Homeland season 6 despite some fine moments is losing its mojo

Getting set to watch season 7 of Homeland (maybe) caught up by watching all of season 6 and was not inspired.  S6 is filmed mostly in NYC or in an imagined NYC when no one's caught in traffic and parking spaceship are always available when you need one.  Guessing that star Claire Danes may have requested a season in NYC to be w family? Anyway in part by moving the setting the series seems to lose its mojo in S6 - it only remotely feels like a CIA dram, which truly was its raison d'rtre. The first three seasons were entirely focused on the terrific Brodie story - hero or turncoat and if the later why? And is Danes/carrie Mathison deranged or a genius in suspecting the worst? Since Brodie's death the series has foundered, entangled in multiple plot strands and this is especially true in S: defense of a young man accused of terrorism, a bo,bing in manhattan, a black, ops team in a house in queens, the mental and physical decay of agent Quinn, a rush limbaugh -like character, and dar (f Murray Abraham) plotting for greater control of the CIA (btw if he's not the director what is he?). Central to it all as if these weren't enough plot lines (and I have left some out) is a pres elect Keane - Iranian ambassador in s4 - putting together her leadership team and getting counsel from Carrie. It appears the creators guessed wrong in having a female prez elect w a foreign policy background and a crisp demeanor - but they were adept enough to pivot mid season into a pres as female trump avatar replete w paranoia, fake news (in this case the news truly is fake) and  protestors chanting not my president. By the last two episodes w an assassination plot in the works that for some reason I still can't figure out involved a us senator I was really lost - and uninterested.  All this said the season does have some moments of tension and Danes remains the most expressive actor on tv - it's as if she could conduct an entire dialog via facial expressions alone.

Though episode 12 falls way off the pace, Homeland Season 5 is still worth watching

Homeland Season 5 was fantastic, tense, gripping engaging - choose your adjectives - for 11 episodes, but unfortunately there was also an episode 12, which in my view was a failure: the crisis that drove the plot (a plan to fill a Berlin train station with poison gas) is resolved in the first 15 minutes, and then we have another 45 minutes in which the writer-director wraps up the various friendships, romances, and betrayals among the key characters, leaving a few strands untied as we get ready for Season 6. A great spy show becomes Lifetime movie, sadly. But don't let that dissuade you. At least through 11 episodes this series is terrific, thanks in large part to the ever-expressive Clair Danes in the lead and Mandy Patinkin perfectly cast as her mentor, protector, and sometime antagonist in the CIA. The tense plot is timely and disturbing, as across the world this week tensions between the West and the Muslim world rise - and terrorist attacks continue. This may make it hard for some viewers to watch this series; there are some shied-your-eyes scenes, and of course we hope a series like this isn't giving any terrorist cell new ideas (I doubt that it is). Yes there are improbabilities throughout (e.g., what are the chances of Quinn's rescuer bringing him into the same building where a radical cell plots a terrorist attack?), but the series moves so quickly and the focus is so intense - every screen moment matters for the plot - that these slip right by us. We're caught up in the action.

Never thought I'd be rooting for the CIA, but ...

Catching up after a long gap with the great Showtime series Homeland, and finding Season 5, in which Carrie has (apparently - no one quite believes her) left the CIA to work for an international foundation based in Berlin, but never the less gets entrapped in a complex web of assassinations and attempted abductions - can't she just stay out of danger, for once? The plot is hard to unravel, but is something like this: Some hackers stumble upon a cache of CIA communications and leak them to a reporter (who works for the human-rights foundation where Carrie also works); reporter publishes, setting off a series of CIA head-rolls and sending her old boss, Saul, to Berlin to try to straighten things out. For reasons not at all clear to us, yet, Saul is using the super-agent Quinn to conduct some off-the-books (it seems) assassinations aimed at collaborators w/ the Hezbollah. Somehow, Carrie is on Quinn's hit list - we don't know why. Carrie figures out she's in danger, though, and in trying to determine who's after her she goes off her meds; as we've seen in other seasons, doing so gives her great energy and insight but makes her so unstable that those around her refuse to believe her - in this season, it's her German boyfriend, in a rather hapless role, who can't get the message straight. As always, Claire Danes and Many Patinkin are terrific in their roles (some others, not so much) and the series keeps your attention and keeps you guessing start to finish. Never thought I'd be "rooting" for the CIA , but the combo this week of Homeland and DJT idiocies at CIA hq in in Va have brought me around to the dark side, too.

