# Homeland: most overrated show ever?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 28, 2012, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372 "2012-12-28T11:23:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/1 "2012-12-28T11:23:36Z")
I finally watched (most of) the first season to find out what the fuss is all about, and I was underwhelmed. The first few episodes were pretty good, but then it devolved into soap opera level contrivance and twists and double twists for their own sake. I guess the thin veneer of solid acting and production values has a lot of people fooled into thinking this is more than pulpy airport fiction.
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### Author:  [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/2 "2012-12-28T12:01:49Z")
I liked it alot, but I started watching it before I heard of the Hype
what shows do you like?
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### Author:  [@Premislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Premislaus)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/3 "2012-12-28T13:06:03Z")
If you think the first season eventually devolved into stupidity, don’t even try to watch the second.
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### Author:  [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/4 "2012-12-28T21:47:10Z")
I never know what other people expect from television series, but I think Homeland is one of the greats!
If you have ever read any espionage/spy thriller novels, you will find similar plots and twists and surprises. Are these “real”? Well - some of it could be, other parts might stretch the imagination, but that is why they are considered fictional entertainment and not documentaries or historical bio pics.
I would venture to guess that many might have thought of Sopranos as an over-the-top mafia soap opera, or think The Wire was just some urban street pulp fiction about low-lifes - but you either buy into the premise or you don’t.
So, still not sure what you were expecting in a series based around a terrorist/mole/CIA and politics, but I think Homeland has done an excellent job in keeping the action moving at a good clip, and throwing in some unexpected surprises along the way.
But hey, each to their own. I personally hate any films/series with zombies or vampires and consider them utterly ridiculous - but they get good box office and high ratings, so what do I know?
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/5 "2012-12-28T23:46:14Z")
I don’t read espionage/spy thrillers. That’s totally cool for anyone who does get into that stuff, but I was led to believe, with all the hype from critics and the awards, that this was on a higher plane than a book you’d find at an airport gift shop or wrapped up in a beach blanket next to the suntan lotion.
> [@](#):
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> what shows do you like?
My top five shows currently airing (that is, not yet done with their run even if they are on hiatus ATM) would be _Breaking Bad, Girls, Louie, Community,_ and _Parenthood_. Past faves include _Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The Larry Sanders Show, The Office (UK), Da Ali G. Show, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, In Treatment, The Wire_ (though I have only watched the first season so far), _Firefly, Stargate Universe,_ and the first season and a half\* of _BSG_.
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> If you think the first season eventually devolved into stupidity, don’t even try to watch the second.
This is what I’ve been reading! I sort of sniffed things out online to see if maybe it got better in the second season (which sometimes happens, like with _Parks and Recreation_); but it seems there are a lot of people who are like “I used to be able to take this show seriously, but now it’s gotten way absurd”. So, yeah, I figure it would just be even more ridiculous now if I delved back into it, kind of like that show \*Revenge \*(which my wife–she of summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and two master’s degrees, yet–somehow loves, and I have to stifle snickers at when I happen to be in the room while she watches it).
* * *
\*Through “Resurrection Ship (Part 2)”, which is where I would implore anyone to stop if they were checking out this show for the first time.
ETA: I did think the first half of the first season of \*24 \*was pretty cool, but that it got really stupid and overly twisty after that (the Nina “reveal” was a huge shark jump IMO); so this is just par for the course I guess since it’s the same crowd making it from what I hear.
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### Author:  [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/6 "2012-12-29T00:50:11Z")
I don’t know. I think maybe you were expecting something that Homeland wasn’t trying to deliver. The first season was about Carrie dealing with having a mental breakdown, and as such, did a good job of painting that picture. It’s not a procedural. It’s about the people, and the characters in the first season were some of the most nuanced and well developed that I have come across on television in recent years. It may not really have been realism, but that clearly wasn’t the point. It was about conveying a sense of mania and panic so that you can get a look inside Carrie’s head as a person on the edge of a psychotic break. If you don’t dig that, that’s cool, but take it on its own terms before you decide it’s over rated.
Also, Homeland featured (and continues to feature even though season 2 sort of lost its way) some of the finest acting I have ever seen on television. Mandy Patinkin deserves every award they can throw at him for what he is doing on that show just with his beard, and the rest of the cast is doing a stellar job as well. Claire Danes is quite possibly the most gifted actress of her generation, which is saying something.
