Homeland: New show on Showtime

only thing it was missing was Jack Bauer.

 

There have been plenty of eyerolling developments in the history of this show, not just the last episode. But as long as the ratio of eyerolling to compelling drama stays below a certain threshold, I'll continue to enjoy the show and enjoy the talents of Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin.

 

I'd like to see how Americans and American government officials are portrayed in Russian TV dramas?

 

LOL, these days, it can only be flattering compared to the reality!

 

Well, let's say back in the day it was all cliches. Here's a scene of american senators and tycoons playing golf and discussing an international military provocation to avoid defense spending cuts in 1985's The Detached Mission. No cigars strangely.



Nowdays it's a lot more real compared to how the russians are shown in US movies. For several reasons - average russian viewer knows 100 times more about America than an average american about Russia. Countless russians have been to America numerous times plus we have american movies and TV shows here for like 24/7. There's no way that a 2018 russian TV drama would show events in Washington with even 30 percent of epic BS level that was achieved on Homeland's latest Moscow episode.

 

We will never know how realistic was the portrayal of life and events on Iran, Afghanistan etc in the previous seasons. If it was anywhere close to the latest episode than I'm afraid we've been all overrating the show for quite some time. Particularly the portrayal of iranians and Tehran raised my suspicions several times and I have never been there as I think everyone here.

 

This very well could be the preview of the next episode...

 

I'll have to see if I can dig up some links, but I recall there being a fair amount of press about the ways in which the middle eastern action in the early seasons was unrealistic and about how the set designers were having a good time signaling that to people who would know better by using graffiti to make jokes about it in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, etc.

L.

 

I seem to have misremembered the details. It was a particular episode in season 5 and a particular set of Egyptian graffiti artists who were responsible for the subversive joking. Here's a CNN report on it:

'Homeland is racist': Graffiti sneaked onto TV show - CNN

There have, however, been other critiques of the way people and places in the Islamic world have been depicted (for example, an official protest from the Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. over the way Islamabad was depicted in at once point, etc.).

L.

 

And one more thing - did anyone notice snow on the roofs when SVR cars were passing through "Moscow" yet Simone was enjoying her swim in the outside pool? Winter in Russia never felt so warm!

 

Swimming in cold water isn't than uncommon, however, it's more likely that the pool was heated.

 

Nobody swims in outside private house pools in winter Russia. Nobody. In fact it's very rare even for a very upscale house near Moscow (and Sergiev Posad is 2 hours drive away from the city) to have an outside pool here because it can be used for maybe two months a year and it just makes no sense. Such houses have inside pools to along with the sauna/russian banya and some dedicated banyas have an outside small pool to take a short dip after sweating inside. It's called "kupel" and is also used by russians during the orthodox christian Epiphany. People go in in the freezing water dip 3 times and cross themselves.

 

Yes, but they noted that Simone is French, and refuses to abide by Russian protocol.

 

Where did they say it was winter? We're a few months into Elizabeth Keane's Presidency, the inauguration is in January, you do the math...

 

There's snow on the roofs when the SVR cars pass through Moscow. Unless you assume we have snow here for the whole year it must be winter.

 

Me too! Crazy. I actually stopped the episode and went back to the Showtime app to see if I had skipped an episode!

 

Well that was a cracklin' episode-in typical episode 11 style. That CoS was a real POS though. But at least we got some "Americans"-style wig play.

 

The Russian doth protest too much, methinks....

 

Nope, I just hate to see my favorite show for 7 years reduced to the level of TV trash overnight. That's all.

 

Most TV, even the "good" stuff, is chock full of these sorts of exaggerations and stereotypes, you've just suddenly become aware of it because of familiarity with the subject.

 

This episode is chock full of more than just the exaggerations and stereotypes that have been part of the series' approach from the start. It plunged over into the sloppiest and least thoughtful plotting they've ever engaged in before. There have been scattered bits of unbelievability from the start in past seasons, and certainly in this season, but this episode was the first that seemed out and out absurd to me. Stereotypes about Russians, continuity problems regarding the weather, and questions about how convincing the locations are to people who know the real places are by far the least of it.

L.

 

I agree that the sheer implausibility of the operation outweighs the detail errors. The standoff with the militia types in Ep3/Ep4 was equally lazy writing with cliche characters and situations, particularly the bit with the boy and his dog.

 

It's an alternate society only loosely based on our own. I don't think a coup attempt against the president could happen like that in our society, but apparently in that one. And maybe in that society Russians are much less skilled at deterring internal attacks.

 

BTW, has O'Keefe just been locked away in the CIA dungeon with no due process since Ep4?