Homeland Season 4 great - for 10 episodes. And then what happened?

Season 4 of Homeland was absolutely terrific, exciting, engaging, sometimes surprising, propelled by the always fantastic acting of Clair Danes with strong support from the grumpy Mandy Patinkin and just great action directing, art direction (how do they so effectively create an embassy under siege in what purports to be Pakistan), and the music - most of the time you don't notice it but it always adds to the mood and aura, esp in the cool opening credits montage. Unfortunately, they should have stopped at episode 10, the attack on the US Embassy by the the ISI (obviously modeled on ISIS, and the attack roughly modeled on Bengazi). The final two episodes of the season were a let down - all the drama had taken place and we're just tying some loose ends - Carrie/Danes trying to find Peter Quinn and get him out of Pakistan (a drama largely played out off screen), and finally Carrie at home bonding with her baby, visiting her estranged mother, squabbling w/ sister - it felt much more like a soap, and a bad one at that, as lots of time wasted in resolving a relationship (Carrie and Mom) that was never even established in the first place. Too bad because otherwise I'd give this season a rave. Will watch Season 5 anyway, but hope it doesn't pick up where this season left off.

In defense of Homeland Season 4

I don't get what the Homeland nay-sayers want out of a series. I understand that maybe nothing can rise to the level of Season 1 when we were constantly in doubt about whether Brodie was a terrorist agent or a traumatized soldier, and we first understood and recognized the complexity of Carry's character - and how her illness was a tremendous burden, making it all too easy to dismiss her unconventional ideas as delusions or worse. But Season 4 - 8 episodes in now - is as exciting a spy thriller as you'll find in any movie, w/ episodes 7 and 8 being two of the strongest and strangest - esp the terrific cinematic presentation of Carry's drug-induced breakdown and in episode 8 Saul's escape from captivity and the incredibly tense struggle to bring him to safety and the toll that takes on everyone at the CIA/Embassy. The characters may not be as multi-layered in this season as in some of the earlier, especially the bad guys and the heavies - is "Duck" now typecast for life? - and we do miss Brodie (who makes a cameo in 7), but the plotting is tight as a drum, the pacing is fast, and all the technical details - the art direction, the score, even the credits - meet the really high standards that used to belong to HBO alone but now SHO giving them a run. If this season doesn't hold her interest and at times keep you on the proverbial edge of your seat, what will?

Don't give up on Homeland yet

I understand that many viewers have bailed on the Showtime Homeland, and I guess I can see why, as Season 4, without the dynamic relationship between Brodie and Kerry (Claire Danes) and without the enigmatic issue of whether Brodie is a wounded hero or a conniving traitor, or both, the show does lose some of its moxie, its raison d'etre. That said, we still have Danes, she of the most expressive face in pictures, and a pretty good if sometimes convoluted narrative about the CIA efforts to get to the heart of a terrorist ring in Pakistan. There are some tremendously exciting street scenes throughout the first 4 episodes, some really good cinematography that captures what we (or I) at least imagine the far east to look like (I think I read most is filmed in Jordan?) - scenes that had to be a tremendous challenge to stage and capture. The story centers in a Benghazi like uprising, which initially seems to be a crowd outraged by US air strikes against a target that ended up killed nearly an entire wedding party; soon, this becomes a little more complex, as they realize that attack was engineered and planned - and then we learn even more layered and nuanced information about the air strike - which I will give away here - that it was a set up, feeding false info to the US to get us to bomb an innocent target and create an outrage (also to get us to think that the target was killed, allowing him to go on living outside of surveillance). There are a # of subplots, including an ambassador's husband who sells state secrets - the mirror image of a plot element in an earlier season in which CIA honcho Mandy Patinkin was betrayed by his wife - though the wife betrayal was far more degrading. In episode 4 Danes, quite improbably I think, seduced a young Pakistani in order to win him over - using sex for political (and personal?) gain - I know Danes/Kerry is a troubled and impulsive figure, but I think she should feel degraded by or at least ambivalent about her actions - as did, for example, Xtina Hendricks in Mad Men - but I'm afraid that they may play this as: Kerry will do anything to win, to get her way. Intrigue between her and Patinkin is strong, the silent rage of her partner Quinn, who also seems to carry a torch for Kerry, is a promising plot element, and Kerry's abandonment of her daughter tells us a lot about her personality - if it does strain credibility (would she really have carried the pregnancy to term? for that matter - does a CIA station chief have any authority to call for an air attack on a civilian target?).

