This review of the finale of Homeland discusses not just the final episode but the entire season. We reflect on what is new and different about this fifth season, from the religious dimensions being crow-barred into the show to the use of Russians as the enemy image and hackers as second-level terrorists.
On this penultimate episode of our Homeland series Tom and I begin by venting about our hatred of Alison. Next we move onto the shows continual use of women as negative characters. We discuss the similarities between Alison and real life Russian spy Anna Chapman. We look at the parallels between these two characters and the notion that Alison will receive a hero’s welcome if she returns to Russia.
Before the murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald – or even possibly a double – visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. Retired KGB Lt. Gen. Nikolai Leonov, then on assignment in Mexico’s capital as an intelligence officer, met Oswald that day, and he has little doubt the young American was just a pawn in a much wider plot.
Former KGB General Filipp Bobkov was a veteran counterintelligence officer and chosen by Yuri Andropov to head the Fifth Chief Directorate (Ideological Counter-Subversion), which he led from 1969 to 1983. Bobkov recounts the twilight war of counterespionage waged between the CIA and KGB – a contest with deadly consequences.
On this episode of our Homeland series Tom and I spent the first half of the episode dissecting the falsehoods that this particular episode as put forth in terms of the legality of spying. Suddenly aware of the rule of law and constitutional rights we see all the major characters in this episode pushing this agenda of doing everything by the book.
The Power of Nightmares was possibly the last great documentary series produced by the BBC. A decade after it was first broadcast I look back at the series, offering a brief review before using this as a basis for analyzing recent events. I discuss the criticism of the filmmaker Adam Curtis for his superficial take on 9/11, before exploring the 'defection' of Jamal Al Fadl, an associate of Osama Bin Laden.
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.
The dark arts of espionage share more in common with historically-rooted secret societies than the media would care to admit. Using decades of experience and observation, KGB First Chief Directorate Col. Stanislav Lekarev (1935-2010) takes us into the murky netherworld of globalist powerplayers, occult orders, and state intelligence services.
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.
