Is "Homeland" the Future of Television?

By Spence Blazak

            Showtime’s Homeland has recently gone from obscurity to one of television’s biggest shows. This was spurred by its dethroning of Mad Men and Breaking Bad at the Emmy Awards, a recent plug from Barack Obama saying it is his favorite show, and the launch of its second season. Stars Damian Lewis and Claire Danes have been giving interviews left and right to big name media sources, and the Internet has dubbed the show “the future of television,” but is this really the case?

            Homeland follows the intertwined stories of Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody, played by Danes and Lewis respectively. Carrie is a CIA agent stationed in Baghdad who gets a tip that an American prisoner of war has been turned to the side of the world’s most dangerous terrorist Abu Nazir. A few months later, Marine Brody is found in a POW prison and returned home after 8 years in captivity. After attending Brody’s debriefing, Carrie is convinced that Brody is secretly a terrorist.

            So begins the tale of Homeland. It seems like the things that appeal to television junkies the most are its tight pacing, well developed characters, unavoidable plot points that are spaced out at the right amount, believable dialogue, and expert execution of the intellectual inner workings of government bureaucracy. Carrie’s battle with her near crippling bipolar problem is the best aspect of the show so far, giving her quest to prove Brody is a terrorist the kick in the face it needs to keep from being a clichéd snooze fest (like something on CBS).

But the real reason for most of this hype? People are probably just getting sick of the same two shows being considered television’s best so they are overlooking Homeland’s flaws and putting it on a pedestal. Dexter hasn’t been watchable since 2009, Game of Thrones is sublime but isn’t an original, and Walking Dead has been suffering from pacing issues and plot motivations that feel like they were WRITTEN by someone without a brain! Thank you, thank you, great to be here everybody, don’t forget to tip your waitress. Television people are tired of having Mad Men and Breaking Bad on the top of the heap, and are trying to move onto something fresh.

Homeland suffers from faults no different than most standard original dramas: unavoidably and unintentionally awkward family scenes with Brody and his family, Danes overacting gets kind of uncomfortable to watch at times, and one trick pony side characters are a bit cartoonish. The best two so far are the evil Vice President and Brody’s conspiracy theorist war buddy who so has so far appeared twice with both scenes ending in him calling the EXACT logistics of some intricate terrorist plot…then getting called crazy or punched in the face. This makes a man ask questions. Why is the Vice President so important? Why was the actual President only mentioned ONCE during the show so far? And who keeps inviting the conspiracy theory guy to hang out?

Don’t take this the wrong way, Homeland is a great show so far, but it’s just not the godsend that the media is making it out to be. Half of the show’s hype can be attributed to the relationship issues that television pundits are having with AMC’s best…and they might even be a little jealous that these shows just keep getting better with age while these television writers just keep getting fatter and more tightly shackled to the laptop in their mom’s basement. Televisions two best shows have their reputation for a reason, after all.

So far, Homeland has had a solid start to its second season, and its most recent episodes have taken it in an unpredictable direction, making it very interesting to see if the show can keep it up for the rest of the season. Who knows? By 2015, Homeland might be a Sunday night staple, and television writers might be trying to break up with it as well, for all the same and all the wrong reasons as Men and Bad: so they can begin courting some zesty, new show in a low cut red dress.