Season 3 feels like the end of Homeland - hope they don't just play out the string

Though I realize that the critics were less than kind to Season 3 of Homeland, I found the season to be very compelling and dramatic, the final episodes, which bring Brody, trailed by Carrie (Claire Danes) into Iran on a mission of assassination, to keep up the tension from the earlier episodes and even build up the drama. As noted in previous posts, Danes is terrific and expressive throughout - her face has to be the most expressive in all of television - and the rest of the cast is generally very good, notably Patinkin, who despite is mannered mumbling which causes us to miss a few lines here and there, has really grown into and developed his role as interim CIA chief (F. Murray Abraham, on the other hand, is really miscast - who knew two old Jewish guys ran the agency? - and perhaps as a result the season makes less of his devious nature than it could have). The plot in this season is particularly complex, but as we follow it we are always rewarded with surprises - and all told the complex plot seems pretty credible. (I won't divulge any of the surprises here, btw.) On the other hand, the weakness of the season and of the series in general is the relationship between the principals, Carrie and Brodie - I just can never buy that they're so deeply in love with one another - each is too driven, too professional, and finally too different to imagine them having any kind of life outside of the life-and-death drama they're caught up in. I think a weakness throughout has been Brody's family, which the creative team seems to have realized, too, as they have moved wife and son largely offstage and focused more on his relationship with his daughter, a truly fine young actress I believe. It feels as if the series has reached a concluding point at the end of Season 3, but evidently not as 4 is being aired and streamed right now; I will watch, no doubt, but am always troubled by great series that seem to run on a season or maybe two seasons too long - can anyone say The Killing? A great series really does not a sense of an ending, and I hope they don't just run out the string in succeeding episodes.

Homeland keeps us on edge right through Season 3

We're a year behind the times, as season 4 is soon to debut, but in the midst of season 3 of Homeland finding the series as great as before; the 2nd "disc," encompassing episodes 5 through 8, is full of twits and surprises - and unlike so many complex shows in Homeland the twists all seem to make sense. Sure, the ease with which the CIA folks pry out arcane info about global finances and with which they track the clandestine movements of dozens of suspects, is a bit beyond the pale - but the plot holds together very elegantly, keeping us on edge constantly and introducing just enough twists to keep us thinking without making us throw up our hands in disbelief - compare with the largely successful series Damages, in which one had the feeling that clever screenwriters were making it up episode by episode without any clear idea of the destination or overall design. Claire Danes's Carrie Mathisson remains a great lead character - though as this season progresses she becomes a more conventional CIA agent and less a troubled, sometimes desperate woman. Mandy Patinkin's Saul Berenson, though highly mannered, is great in the role - and his opposition to the pending new CIA chief, a right wing, self-important senator obviously modeled on Cheney, is a good plot development. I was surprised that they let one plot line go away so easily, as the Bethesda police just dropped the pursuit of murder charges against Quinn, one of CIA agents involved in the pursuit of the Iranian security chief. In final episodes of the season, a lot will depend on how much we can buy into Carries's love for the largely absent Brodie: she is seemingly motivated by her desire to prove him innocent of the CIA hq bombing - and thereby to protect herself, as she has lied about her role in helping him escape - but the stakes on that have been pretty low, as neither Saul nor anyone else truly suspects her of enabling a suspect to leave the country. I would expect this plot element will develop further and put her into greater jeopardy and conflict with her agency. The spying on Saul himself is just starting to emerge as a plot element - though I have to say I found it ludicrous that an intruder could slip into the DC home of the head of the CIA; one would think there would be pretty tight security, esp. if he works from a laptop that he often leaves at home unattended?