What do you mean when you say it’s “soap opera level contrivance and twists and double twists for their own sake”? It has been a while since I watched the first season but I recall everything being very logically constructed with one even following the next fairly sensically. The twists were always of the “I didn’t think that would happen yet” variety not of the “what?!” variety. The outlandish stuff all had to do with Carrie’s illness, but again, that’s sort of by design since it is the portait of a person with severe bipolard disorder being pushed to the edge of her sanity.
Otherwise I think their abilty to create an edge of you seat thriller in an even slightly unconventional molde is impressive. I mean, if I am remembering right, they tell you Brody is a terrorist in the first episode and never \*ever \*contradict that. It’s a neat trick that they were able to do that and then keep the suspence up for a whole 13 hours of TV.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/7 "2012-12-29T01:39:15Z")
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> I think maybe you were expecting something that Homeland wasn’t trying to deliver.
That’s entirely possible, but the critics and the awards made me think otherwise. Not the showrunners’ fault, I suppose.
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> The first season was about Carrie dealing with having a mental breakdown
Maybe the very end of the season was about that, but before then the only level at which they showed anything about mental problems was her periodically popping a pill and talking with her sister about her condition. “Show, don’t tell”, was not followed for most of the season.
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> It’s not a procedural.
You say that like I was looking for a procedural when those are a genre I generally detest. I have seen enough of them though, at older relatives’ homes, to say that part of the problem is that it does in some ways resemble a glossed-up, sexed up, pay-cable version of a CBS procedural like _NCIS_. Don’t all those shows have an older, slightly curmudgeonish (but with a heart of gold) mentor figure like Saul?
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> It was about conveying a sense of mania and panic so that you can get a look inside Carrie’s head as a person on the edge of a psychotic break. If you don’t dig that, that’s cool…
I would dig that, but it wasn’t what I saw in the nine episodes I watched. Lodge Kerrigan has made a couple indie films that effectively explore that territory (\*Keane \*and _Clean, Shaven_); I didn’t see anything like that in _Homeland_.
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> Also, Homeland featured (and continues to feature even though season 2 sort of lost its way) some of the finest acting I have ever seen on television.
Good acting requires good scriptwriting (including consistent characterisation) to have any real meaning. There have been strong moments viewed on their own, but wild plot twists and inconsistent or illogical behaviour to advance the plot have undermined the characterisation and thus my appreciation for the acting.
Take Patinkin for instance. He is enormously appealing, I agree. But for several episodes Saul freaks out when Carrie steps even moderately out of line; then when she admits the most egregious act of all (sleeping with Brody), he pretty much shrugs and pats her on the shoulder. Danes’ Carrie is savvy and very careful, until she needlessly spills the beans at the cabin that Brody is a target of investigation–and compounds the error by admitting it’s just her theory and the rest of the CIA doesn’t buy into it. Wha?? Then Brody goes home and cries, as though he is genuinely wounded by Carrie’s suspicions; the next episode reveals she was right all along, thus all the emotional meaning of that performance is sucked out.
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> What do you mean when you say it’s “soap opera level contrivance and twists and double twists for their own sake”?
I’ll let a far better writer than I, James Poniewozik of _TIME_, take this one–even though he clearly still likes the show more than I do:
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> So to begin this write-up of Homeland honestly, I must go back to my writeup of the stunning “The Weekend,” about whose events I wrote: “As with any mystery-based serial drama on TV now, you can work yourself up anticipating the next triple-twist and quadruple-cross, but for now I think Homeland has earned our trust that it will not collapse into the constant switcheroo mania of a latter season of 24.”\*
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> Well, if my judges’ notes are correct, that did appear to be a triple-twist with one-and-a-half rotations in the last moments of “Achilles Heel,” setting up a potential quadruple-cross on the landing. As we saw in the final scene, Brody—who seemingly had been exonerated in that breathtaking everything-on-the-table scene with Carrie—is in fact in league (one way or another) with Abu Nazir after all, seemingly along with his fellow captive Walker.
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> _Or is he!_ He’s been lying to Carrie and everyone after all. _Or has he!_ Now there’s no one we can trust except Carrie and Saul _Or can we!_
Tiresome.
Then of course there’s the aforementioned fellow POW and good friend Walker, who Brody thought he had beat to death but actually hadn’t (classic soap opera plotting there), who showed up panhandling right in front of the U.S. Capitol (LMAO). Oh, or the season finale (I didn’t watch it, but read spoilers), in which Carrie realises she was right all along just before she conveniently gets amnesia–another trusty soap opera plot device.
