S01E09 "Crossfire" Promo

Carrie will do anything to get the Intel she needs. Walker is somewhere helping Abu Nazir. Brody is accepting his mission.

S01E08 "Achilles Heel" Clips

CLIP 1
Brody and Jessica attend to Elizabeth's party and are introduced as "The perfect couple".

CLIP 2
Helen Walker is at the CIA and is questioned about Thomas Walker.

1x07 The Weekend Review [SPOILERS]

Showtime

Line of the episode: “I just wanna live here”. –Brody.

Aileen - Saul - Estes
Aileen was captured right away when she got to Mexico, and Saul was taking her back to the US, he convinced Estes so he could be there and bring her back.

On the way, he used all kind of tricks to make her talk about her childhood, parents, Faizel, Abu Nazir and everything that was going on with this matter, and only until the very end she did, and wow she had a lot to say…

Saul called Estes and told him that the house she was living in near to the airport was supposed to be used to kill a target, so an agent is sent over to search the area, pointing out different parts of the airport, specially “Reserve M1”, meaning Marine 1, and revealing that an expert military sniper can actually shoot from the house to the airport.

Brody’s picture is shown to Aileen, but she describes the guy she talked to looking like Thomas Walker… So yes, he is alive and introduced like the possible turned POW, making this gigantic change of plans for all of us that might have thought that Brody was the one. Still I’m not confident enough as to erase his name though…

Showtime

Jessica - Mike

After an episode of Dana and her friends smoking and drinking, she walks through the glass door, then taken to the hospital to get stitches. When they head back home, Mike is there fixing the door and Dana tells him that he needs to go for good.

Jessica then walked in and, after Dana was gone, told Mike that she misses him, kissed and are interrupted when Jessica is called by. Interesting thing about this couple is that they love each other but the circumstances are keeping them apart, and they probably won’t have the chance to be together any time soon.

Brody and Carrie

In this episode we had the chance to see a side we’ve never seen before. Carrie is in fact human and she discovers that she actually might need someone to share things with, someone to be herself and feel free… Problem is the person that she’s having those feelings with, Brody. There is a new window now, Carrie was walking straight ahead and Brody met her in the middle, and I shall say it was a very good view.

Another thing that marked this moment: It’s amazing how different it was Carrie’s reaction to his scars, because if you think back, Jessica was shocked and started to cry, which was something painful to watch; in this case, Carrie kissed him, because  she understands what that is, and Brody is more than pleased with that.

The connection between them was so fond and deep that even when they slept together and Brody was having a nightmare, Carrie calmed him down and embraced him even harder so he could fall asleep again. They were playing the part as the couple in the honeymoon and we were there in the front seat… It’s in these scenes that we actually see the real Carrie and the real Brody. He is himself and finds another one just like him.

The moment we thought that this honeymoon could last forever, Carrie tells him that there might not be the kind of tea that he likes, so he has doubts, confronts her and Carrie just says everything she’s been doing and even has the nerve to tell Brody that she thinks that he is the turned POW.

Brody, acting very hurt and upset, invites her to ask him everything… And oh she does. Funny thing about this scene is that she is constantly trying to find the flaw, the exact sign that she’s so desperately seeking, and all the while he’s sitting there answering all her questions.

It was indeed amazing how you feel that their relationship (if there was any) is falling apart to the ashes while she asks and gets this kind of honesty that is absolutely making her angry at herself; she is confronting him just the way she wanted since the very beginning of the show and she gets nothing on him. On the other hand, he could be lying; we do know that Brody can be a hell of a good liar… But if we give him the credit, he sounded so awfully honest.

In the middle of all of that going on, Carrie was phoned by Saul and was told that Thomas Walker is (might be) the turned POW, but we all know it was all too little too late since Brody was all hurt, so he just takes off, but before that, Carrie tries to apologize, even begs, which is something I never thought she’d do.

And there she is… lonely, crying and hurt, realizing that he might be telling the truth of who he is all the while, and that she might be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Brody goes home, checks everybody’s room, then just sits on the sofa and starts to cry. I have two ideas: 1) he realized that the person that may have understood him and with whom he made this great connection with was lying all the time and now he is miserable, or 2) he knows that all his life is upside down; Jessica, Carrie, all the years in captivity, his children… it all seems too real.

Showtime

OVERALL

The weekend is tracing the line between now and what we thought before. We had the precious opportunity to see Carrie and Brody together and found out that without all the problems surrounding them they can actually be a very functional couple, but that might have to wait, because if they finally can get along, the show is obviously finished.

The turned POW might be Thomas Walker and not Brody, which is an interesting plot line twist, because it proves once more that the writers are making us think what they want and not what might actually be the obvious, the very same promo that appears everywhere: Brody is the turned POW.