Season 3 of Homeland just as great as Season 2

Season 3 of Homeland absolutely picks up with 2 left off and is every bit as gripping as the first two seasons - a rarity among series that often deflate as they move beyond the initial plot lines - and the first disc, with 4 episodes, has very helpful "previously on" sections at the head of each episode (on the other hand, these discs, from Fox 21, are horribly designed and require you to sit through endless previous each time you re-open). A couple of the great things about Season 3: most of all the incredible Claire Danes with the most expressive face on film or television, clearly at the center once again, suffering from her bipolar disorder, off her meds, blamed as the consort of Brodie who is suspected (even by us, perhaps) as the one who bombed CIA headquarter, and thrown "under the bus" by Saul (Mandy Patinkin), now acting head of the CIA - she knows or believes that they want her out of the picture because she knows too much and that they will no doubt kill her and make it look like a suicide of a mentally ill person; she goes to the press but her behavior is so frantic and bizarre that nobody is likely to believe her rant that the CIA is out to get her - sounds like classic paranoia (some may recall the very funny take on similar dilemma in the old Jerry Lewis movie The Big Mouth). As she's held against her will in a psychiatric hospital, we see Brody (in episode 3) held by some thugs in a cell-like housing complex in Venezuela - not completely clear yet who they are or why they're holding him except that he, like Danes/Kerry knows too much. Brody's daughter, Dana, runs off with a boyfriend in a plot element that seems increasingly peripheral except that she is emerging as a terrific young actress - perhaps the Claire Danes of her generation. Tremendously interesting plot twist in episode 4 that I won't divulge. Altogether a great series - two oddities, though. So funny to see not only Patinkin but alongside him F Murray Abraham as the two honchos running the CIA: who knew it was an agency run by a couple of aging Jewish tummlers? Second, Brody's sudden appearance in Caracas (he'd fled north to Montreal, last we saw) and his temporary escape into a nearby mosque (!) seems so odd - a relic from the original Israeli series when no doubt the Brody character escaped to Lebanon or Jordan: couldn't they have made a more credible plot element here? Third, some of the CIA agents and actions seem almost absurdly competent - impossible to reconcile with an agency that didn't even recognize the terrorist in its midst.

Homeland Insecurity: Season 2 just as good as season one - bring on # 3

Season 2 of Showcase Homeland is just as taut, suspenseful, surprising as Season 1, and therefore maybe even better than that great season in that now we know the characters better and we don't need as much exposition. The plot is a little less baroque as we now understand that Brody was a terrorist who backed off at the last minute and is now being played for by both sides. There are many great scenes and dialogues throughout the season: all of the interrogation scenes are great, esp Carrie (Claire Danes) with bringing Brody around to become a spy for the CIA and Carrie/Danes in a powerful interview that goes very wrong with the journalist/terrorist who'd been handling Brody. The secondary plot involving the Brody daughter, Dana, and her relationship with the veep's son, Finn, is played very well - I think the actress playing Dana is perfect as a smart but somewhat sullen and misguided teenage girl. The early episode when Brody is in Gettysburg with the terrorist tailor while his wife expects him at a fundraiser is one of the best as well. The plot clicks together in a satisfying way at the end - resolving some questions, opening some new ones, and leading on very well toward a Season 3 I hope - as [ spoilers] Brody gets framed (or so it would appear) by Nazir and the terrorists and has to escape from the U.S., leaving open the question not only of what will happen to him but also: how they hell did they get his car and fill it with explosives? Could he really not have been in on that? I've even gotten to like the mumbly, mannered Mandy Patinkin as Saul. I do have a few quibbles: I really don't buy into the love relationship between Brody and Carrie  - esp in the last episode, I was like a little kid, thinking enough of the mush let's just move this story - their relationship is entire sexual and iconoclastic; as a romance, it couldn't last for more than a weekend. I also wonder why Nazir would ever come to the U.S. and, if so, why he was so reluctant to kill Carrie when he had the opportunity. And is the death of the veep by remote code to his pacemaker in any way possible? Those quibbles aside, Homeland remains an entirely engrossing series with some fine acting, writing, directing, and production values - even the score, which I usually find I detest these days.

If Shakespeare were alive, would he write for TV?

Let us now praise Season 2 of Homeland as another one of the great ongoing TV serial dramas - a genre that possibly defines our time and place in terms of popular art with high cultural and entertainment values, our contemporary equivalent of what theater was for the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. Well Homeland does not rise to Shakespearean levels of course, but damn if some of the writing doesn't rival that of any famous contemporary playwright or screenwriter. Episode 5, Q&A, is a paramount example, where the long interrogation scene entirely focused Carrie (Claire Danes) and Brody is unparalleled dialogue - as she slowly, deftly, turns him around, exerts what at least appears to be a confession, and entices him into becoming a secret agent - pretending to keep serving underground for terrorist Nazir while actually carrying out CIA orders. One thing that makes the drama so complex is that we are still not sure, not ever sure, when Brody is telling the truth and when he's lying, which we know he does often as it suits his needs - sexual, political, or professional. By episode 6, when he takes on his first CIA assignment, which goes horribly wrong (agents massacred while taking apart the tailor shop that had been a bomb manufacturing outpost - in Gettysburg - wouldn't this have drawn just a bit of attention? - one of the flaws in the credibility of Homeland, but even Homer nods) - we still don't know if Brody leaked the info. If not him, then who? I still think that one of the CIA folks is a double agent - we're led to think it may be Quinn, the new boss of operations assigned to keep watch on Carrie, a hothead for sure - but he's too easy a choice and too obvious. Throughout Season 1 I suspected Carrie's boss and former fling, who pretty much failed a lie-detector test but they let it slide; now I'm not so sure - don't know what his motives would be at this point other than $ for alimony, which he complains about. I'd still keep an eye on him, though.