Twists and turns are supposed to be exciting, but it’s kind of like stores having BIG SALES: over time, as everyone tries to compete with everyone else’s “sales”, they become commonplace, people expect them, and they become routine, part of the landscape.
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> I mean, if I am remembering right, they tell you Brody is a terrorist in the first episode and never ever contradict that.
Sure they do. Having Walker be “the POW who was actually turned”, and therefore having Saul and Carrie declare him innocent, but then later saying “oh, btw they were both turned”, was a cheat toward the audience.
\*I think it’s worth going back to that earlier review in more detail, to note more fully just how much Poniewozik did get the rug pulled out from under him:
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> In a wonderfully tense and dense download of confession and information at the end of Brody and Carrie’s weekend getaway, we learn that Brody was not turned by al Qaeda,\* that his conversion to Islam was real but nothing more than that and that the Manchurian-candidate prisoner is in fact his recently eulogized buddy Walker. Further, Brody learns that the CIA, specifically Carrie, suspects him of treason and has been invading his privacy in the most intrusive way, alienating him from the feds just as he, presumably, would become immensely valuable in an investigation.
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> \*(Yes, yes: Or so he says. One can add that qualifier in front of pretty much everything revealed in this episode. Saul got Aileen to identify Walker as the U.S. prisoner who had been turned—or so he says, &c. As with any mystery-based serial drama on TV now, you can work yourself up anticipating the next triple-twist and quadruple-cross, but for now I think Homeland has earned our trust that it will not collapse into the constant switcheroo mania of a latter season of 24.)
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### Author:  [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/8 "2012-12-29T02:35:58Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
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> You say that like I was looking for a procedural when those are a genre I generally detest.
That wasn’t my intention, I was just taking a guess at what you might have expected since what they presented didn’t seem to be it. I wasn’t trying to box you into a particualr genre, I was just trying to create a contrast with the genre that it was using as inspiration. And I agree, it uses the trappings of a procedural. The “twists” all come from playing against what you would end up expecting in that situation.
I am going to rearrange some of your post at this point.
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> I’ll let a far better writer than I, James Poniewozik of _TIME_, take this one–even though he clearly still likes the show more than I do:
I never once had that reaction to the show. The reveal of Walker, Brody protesting his innocence, none of that changed the fact that they had told us that Brody was a terrorist already. The most they ever did was have me doubt for an episode, but watching it in its initial run I was always as certain as Carrie that she was right and everything else was just the plot being revealed fully. So maybe that’s where I was watching a different show.
[quote]
Take Patinkin for instance. He is enormously appealing, I agree. But for several episodes Saul freaks out when Carrie steps even moderately out of line; then when she admits the most egregious act of all (sleeping with Brody), he pretty much shrugs and pats her on the shoulder. [/qutoe]
I can’t speak to that specifically since it has been too long since I watched the original series, but my memory of that is different. That said, I tend to seperate a performance from the writing. For me they are very different things so let’s move on to Dane’s.
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> Danes’ Carrie is savvy and very careful, until she needlessly spills the beans at the cabin that Brody is a target of investigation–and compounds the error by admitting it’s just her theory and the rest of the CIA doesn’t buy into it. Wha?? Then Brody goes home and cries, as though he is genuinely wounded by Carrie’s suspicions; the next episode reveals she was right all along, thus all the emotional meaning of that performance is sucked out.
This is where I would like to go back and point to my previous thesis that the show is about someone with bipolar disorder starting to go off the edge. The whole thing at the cabin, the whole cabin trip, is Carrie starting her breakdown. I never took Brody crying as him being hurt by her accusations, but again, I always believed him to be a terrorist so, different show.
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> Then of course there’s the aforementioned fellow POW and good friend Walker, who Brody thought he had beat to death but actually hadn’t (classic soap opera plotting there),
I disagree. It would be soap opera if Walker’s death was important to the audience. It wasn’t. It was only important to Brody. The important point is that Brody had been made to think he commited attrocities already, making it easier for him to kill himself and commit further attrocities. Walker not having been killed does several important things for Nazir and makes logical sense if you buy the terrorist plot at all.
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> Oh, or the season finale (I didn’t watch it, but read spoilers), in which Carrie realises she was right all along just before she conveniently gets amnesia–another trusty soap opera plot device.
This isn’t really what happened and the resolution of the ending is one of the things season 2 did really well. It was more like The Wire where the good guy loses because there are too many cards stacked against him and not enough time.
I would need to rewatch to get into it further, but I think there is a real difference between using familiar tropes to create cognative dissonance in an audience and playing on old familiar cliches. You say they are doing the latter, I say the former. I am probably not going to convince you otherwise.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/9 "2012-12-29T03:46:18Z")
Don’t you think at all that the more widespread critiques of Season 2’s wild implausibilities retroactively vindicate my perspective on S1? Maybe my BS detector is set to a more sensitive setting than most people’s (and if so, I’m sure it’s due in no small part to getting badly burned by LOST).
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### Author:  [@Rollo\_Tomasi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rollo_Tomasi)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/10 "2012-12-29T04:02:33Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> Don’t you think at all that the more widespread critiques of Season 2’s wild implausibilities retroactively vindicate my perspective on S1?
No, because they’re talking about season 2, and you’re talking about season 1. It might be a serialized show, but season 1 is surprisingly self-contained, with its own arcs in terms of both plot and characters. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine, but think of it like this: just because **The Godfather III** was bad doesn’t mean that the first two weren’t great.
I’m really surprised that you don’t see Carrie’s mental state as a key part of the show. For me, that’s always the specter hovering in the background. When she starts to get really revved up about something and Saul has to talk her off the ledge, that’s her having a manic episode. Emotionally, she’s all over the map, and other characters sometimes walk on eggshells around her and question her fitness to do her job when she’s not around. During the first season, I was constantly wondering if she was going to be pushed over the edge by the emotional toll of her job and by the decisions (both good and bad) that she had to make. Is she doing this because she really thinks it’s the right thing to do, or is she having some kind of emotional break, and if so, is it going to push her over the edge this time? That’s absolutely the core of **Homeland** for me.
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### Author:  [@Rollo\_Tomasi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rollo_Tomasi)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/11 "2012-12-29T04:08:44Z")
And just for the record, I thought the first half of the second season was terrific. Cracks definitely started to show (and widen) in the second half, but that first half is easily equal to the first season, IMO.
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### Author:  [@Vector\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vector_1)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/12 "2012-12-29T04:42:27Z")
I did not read the replies so I have no idea if my experience resembles what some others may have felt.
I accidentally found the final episode of season 2 while channel surfing. I had no idea why everything happened the way it did without a back story history, so I was intrigued.
As a result I watched the episodes of both seasons. Some episodes are better than others, but overall it is an interesting show. I am not really sure where they can go with it now, but I look forward to next season to find out.
So while the series is no St. Elsewhere, it is not bad either.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/13 "2012-12-29T06:29:52Z")
> [@](#):
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> When she starts to get really revved up about something and Saul has to talk her off the ledge, that’s her having a manic episode.
Sure seemed to me more like Carrie was always right and Saul was always wrong (though understandably so). I’d be revved up too!
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> Emotionally, she’s all over the map, and other characters sometimes walk on eggshells around her and question her fitness to do her job when she’s not around.
Except she’s actually doing her job better than they are. How is this different from Jack Bauer, not diagnosed with anything but always in trouble and seen as unfit, but who is actually more on top of things than anyone else?
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> So while the series is no St. Elsewhere,
I loved that show way back when! I recall very little about it though and am not sure if I’d still feel the same now.
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> it is not bad either.
If that was sort of the general consensus on the show, or there was a wide variety of opinion about it, I wouldn’t make it my mission to be the wet blanket for everyone who liked the show. I generally leave people alone about their shows–I know someone who loves her some David Boreanaz on _Bones_, and hey: go for it, who am I to judge right? But what sticks in my craw in this case is that this show gets **so** many awards and plaudits–it’s really treated as the second coming–and it is just not all that.
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### Author:  [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/14 "2012-12-29T15:31:00Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> Don’t you think at all that the more widespread critiques of Season 2’s wild implausibilities retroactively vindicate my perspective on S1? Maybe my BS detector is set to a more sensitive setting than most people’s (and if so, I’m sure it’s due in no small part to getting badly burned by LOST).
No. Season 2 was about Brody in the same way that season 1 was about Carrie and I don’t think they knew what do with his family to get them to where they needed to be by the end of the season without doing some stupid stuff, and that is unfortunate. It felt as though there wasn’t really a plan for season 2, while in contrast season 1 fit together like a novel with every piece having a place and purpose and with everything being through plotted and set up several episodes in advance.
In that was Season 2 was a lot like Lost (which never had a plan) and that’s a bit disapointing. It was fun, but got sort of fluffy. Season 1 still holds up in my mind, but I may have to go watch it again to be sure. You have such a different impression of it than I do that I am starting to doubt my own memory.
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### Author:  [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/15 "2012-12-29T17:26:00Z")
I’m with you. Watched the first season and finished it just out of habit, no interest in continuing.
For me I think there’s a fine line between “interesting” and “ludicrous”. A story has to be just out of the ordinary enough to be interesting, but not so zany with plot twists that there are no longer any “stakes”. \* Mad Men\* failed the first test, in that the story seemed plausible and the setting realistic, but I just don’t give a shit about the story or the characters enough to keep watching. _Homeland_ fails the second test, in that there are so many wacky twists and implausible turns of events that the story was no longer interesting - if absolutely anything can happen, then there is no more reason to care about anything in the show.
As an example _Breaking Bad_ manages to walk this line fairly successfully.
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### Author:  [@Vector\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vector_1)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/16 "2012-12-29T18:10:41Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> I loved that show way back when! I recall very little about it though and am not sure if I’d still feel the same now.
>
> If that was sort of the general consensus on the show, or there was a wide variety of opinion about it, I wouldn’t make it my mission to be the wet blanket for everyone who liked the show. I generally leave people alone about their shows–I know someone who loves her some David Boreanaz on _Bones_, and hey: go for it, who am I to judge right? But what sticks in my craw in this case is that this show gets **so** many awards and plaudits–it’s really treated as the second coming–and it is just not all that.
I believe St. Elsewhere is still popular in reruns and will stand the test of time. It was so well written, acted, and character driven, it won numerous awards despite not having top ratings for the masses. Then again shows like Two and a Half Men and something called Honey Boo Boo(sp?) seem to appeal to the masses, so go figure.
As to sticking in your craw, I understand what you mean, hence my comparison to a show like St. Elsewhere that was certainly worthy of the accolades bestowed upon it. Homeland is no St. Elsewhere, so no matter how good it may be, that much is certain.
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### Author:  [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/17 "2012-12-29T19:26:44Z")
> [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](#):
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> if absolutely anything can happen, then there is no more reason to care about anything in the show.
This is the part I am confused by. Not anything can happen. In season 1 the events that did happen are the only logical way things could have played out. Again, Brody was shown to be a terrorist from episode 1. Everything else was just filtering through the shower of information. It’s one of the things that I thought was so brilliant about the show, and I am surprised that it is being called out as having crazy out of left field twists and turns.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/18 "2012-12-29T19:30:34Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> I finally watched (most of) the first season to find out what the fuss is all about, and I was underwhelmed. The first few episodes were pretty good, but then it devolved into soap opera level contrivance and twists and double twists for their own sake. I guess the thin veneer of solid acting and production values has a lot of people fooled into thinking this is more than pulpy airport fiction.
Can you give us some examples of what you consider to be good drama series?
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### Author:  [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2012, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/19 "2012-12-30T04:37:01Z")
I think the core of it remains very smart, but it suffers from the writers not being able to plan far enough ahead - S3 was only agreed mid way through S2, you can’t write like that.
The moral ambiguities are definitely cleverly drawn and take several shapes: Hey, you’re romantically rooting for an amoral (murder condoning, torturing, etc) woman and married, suicide vested Congressman - or is she working for the state terrorists and he …
You also have the weird stuff - Bradley Manning in the form of a blonde woman, Hezbollah bizarrely teaming up with Al-queda, a sulky, angsty teen who is literally the only moral compass of the whole piece …
It’s different, anyway.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2012, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/homeland-most-overrated-show-ever/645372/20 "2012-12-30T05:20:40Z")
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> In that was Season 2 was a lot like Lost (which never had a plan) and that’s a bit disapointing. It was fun, but got sort of fluffy. Season 1 still holds up in my mind, but I may have to go watch it again to be sure. You have such a different impression of it than I do that I am starting to doubt my own memory.
That might be a good idea. With both LOST and BSG, going back and reflecting on it I see the shark jumping coming a lot earlier than I was able to perceive at the time.
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> A story has to be just out of the ordinary enough to be interesting, but not so zany with plot twists that there are no longer any “stakes”. Mad Men failed the first test, in that the story seemed plausible and the setting realistic, but I just don’t give a shit about the story or the characters enough to keep watching.
Sounds like we have pretty similar sensibilities. I too found _Mad Men_ surprisingly uncompelling even as I can appreciate its very high level of attention to detail, good acting, gorgeous cinematography, etc. And I adore _Breaking Bad_.
**John Mace** , I detailed my tastes in TV up thread.
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