Now that the much anticipated Season 3 of Homeland is well underway many viewers, including myself, may be thinking the writers should have called it quits after Season 2. They seemed to have lost the script.
It's bad enough to have the CIA operating where it's banned from operating, in the USA proper, and it's also absurd that it would keep on its payroll a psychologically disturbed staff member. That's history.
But from the very start Season 3 has been what newspaper reporters term a "pad job" of rather boring events including a so far pointless sub plot involving runway teenage lovers, also with psychological problems, aimed at keeping you watching for a major revelation or climax.
Now, at least we know that Carrie (Claire Danes) time in the psycho lock-up has been useful in allowing her to gain an entrée to the Iranian terrorists who, an another artistic absurdity, wiped out much of the CIA at the end of Season 2. Can you imagine with the security obsession the Americans have allowing a strange black SUV to be parked in front of the CIA HQ so it can blow up, killing hundreds of VIPs?
So, as we breathlessly anticipate episode 5, we can look back at four shows with Carrie locked up in three of them. And her boyfriend, Brody (Damian Lewis) essentially locked up in South America. Both are dying to get out of locations. And, now Carrie seems to have made it.
More puzzling is how Carrie became incarcerated in the first place. Seeing that she was being made a scapegoat for the CIA allowing a strange black SUV blowing up their HQ, she runs to a newspaper with her exclusive whistle blowing Edward Snowden style story.
But, this wasn't your typical American rag dedicated to truth, justice and the American way, it was more like the Guardian. Here she is giving an exclusive interview when the cops, called by the editor, march in to take her to the funny farm. Other than the CIA conducting covert US based operations, this was the most absurd thing yet the writers have put forth.
No reporter or editor anywhere would call anyone, especially in this case the CIA, before getting the interview. This action was so absurd I had laugh out loud.
Now I know these days with Homeland Security and the Patriot Act things you may have said or done in the 60s can get you arrested. But the USA isn't yet like Soviet Union was where anyone who didn't like the country was deemed a nutter and locked away in a mental ward. The CIA, once again, doesn't have the power to do this on US soil. And, Carrie wouldn't have qualified as a public menace to be sectioned such as was the very real case with actress Amanda Bynes. Of course her effete sister and father weren't much help in getting her out. It took an agent of Iran to do that.
It seems to me she will have to become sort of a runaway, as well, to eventually meet up with he runaway boyfriend. Where the meeting will be is the mystery the writers hope will keep you watching the show.
What about the teenage runaways? Well, if there's enough interest in their story, a spin-off series could be next: Brody's Wild Child.