This was not the most interesting instalment of Homeland so Pearse and I talked about topics related to the episode including the history of Kosovo and NATO's use of jihadis in the entire Balkans region, the arrest this week of a mysterious unnamed Montenegrin arms trafficker on his way to Paris, and why it is that the US Marine Corps Entertainment Liaison Office reports do not make any mention of Homeland.
On this episode of our Homeland review series,Tom and I try to decipher this puzzle-piece of an episode. In contrast to last week’s fairly simple episode, this week’s was complex and intriguing. We explore the character of Alison and her trajectory from CIA station chief to Russian double agent. We discuss how the show is turning her into the ultimate villain, who is not only a master manipulator, but a cold and calculating egoist.
Today Pearse and I discuss the latest 6th episode of Homeland, 'Parabiosis' which saw the return of the classic spies vs jihadis type of storyline. We looked at the two halves of the story - Quinn holed up in a refugee hostel/terrorist halfway house and ultimately him killing the Reel Bad Arab Hajik, and Saul's rediscovering that he is actually a skilled secret agent. Both of these storyline are less about inducing a state of hyperreality and much more about shaping our perceptions of the real world.
In the latest of our Homeland reviews, Tom and I tackle the latest episode, ¨Better Call Saul.” In true form to this season, the fifth episode completely resets the original storyline and refocuses our attention to the evil Russians. Tom and I discuss this development and how it plays out in the episode.
In the wake of the scandal over the CIA giving classified information to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty the Agency's Office of the Inspector General carried out an audit into their involvement in the entertainment industry. The report heavily criticises the CIA's entertainment liaison office for terrible record keeping and a very casual culture.
In this conversation Pearse and I took a few detours and rambled all over the place, but mostly talked about the concept of hyperreality - the condition of a consciousness that cannot distinguish between the real and the simulated. We show how Homeland does this but also consider the question of why: why would the CIA be interested in using this effect that shows like Homeland have on their audiences?
This week we begin by exploring Homeland’s blatant sexism and misogny. We focus first on Carrie and her characters return to bi-polar nymphomaniac, and how the show has routinely made Carrie into an awful female character that we all hate. Tom and I discuss our theories for why the producers have continued to make Carrie into a monster and how this translates into a larger picture of how we view the CIA through Carrie.
For this new fifth season of Homeland Pearse and I are doing an episode-by-episode review to see if a more in-depth study of the show proves interesting and fun. From the first episode of season five of Homeland it appears that, like season four, this is a departure from the established Homeland settings and storylines. In this inaugural episode, we take a brief look back to where all of our favorite characters left off at the end of season 4.
From Breaking Bad to Hell on Wheels, House of Cards to Fargo, psychopathic characters are becoming the mainstays of modern TV. In this episode I offer my opinions on all four of these shows, focusing on Fargo as an example of an antidote to the glorifying of psychopaths in pop culture. I also reflect on the differences between reptiles and mammals and how this pertains to the problem of psychopaths in our society.(Read more...)
