Long Time Coming

Like many people I'm sure, coming back to the fourth season of Homeland was something done slowly and with caution. The third season had been pretty weak for the majority, and then asked a lot of belief suspension towards the end; it also had a conclusion which could easily have been taken as the end point of the show if you were looking to stop watching, since it ends the Brody storyline. The fourth season does manage to pick things up pretty well though, relocated to Pakistan for the most part, and it reboots itself with the original characters and some good additions.

The story draws heavily on topical subjects, and as such it adds weight to the drama; this is necessary because it also then makes the viewer forget that essentially we are now watching 24, and it does this by virtue of wearing big boy clothes so that the twists and turns maybe do not seem as absurd as they otherwise might. They do work though, and in particular the season does a good job of mixing the character-driven threads, while also building good tension with all the main characters involved. Not all of it works and not all of it is as smart as it thinks it is, but it consistently engages throughout. It seems to forget what it is doing in the final episode of the season though. Part of it is an attempt to be more low-key and serious, which I was okay with, but the family issues were too prominent, and the potential "dirty business" of the spy world was left very late in the episode where it didn't do as much as it should.

The cast do well throughout. Danes puts a lot into her performance and mostly it works; I will say she has to fight the writing which doesn't give her a great deal of help to justify why Carrie's history still allows her to hold the position and influence she does, but on a scene-by-scene basis she is mostly good, with only a few places where she overacts. Patinkin is reliable as ever and support is generally good – in particular Friend's Quinn steps up a lot. Jaffrey, Acar, Boniadi, Kaur, and others are all engaging and deliver as required.

It is an arresting season, and a strong one despite the requirement to suspend belief, and a fairly misjudged season finale. The base of topical relevance and patient drama, allows the viewer to go with the more "24-esque" moments and get caught up in a quite thrilling and dramatic season.

This season of Homeland was incredible! Really mind-blowing stuff, and some of the most intense moments in TV history. "There's Something Else Going On" was an incredible episode that rivaled the greatest episodes ever made. Before this season finale, there was six strait episodes were it seemed that the writers could do nothing wrong. The writing was excellent. Then this episode came and...everybody became furious. This episode doesn't deal with anything that this season has set up, well at least nothing interesting. It was a filler episode. A filler season finale. I heard that this episode sucked, like really sucked. Therefore I kinda dreaded this episode....but I also felt something else - excitement. I was excited to see if this episode was as bad as most people said and, at least in my opinion, it wasn't, not even close. This episode currently holds a 5.1 rating on this site; 5.1. The worst episode before this was "Tower of David" which currently holds a 7.3 rating. So this episode should have been dreadful, awful, agonizingly abysmal, right? But I didn't think so! Sure it was absolutely nothing to write home about, but it did not suck either. I think it's definitely among the top 3 weakest episodes of the entire series, but I was expecting it to be the worst by far. What this episode was though was unnecessary. This could have easily been the season 5 premiere, a rather weak and bland one for sure, but nothing dreadful either. But, it now being a season finale, puts all of this astronomical hype on it, something the finale failed to deliver on. A decent season premiere, a bad season finale. But if you're a fan of this show, then the previous 11 episodes, the last 6 being fantastic, more than enough makes up for it. It surely left a lot of plots and sub-plots up in the air, which also might be the reason why I feel even more excited for season 5.

The episode was slow. The dialog was dry. The acting was poor. The plot lines were contrived. It was an extremely poor choice for a finale. If the producers want to highlight the humanity of the characters, or they want to grow the series into something more than a international espionage thriller, they have to find a way to weave these elements into each episode. They can't just abruptly shift to those themes in a season finale and almost entirely ignore the gut-wrenching plot lines of the current season. The only reason that this episode earns a two star rating instead of one star, and the only redeeming quality that makes it worth watching at all, is the complex situation involving Saul and Dar Adal's deal with the devil. Overall, a disappointing betrayal of the devoted fans.

When I wrote an almost bad review about the previous episode and comment about the huge difference it had with the previous 3 which were great, I saw many fans react and voting my review as not helpful.

Well my fears for the seasons finale that comes next were confirmed. Here you go. Another bad and uninspiring episode with meaningless subplots that no one really cares.

I wrote in my previous "you need a couple of sub-par episodes just for ...balance". Someone could think that they gave up their budget to the previous episodes so the next two (including this one) would look cheap and boring in comparison.

So. Not an actual cliffhanger to make you think for season 5. Nothing new or extraordinary. A good series having a couple bad days I guess...

I am currently binging the show, so I do not feel the frustration that many viewers must've felt watching this finale live, excited to have an action packed, satisfying conclusion. There's barely anything happening in this episode, and people are left waiting for the conclusion to this seasons story for a year.

For me, it wasn't too bad. I can just put on the next episode and continue like this was a mid season episode. And for that, it was ok. Still not alot happening, but it wasn't terrible.