Balls and Walnuts
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Showtime goes all 24
This post is one big spoiler, so if you hate hate hate spoilers, don’t read on.
Still here? I’m about to reveal the name of the program I’m spoiling, and what with that title right up there in humongo-font, if you know anything about 24, then you know what I’m gonna say next.
So, yeah. Karen recorded Homeland for me, and I watched it last night. I asked her to record it for me because I’ve loved Mandy Patinkin’s acting ever since Princess Bride, not to mention the short-lived series Dead Like Me. From the trailers, it looked like an updated Manchurian Candidate with al Qaeda as the puppetmaster, but I had hopes. This is Showtime, after all, not Fox. They can be edgy, right? Right?
Well. Um.
Claire Danes plays Carrie Anderson, a CIA operative who risks everything blah blah blah to get a particle of information: that al Qaeda (essentially) has “turned” an American POW. When an American POW is discovered shortly thereafter, Claire’s convinced that he is the sleeper and will stop at nothing *yawn* to prove that he’s eeevil.
Mind you, I wasn’t being a little bitch just yet. As I said, I had hopes. The first episode was well directed, and the al Qaeda mole, Sgt. Nicholas Brody, looks like nothing more than a very damaged man. Which is what you’d expect from a man who has spent 8 years in a hole, has been tortured, etc. Neither the director nor the screenwriter has tipped his hand, and everything is just ambiguous enough that you could see this story going either way.
About forty minutes into it, I said to Karen, “You know what would be great? If he really is just a POW. Nothing more. And Claire Danes’s character absolutely wrecks this guy’s life, this guy who has already given up about all he can give to his country short of dying for it. This guy who everyone is welcoming back as a hero — he really is a hero, and she wrecks his life all in the name of counter-terrorism.”
I think Karen’s response was something like, “Naw, never gonna happen,” but I had these hopes, see?
So Carrie Anderson with her own money bugs the crap out of this guy. I mean she has every room in his house wired for visual and audio, and she has a couple of guys following him around in a van that can pick up his conversations at a distance, et cetera. ALMOST at the very end, she’s discovered by her mentor (Mandy Patinkin’s character) who advises her to get a lawyer. And I didn’t get this, because if it’s all going to go to hell for her, shouldn’t that happen at the end of the series?
She spends her last night of freedom at a bar trying to pick up some dude for a quick lay, when she twigs to this hand-signal code Brody has been using to signal to someone via national TV — oh, whatever. Bottom line, the show resolves itself into just another 24. It’s okay to thoroughly violate someone’s civil rights if it turns out he’s eeevil. The ends justify the means. Give this series a few more episodes, and Carrie’s gonna torture some vital information out of some poor bastard. You just watch.
Or don’t watch. I think I’ll wait until the series is over and then I’ll check it out on Wikipedia.
D.
I like your plotline better. 🙂
Ends justify the means is so retro! Let’s see some shows about people sucking it up and doing the right thing! Following the law! Obeying a code of honor!
Had a long chat at lunch today with a couple of Euro-types, who, as one would expect, were excusing infidelity as human nature. Geez, the culture today is all about doing whatever you feel like. Let’s move into pulling your socks up and taming baser impulses! But when we were moved to discussing drugs, I took my usual pro-legalize, heavily regulate and tax, and ensure quality control stance. Hmm, guess that’s OK, if doing drugs per se isn’t “wrong” (whatever that means, so, yes, I’m just as much of a subjectivist as the unfaithful Euros).
Apologies for ranting all over your blog.