Homeland is a SHOWTIME series now in its 8th season.
4 out of 10 for Season 4. Episodes 1 through 9 were great. Episodes 10 through 12 were awful and ruined the entire season.
The first season of Homeland was about an American POW named Nicholas Brody captured, tortured, and turned by terrorists into becoming a suicide bomber and the CIA officer who figures this out, Carrie Matheson.
The second season of Homeland was about the love affair between Brody and Carrie and her turning him against the terrorist cell who tortured him.
The third season of Homeland was about moving an American asset, Majid Javadi, into the top position of Iran’s Security Agency which resulted in the death of Nicholas Brody, one of the key roles in seasons 1 through 3.
The fourth season is about the infiltration of the CIA station in Islamabad and the takeover of the US Embassy in Pakistan by tribal lords led by a man named Haqqani.
As the season begins, Carrie Matheson has had her daughter Franny, left her in the care of her sister and father in the United States, and has become the station chief of Kabul, Pakistan. She receives intel from the head of station in Islamabad, Sandy Bachman, that one of the top men on their hit list, Haissam Haqqani, is at a particular location. She has the drone satellite move over that location and has two bombs dropped on it. It turns out it was a wedding of two members of Haqqani’s family. Yes, they’re his family and also terrorists, but there are women and children present which makes the CIA look terrible. Bachman won’t reveal his source and is brutally pulled from a CIA vehicle and beaten to death in the streets, so Carrie takes over his position as chief of station of Islamabad.
She recruits Haqqani’s nephew by sleeping with him, which was a very slow part of the season, and Haqqani murders him. What the CIA doesn’t know is that they have a mole, the ambassador’s husband, who is feeding information and CIA plans to the head of the Pakistani Intelligence Agency, a woman named Tasneem Qureshi. Tasneem in return is feeding that information to Haqqani. This eventually results in the embassy being overrun with Haqqani’s forces and 36 CIA and embassy employees being brutally murdered.
Peter Quinn is a CIA officer who for the past two seasons has protected Carrie and also has fallen in love with her. At the end of this season he, along with one Marine, save everyone and run the terrorists out of the embassy. He is given practically no credit for this, none at all.
So here are my nitpicks for the worst parts of this season. 1. The subplot with Carrie sleeping with and recruiting Haqqani’s nephew is kind of disgusting and very sloooow. 2. The subplot with Carrie being drugged by Tasneem with I25, a drug with twice the effect of LSD, was also very sloooow and we’re so tired of Carrie’s bipolar disorder being a huge part of the season. Enough already. Either get a new character or drop it. 3. The ending was one of the worst endings I’ve seen in a series. After kidnapping and torturing a CIA officer, bombing two more officers in their vehicles, killing dozens of Marines, taking over the US embassy, stealing the CIA’s intelligence list of informants, and executing 36 embassy and CIA employees (not spies), Haqqani drives off a free man with one of the CIA’s top level managers in his vehicle. :0 Seriously, wtf.
4 out of 10 stars. I really should be giving this season zero stars.
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