extend the mystery of Brody's allegiance beyond the first twelve episodes, but that could get tired (and Lost has made me permanently wary of series-spanning arcs). But while I'm nervously curious about what Homeland will look like a year from now, for the time being ignore my petty pessimism and watch it, because it's really damn good.

Will I watch again? They have me for at least the first season, guaranteed. Beyond that we'll have to play it by ear, but if the rest of the season is paced and structured in a way befitting the quality of the pilot and climaxes in a suitably unpredictable yet thrilling fashion, they'll have me for good.

Premise: A-

Execution: A-

Performances: A

Potential: A

Overall: