Excellent season finale after a couple of weak eps!
I’ll say it for you.
That was absolutely brilliant.
Bob Ducca, 'splain yourself.
The only part I guessed ahead of time (about 5 seconds ahead) was that Carrie would change her mind about leaving with Brody. I don’t see him leaving the country. Maybe long enough to grow a beard, but he won’t stay away.
Poor Dana. She knows that the confession is related to the prior attempt, but she can’t say so.
Great finale! I was a bit disappointed not to get any scene with Quinn reacting to what happened. You gotta wonder if he buys that Brody was responsible - if so, he’s feeling stupid!
Nice touch by Nazir getting vengeance for Brody’s betrayal by not only using his car for the bombing, but also releasing the tape of his martyrdom video. Or did he always plan on Brody being blamed, whether he stayed loyal or not?
Also, anybody else have mostly groundless but still little sneaking suspicions about Saul’s wife? Saul’s in charge, now she wants to come back…hmmmm! Lol, this show really brings out the paranoia!
Best spy/terrorism TV show ever - makes 24 look like a cartoon by comparison.
Holy shit, great finale! So is Saul going to nail Carry for getting Brody out of the country? He’s got to know she did with his body being unaccounted for. Plus, who else (besides Saul and Carry) is aware of the true timing of the martyr tape and the deal with Brody, with Estes and large proportion of the CIA getting taken out?
No, I think Saul’s probably smart enough to realize it wasn’t Brody, and was all a setup, specially if/when Carrie tells him how it went down.
As for his body being unaccounted for, as long as his name remains uncleared, and he’s thought to be the bomber, they can write it off as a suicide bombing (with support from the video) and his body was fully incinerated in the epicenter of the blast.
Quinn for sure, and maybe those other couple operatives, but I’m not sure about them.
At the cabin, Carrie took the bullets out of the gun and put the bullets into an Altoids tin (the curiously strong breath mint). Nothing ended up coming of it… yet… But I imagine it will come back up at some point.
Amazing finale. Didn’t Brody steal the list with an analysis of the most vulnerable targets for Abu Nazir earlier? Who wants to bet that “funeral of a statesman” is one of the targets on that list?
It was awfully convenient for Brody and Carrie to get away from the memorial service just at the right time wasn’t it? I think we’re supposed to think that Brody is being framed, but this show makes me doubt everything. If he was involved with the bomb, it wouldn’t have made sense to go to a room near the explosion, though.
Where were Carrie and Brody when the bomb went off? Was that Estes’ office? I’m amazed at the apparently complete lack of security at the CIA. They let visitors run loose in the building, nobody locks their office doors, you can drive an SUV right up to the front door and leave it there unattended…
Carrie has the best Visitors badge ever. She has somehow been able to wander unattended pretty much anywhere in the CIA building (often under the guise of going to the restroom). I thought it odd that the building seemed deserted when Carrie and Brody slipped away. I guess everyone in the CIA was at the memorial service (or watching a burial at sea).
Great show, though…
There are season finales that go out with a bang, and there are season finales that go out with a BANG!
Did Brody know or not? He says he didn’t know…but think about his last conversation with his daughter, and seeing the end of his relationship with his family and making sure they would all be taken care of and “giving them” to his buddy…does that sound like someone who just really had a bad day with that final scene at the CIA, or does that sound like somebody who might have been preparing for that final scene at the CIA?
Saul seems to know a bit more than he might be admitting to anyone…and now with his wife returning, what will that bring? What exactly was she doing over there again?
Poor Carrie…she is a nanothread away from having her last nerve snap. As an actress, she probably has to drink 15 Red Bulls before every scene now. Her blood pressure must be at Guinness Book of World Records levels now.
Oh sure, there are a couple of plot holes and nitpicks here and there, but as far as I am concerned, Homeland has now officially made it onto the list of one of the best series ever on TV - along with The Wire, Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under and those few other great shows I am forgetting off the top of my head.
In other words - I am a Homeland addict now and will be one of the millions tuning into the first episode of Season 3…which will most likely break many records for viewer numbers after others catch up with Seasons 1 and 2 and join in the audience.
I wonder how far in advance the writers have planned this series? At this fast and furious pace, how long can they keep this up?!
At any rate - I think I smell some new Golden Globes coming along for the series and actors of Homeland.
I’d have to watch again to see which one of them made the “let’s go” gesture first. I think it was Carrie.
I don’t think Brody was involved. I think he was well and truly finished with Nazir. Nazir had to threaten Carrie to get Brody to tinker with the VP’s pacemaker.
I think Dana knows the confession tape is from his earlier attempt. That’s the only reason for the writers to show Dana watching him get dressed and asking him about the time before, and the bomb. The first time, she saw him putting on his uniform. He was wearing his uniform in the tape.
I feel bad for Saul’s wife. She says “I’m coming back” and he says “Yes” and she looks like “Damn, I didn’t expect that.” It’s a nice counterpoint though. Saul gets a real life with someone he loves, and Carrie’s alone.
What in what language was Saul praying in the final scene? Was it a prayer?
It was Hebrew. The Mourners’ Kaddish is the Jewish prayer for the dead.
Yes, it does. It seems to me the writers are trying to directly implicate Brody while foreshadowing that it was someone else. It seems likely to me that the bomb was Quinn. He inexplicably let Brody live (considering nothing had really changed regarding what he signed on to do and the reasoning) and then disappeared for the rest of the episode. I believe he was conspicuously absent at the memorial service. Note that unless the writers are doing really cheap tricks it could not have been Brody. We saw him park the car then walk into the memorial service. He couldn’t have moved it.
She is some type of humanitarian, IIRC. I think the writers try to be cagey with all the peripheral characters just to seed doubt. I don’t think Saul really knows anything big or is the mole.
I like the show well enough, but I think you’re drastically overrating it. Based on the interview with the writers posted earlier I would say they’re pretentious and think they are way more clever than they actually are. Huge pot holes, inconsistencies, writing themselves into corners, characters doing things that make little sense, and just a lack of care for realism in the sense of getting details correct. The wandering around CIA headquarters and the whole premise of the show are two great examples. The CIA has no law enforcement authority whatsoever and can’t conduct operations like the ones depicted in the USA. I’m not just talking about things that are clearly illegal like the assassination, I’m talking about basic stuff like forensics on a crime scene, tapping phones of US citizens and politicians, and all the other covert operations they’re conducting inside the USA. At best they would have a liaison present to assist federal and local law enforcement. It seems that the writers use the CIA as a stand-in for all federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Maybe that was a decision based on budget?
In the one scene looking for Nazir, the guys with FBI jackets said they had been recalled to Langley… All the little things are actually easy to research, get correct, and depict without losing anything in the story.
They didn’t know if they were going to have another season for a while, so presumably not that far in advance.
Could be, but I’m okay with Quinn’s reason for not killing Brody. He was Adal’s man, not Estes’, wasn’t he?
Maybe the change came when Quinn watched Carrie and Brody together, acting like normal people, and Brody praying. If Brody was still a danger, Quinn wasn’t seeing it.
It’s good entertainment, which is about the best one can hope for in TV shows today. If the writers are churning out scripts that quickly, fact checking takes somewhat of a back seat. I agree there are some eyebrow raising scenes, particularly on the CIA compound, where people seem to move without challenge, and Carrie drives off with Brody immediately following a huge bomb blast. I’m pretty sure the place would have been locked down immediately. But for the sake of moving the plot along, I’m willing to look the other way.
As far as awards, I’d say that the scene between Carrie and Brody in the interrogation room earlier in the season would probably win an Emmy for them, even if the season wasn’t as stellar as season one. I hope Mandy Patinkin wins one this time out. He’s done a great job.
I’ve never seen such a silly show get such serious praise.
Homeland is about a half-step above a soap opera. It’s featherweight entertainment. Why critics fall down over each other trying to convince the world it’s a great show is mystery to me.
I’m not sure that matters… they probably planned to leave in advance. The key thing is who’s idea it was.
I’m back on the “great show” bandwagon … if only the story line of Carrie chasing the Minotaur (shout out to Jacob Clifton at TWoP) in the factory wasn’t so bad I’d feel alot better about myself.
The tunnels chase was unnecesary and kinda dumb, but it didn’t change anything fundamental about the plot. If the whole SWAT team was there and killed Nazir off the bat, the same sequence of events still happens. So you can’t ignore it and not have the plot change, which is nice. It’s always much worse when a dumb thing has to happen for the plot to advance.