DVR: Week fourteen

Last Resort: Blue Water

With this episode it's become difficult to say whether the production team knew the cancelation was imminent, or if they'd decided to burn through story in the hopes of turning a page as they headed into a  back nine.   On the one hand, Sam gets a brief reunion with the wife -- after freeing her from, and they actually call it this; "an old, abandoned warehouse" --  then presumes she is killed in action, leaving him free to pursue his island romance.

On the other, Chaplin makes an alliance with the Chinese, which would certainly be more important on a show with more then 4 episodes to live.

But then back in the states, Kylie has obtained exclusive rights to the SEAL-team helmet cam, which may just about bring down the government.  It might presume Americans have enough spine to revolt, but for the sake of argument let's pretend that could possibly happen...

Sadly, Serrat returns, and ends the episode still alive.  I hope the series ends with him dead.

Homeland: The Choice

The first half of this season finale feints the episode as an aftermath,  implying the real climax took place in the penultimate episode as cable series are now wont to do.   But through what should have been a tense sequence around the cabin, I felt the series succumbing to that Showtime stasis when Quinn balked at killing Brody* and then only threatened Estes.  I had a brief amused vision of an Estes dead in retribution for Nazir with the show's CIA being run by F. Murray Abraham, Quinn at the right hand, Saul and Carrie exiled to a backwater posting.

Then that was nearly what Saul had pulled for Carrie, and I could see another version of the third season, again with the two of them running a station somewhere, plotting some revenge against Estes.  Less office-political intrigue, but a solid idea; I could have been behind it.

So when Carrie decided to leave the Agency for Brody, I saw that at the very least, one rug was about to be pulled out from under her. That the car could have been sidled up to the window is ludicrous** but I'll give the series credit for apparently cashing out Estes as a character, in addition to all the story-deadweight Walden family.***  Finn, too, has now paid for his crimes.

And then came the third tease of a retooled Homeland; with Carrie and Brody on the lam while Saul, now ranking man in the CIA, tries to bring them in safely.  When we consider how important Brody's martyr video was ten weeks ago, it's a credit to the series that Nazir's network can roll it out this week and take a jaded, impatient viewer like me by surprise.  Well played, Homeland.

In the end though, the show couldn't quite commit to that radical a change, and the pre-finale speculation that next season would be without Brody were closer than not.  We will get the Berenson-Mathison CIA, or at least some version of it.  Saul's closing smile at Carrie returning, alive was my other favorite moment of the finale; echoing hers from the season premiere yet showing a run-on sentence of conflicting emotions; relief, disappointment in the aid she rendered Brody, and some satisfaction that she chose to return in the end.

In all, enough to pull the series back from its Abu Nadir of the tunnel boogeyman sequences. I'll be back for it next fall.

* Given last week, I half-expected Quinn to take the shot just as Brody bowed in prayer...

**who parked it? There's about sixty million security cameras in this series when it's not taking place at the CIA

*** And did they have to give the VP the most distracting first name possible? During Estes' obituary I felt shorted that he omitted Walden's '79 MVP title...