A completely tense series from start to finish: Homeland Season One

Season 1 of "Homeland" did not disappoint in the least - unlike so many other series, it kept me thinking and engaged and tense right to the last moment, and had enough unresolved plot lines and hints and suggestions of further developments to keep my thinking and waiting without leaving me with the feeling of a plot in search of itself or a blatant, pandering cliffhanger. Claire Danes great throughout the season and outdoes herself in last episodes, when her bipolar disorder comes into play and becomes a major plot point: the conspiracy she sees all around her could very well be, to others and even to herself when she realizes how sick she is, just a paranoid fantasy - except we know she's onto something, though we're not entirely sure of all of the parameters of the conspiracy. We certainly understand why her CIA colleagues and others would elieve she's just mentally deranged. I had suggested two big plot outcomes in earlier posts - neither of which came to fruition - but I still suspect these elements might be developed further in Season 2: (spoilers): We know that Estes was involved in a cover-up because he didn't want it known he gave the OK to drone bombing of civilians. Is it worse than that? Is he actually taking funds from Al Qaeda? Second, we know that "Isa" was killed in a drone attack on Iraq; is it possible that Abu Nazir sacrificed his own son to the cause? We still don't really know how the terroristis communicated with the "turned" POWs Brody and Wallace (?), and I for one am not ye completely convinced that Brody would turn against his country because of the drone bombing that killed children. There may be more to this yet. In any case, of all the thriller series I've seen over the past few years, several of which involve domestic terrorism (Sleeper Cell one of the best), Homeland is by far the best crafted and probably the best acted as well, at least among the leads (yes, I have come to kind of like the rumpled and mumbly Mandy Patinkin as Danes's mentor and father-figure).

God said to Abraham: Kill me a son. Homeland and the Bible.

Spoiler again here but just a quick note on Season 1 of "Homeland": in previous post I speculated on some plot developments that I can foresee, one of which, I suspect, will be a revelation that the terrorists arranged the bombing that killed Abu Nazir's son, Isa - a death that was blamed on the U.S. and that supposedly leads Sgt Brody to "turn" away from the U.S. and toward Al Qaeda. I noted that this may be an enactment of the sacrifice of Isaac - which, if I'm not mistaken, Muslims unlike Jews believe actually was carried out. Let me point something out - have others noticed the very names of these characters? The father, Abu (Abraham?) Nazir, and his son, Isa (Isaac)?

Trying to figure out where Homeland is heading in Season 1

Spoilers here: but about 8 episodes into the excellent Showtime series "Homeland" (Season 1) I'm completely convinced that my surmise in previous post is on the money: Estes, the CIA boss, is clearly the mole within the CIA, giving away information to Abu Nazir and the terrorists: he has the means and the motive; they made it really clear that he's in a terrible divorce situation and he needs the money. If you closely watch the interrogation scene, he had the opportunity to slip the terrorist subject a razor blade. He was completely uncooperative on the lie-detector test, and they didn't call him on it because of his rank. He's tried to hinder Kerrie (the excellent Claire Danes) except when he can use her, and he knew of all the intelligence info and had time to convey it. OK, so maybe I figured that much out; but what about Brody himself, the returned POW whom Kerrie suspects has turned? We do know that he has been working with the terrorist Nazir - but is he some kind of double-agent or triple-agent? In these latest episodes they dramatize how and why he supposedly "turned" - anger about the American drone bombing, and then the cover-up, that killed Nazir's son, whom Brody was tutoring in English. I wonder, though, if the bombing could have been done or staged by the terrorists: we know they faked the death of an Marine in order to get Brody to believe his was guilty of murder. My first thought was of the Muslim interpretation of the Abraham-Isaac story: Abraham would have and did kill his son, in service to the cause. But I'm actually thinking that maybe Nazir never had a son, that the whole tutoring arrangement was plotted out to ensnare Brody: the kid may have been just a street urchin. Very hard to figure out Brody's motives and objectives. Also hard to figure out how his fellow POW survived or why he's turned into terrorist himself.

