Long Time Coming

I've never written a review of anything on IMDb before, because everything that needs to be said has usually already been said. With this episode, there's no number of reviews that can make it worse, and the writers and producers of the show need to know that. This made no sense at all. How did Dar know Haqqani's location a day after he bombed the embassy. How could he have been authorized to strike a deal with him. How could Saul even pretend to play along with that? Who cares about Carrie's mother and new half brother? Who jumps to conclusions like Peter did? Nothing in this episode made any sense. I would really like to hear an interview of the producers/writers explaining this episode and what their thought process was.

This season 4 finale was by far the worst episode of the series. It went no where and accomplished nothing. I believe it was just phoned in by writers, actors, and director. They must have been tired and just threw this out to get the season finished. Of course the whole of season 4 has been below the standard set by the first three season. I watched this episode on showtimeanywhere.com and pay for internet by the gigabyte. I feel like I have been taken and wasted an hour of my internet access. Season 5 better hit the street running or I am done. This season 4 finale was by far the worst episode of the series. It went no where and accomplished nothing. I believe it was just phoned in by writers, actors, and director. They must have been tired and just threw this out to get the season finished. Of course the whole of season 4 has been below the standard set by the first three season. I watched this episode on showtimeanywhere.com and pay for internet by the gigabyte. I feel like I have been taken and wasted an hour of my internet access. Season 5 better hit the street running or I am done.

"Marine One", "The Choice", and "The Star" tore up the viewer's hearts and minds with its emphasis on the emotions and more importantly the massive moments of action. "Long Time Coming" is being maligned by those with their hearts set on the big "BAM" moment that never came last night. I was expecting something to happen, but what we got instead is a perfectly good replacement for the blockbuster moment. After a run of episodes where the suspense drove the episode's arc, the writers toned it back so far to exclude all the action that most of the season relied upon.

Instead, the writers proved and reaffirmed the soul of "Homeland" is about—Carrie—and spent an hour probing her. "Long Time Coming" reminded the fans that none of the terrorist plots matter if we do not care about the person driving them. Carrie's development centers around two areas: 1) being a mother to Frannie and how she sees her own reflection in her estranged mother 2) how the men in her life are changing in what they mean to her (her father's dying, her disappointment in Saul, and the possibility of a future of with Quinn). It's an excellent piece of writing from a character viewpoint, and a courageous path to take for the finale.

While I was absorbing the finale, I realized the strength and weakness of season four. "Homeland" was able to have these, at times, amazing episodes that are adroit in their own time and space, but the cogency across the season does not come off with clarity. "Kreig Nicht Lieb" and "Long Time Coming" were both terrific hours of television, yet the do not unite evenly like pieces of a puzzle. That's where the season is weakest, besides utterly misfiring with some early episodes. Those two big mistakes are not enough to abate this great season of television. Though season one and two are better, the tonal identity the show, at this very moment, is the best it has ever been. Once it found its groove this year, "Homeland" season four rammed its audience like an angry bull.

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.

Spending too much time on Carrie's development and her condition as its focus was not the best idea for the writers to use as the point of the finale. The whole time i was waiting for something huge to happen and eventually i figured out that nothing was ever going to happen and if anything we would be left with a cliffhanger. Turns out I, and many other people, were right. Season 4 as a whole was fantastic, so our standards were much higher than usual when it comes to a finale, so we were all let down by the pace and focus of it. I feel like the execs at Showtime gave the writers and producers a set episode count of 12 and they only had enough material for 11, and thus the finale was born. However, this finale did give the audience all the pieces we need to speculate on what season 5 will contain and how it will unfold. If anything this episode is making me anticipate season 5 more so it can fulfill the new standards that season 4 set for the show. I am very unsatisfied, but at the same time I am overall satisfied with season 4 because as a whole it was miles better than everyone anticipated it to be despite the challenge the writers had of creating a completely new plot following season 3.