Saul. Still an enigma. In the previous episode he desperately tried to be transferred and now he was out of the blue so interested on Aileen and there must be a reason… I know there is something weird about him, I just haven’t figured out what that is just yet.

We still don't know who handled the razor blade to Hamid, nor even if he actually killed himself or was killed. (Second guess is my choice).

On the other hand, we saw Carrie in a more relaxed and human mood and Brody as this gorgeous prom king so desperately seeking for his queen. You have to love these two together; at times they were so ridiculously beautiful that grinning and smirking was just so unavoidable.

This episode definitely leaves you with all these mixed feelings regarding the future…

S01E08 "Achilles Heel" Promo

Thomas Walker’s sketch is made and they discover that he is alive and in town, so the CIA is going after him. He might be a threat. Carrie goes to Brody’s house to talk to him. Brody and Jessica play the perfect couple.

Statement to all Homelanders

Dear Homelanders:

The most common replies I get on mondays right before Homeland is aired, are:

“Please don’t talk about Homeland yet”

“I won’t be able to watch the episode”

“I’m going to DVR it and watch it later”

“Don’t write about the new episode please”

“No spoilers please”

Because of that, I've decided not to tweet nor write about the new episode the same day, so, I’m thinking that none of us has the right to spoil anyone’s chance to see the episode without finding out  before what’s going to happen, and for that, we all should pick a day of the week to talk about the episode aired on monday, and probably that day could be a middle one...? 

So what do you think? I’m wide opened to ideas…

S01E07 "The Weekend" Clips

CLIP 1
Brody and Carrie are talking while heading somewhere together...

CLIP 2
Jessica came home with Dana... Mike is there and start talking to Jessica about themselves.

S01E07 "The Weekend" Promo

Carrie and Brody spend a weekend together... Mike and Jessica talk about feelings. Saul is behind Aileen.

Homeland: Opening Title

Opening Title of Homeland (Showtime)

When I think of an opening title review, I do it two ways, the conscious and the unconscious, to say the least, the cinematic and the information that’s coming along the way with that, meaning reading between the lines and not just literally watching, but going underneath and thinking about the metaphor.

The cinematic of Homeland’s opening title is undeniable. In it you can see a sequence of photographs and short videos, between 55 and 65 shots of plenty information of the show. On one side, you have Claire Danes’s character since she was a child in front of the tv, probably listening to the radio, perhaps reading papers, hearing her parents talk about the news, whatever it is, you mention it, you just get to see how we are constantly bombarded from all of these mass communication medias that are trying to control our lives and define what we should think, she is just standing there in the middle of all that happening around her, to grow old with the idea of stopping anything bad from happening.

You see many representative characters that whisper in her ears what’s going on, talking about terrorism and adding adjectives to it and implying that it must be stopped at any cost; buildings blowing up; chaos all around; people running and screaming; how the Army, National Guard, all the Intelligence Agencies are constantly watching…

On the other side, we have this massive labyrinth which could literally mean the world we live in, and then inside it we have the two main characters, Carrie and Brody, that somehow will meet up, that somehow their choices in life will make them turn over and confront each other in one, two, three, countless opportunities; and could probably mean that they are going to be playing cat and mouse, so one of them is going to be chasing the another one, or they both will play cat a the same time without knowing it.

I look at this Opening Title and I think about as a group of images that summarize the entire show. Claire being molded and programmed into this perfect  counterterrorism machine (whom in fact is far from perfection in her private life and makes decisions based on her judgment and listens to nobody) that will protect her homeland and Brody being labeled as a POW that will remain living behind that and could probably be lying at some point… Who knows? And there exactly is the beauty, you have hints everywhere but you will never be sure of any of that because they have managed to keep us thinking and not making up our minds about anything.

The most intriguing line that I find interesting in the title and line of which completely matches Carrie’s goal is: “I’m just making sure we don’t get hit again”. The point of the title is so we can get to know more of the show, and yet again we are introduced to tons of Carrie’s info, her growing up and her intentions, but we do not know of Brody, he is a big, massive, gigantic question mark. We know nothing about his previous life (previous life I mean before he was captured), how he was, why did he become a Marine, his interests… We know nothing! And there is revealed nothing! Nothing! It is somehow disturbing that he is so likeable and so dangerous at the same time, which makes him so appealing to Carrie and to us, because we get to know him as soon as she is discovering his game.

Carrie and Brody: opening title (Showtime)

Opening titles are and will always mean the world to a tv show and you can immediately like or dislike forever a series by it, and in the case of Homeland, it’s exactly the same, so if you think that it’s disturbing, well it is; if you think that it’s lame, well I tell you: look at it again and again…