Congratulations to Homeland

Congratulations to the crew from "Homeland," well-deserved best drama Emmy winner this week - though I'm still a big fan of Mad Men, the recent series seems to have lost of bit of its edge I thought. Homeland was a complete surprise - I've generally been down on Showtime series, which I find very formulaic and just a step up from Lifetime: all featuring a star actor from network TV or films, playing a: woman in distress (C Word, Nurse Jackie) or ordinary person suddenly found in extraordinary circumstances (Weeds) or extraordinary people are really "just like us" (Big Love, Dexter) or just plain exploitation of sex and rx (Californication) - but all of them pretty much two-dimensional and predictable (Dexter maybe an exception there) - and Homeland could have gone the same way (CIA agent with a drug problem) - but it's so much more, at least through the first 5 episodes of season 1: Claire Danes is awesome in the lead, dominating every scene she's in with her big eyes and her expressive features and her strong personality, yet she stays within the boundaries of the character - we genuinely feel we're watching Kerri Mathisson (?) and not C.Danes (not true of most of the other Showtime stars). The plot is suitably complex and tense without being gratuitous in its violence or overly clever or baroque with its plot twists - so far, it all makes sense, and we know just enough to stay interested and engaged, but not all that much more than the main characters. Is Sgt Brody a turned POW, or are Kerri's theories unfounded, or even products of her own drug-induced delusions? We have no clear answer, yet. I will share my suspicion and see how it plays out: I think K's boss, Estes, is the actual turned agent, that he slipped the razor blade to the prisoner - lots of evidence and clues point this way, but I'd be a little disappointed in that his guilt would perpetuate the stereotype: the black/ethnic characters always get the shaft.

Bringing it all back - Homeland

"Homeland" so far (3 episodes) is one of the best and most promising Showtime enterprises ever - the lot is really engaging and manages to stay just on the near side of credibility. Clare Danes in the lead is terrific as a CIA agent based in DC with no personal life, a slew of problems (including some drug addiction), a need to prove herself to herself (making up for a botched case in which she missed a vital piece of evidence) and to her mentor (a grumbly older CIA operative who begrudgingly gives Danes advice but is a bit of a malcontent - played by the highly mannered Mandy Patinkin) - Danes has eyes on a returned Marine POW whom she believes to be a "turned" prisoner passing some kind of secret messages to a stateside terrorist group - we believe she's right, based on some clues, but there are so many possibilities for double-crosses and double-agents it's hard to know if she's seeing the whole picture. She has set up a rather elaborate surveillance mechanism on the Marine's home, and therefore watches way more of their domestic troubles than she cares to, or needs to - and as for us, we're following both a domestic psychodrama (the Marine's wife had been pretty deeply involved with his best buddy, when they both assumed that he was missing or dead) and in his internal psychic problems (weird sexual hangups following years of captivity) - but there are things we see that she doesn't, including his use of a Muslim prayer mat. Of course my suspicion is that somehow he hasn't been turned but he's trying to get access to a sleeper cell in order to expose it. Anyway, plenty of tension and lots to keep us interested and to keep us guessing, without too much gratuitous sex or violence - very smart series so far (based on an Israeli series, which I'm betting was as good or better - the originals usually are).

One of the best from Showtime: Homeland

A few words on the Showtime series "Homeland," which, based on the first episode, is an exciting and taut story about an American prisoner rescued from Iraq who has "turned": or at least that's the suspicion of a CIA operative in the States (Clare Danes). Excellent set-up of the dramatic situation and good quick sketch of the key characters and the crises they are facing: the returned prisoner tormented by his experiences in captivity (including - spoiler here - fact that he was forced to beat fellow prisoner to death - wasn't that a main plot point in a recent movie? Brother?); prisoner's wife who's been having a long relation with his best friend Marine buddy, assuming he's long since dead; wise CIA intellectual (Mandy Patinkin) who's Danes's "rabbi" but also knows he can't completely trust here, most of all Danes herself, who apparently screwed up in some serious way when posted to Baghdad and suffers from various maladies including an apparent addiction to prescription Rx - the flawed heroine (a bit of a Showtime trope there - Nurse Jackie , q.v.) - Though some of the set-up is not credible - the idea that even a rouge CIA team could have access to the returning prisoner's house to put in surveillance equipment seems way beyond the pale, for example - other elements play very well, including a very tense opening sequence in Iraq. A series worth keeping an eye on - hope it's available soon on disc.