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Positive:
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Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
The GuardianMay 22, 2020
Nov 2, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Each episode of Homecoming is about a half-hour, leaving no room for placeholder sequences or needlessly distracting subplots. Every scene, every character, every development is a key component of a jigsaw puzzle that admittedly takes quite some time to develop into something we can truly see for what it is.
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Viscerally penetrating thriller, outstanding in its subtlety, its anxiety-making atmospherics, and not least its heart--the contribution of a sterling cast headed by Julia Roberts in the role of therapist Heidi Bergman--inhabits a world beyond political themes. ... Mr. Whigham’s performance as Carrasco is plain delectable. So is virtually all else about this series whose exceptional powers, including the power to terrify, derive from conversation not action.
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Oct 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It’s a strong showcase for Julia Roberts as an actress but a bolder move for her as executive producer. Homecoming is the opposite of a star vehicle (like, say, Amazon Prime’s recent “Jack Ryan”), focusing more on the story than characters. Nothing about it feels self-indulgent.
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Oct 30, 2018
Season 1 Review:
If you blink, you might miss a nuanced bit of dialogue or the camera focusing on something relevant to the plot. This is one of the most carefully crafted programs I’ve seen, with fantastic performances from Roberts and Stephan James (in a breakout role). Homecoming is addictive, appointment television and yet another feather in the cap for Amazon’s streaming service.
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Oct 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Whigham delivers one of the year’s best TV performances. ... Esmail has worked with the creators to reconceive their audio adventure as a visual delight, full of smart performances and lingering unease. For all its Hitchcock-y camera angles and Lost-y double-reverse plot twists, Homecoming is an all-too human freakout.
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Nov 2, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Its tropes are well-worn, and its narrative doesn’t go anywhere unexpected. And yet all these elements miraculously coalesce into a show that is still tremendously emotionally affecting. Ultimately, Homecoming has too many strengths — and is a story too strikingly told--for its flaws to find real purchase.
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Oct 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Visually and thematically, it plays like a lean, focused distillation of Esmail’s other series. It has the cool tone, the paranoia, the visual flourishes, the mind-bending revelations. But these effects are concentrated on a single, intricate story, laid out in 10 swift and magnetic episodes. In this case, less is very much more.
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TV Guide MagazineOct 25, 2018
Season 1 Review:
This brisk and mesmerizing thriller is the best sort of binge. [29 Oct - 11 Nov 2018, p.10]
Uncle BarkyNov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Roberts and Cannavale also contribute memorable characterizations while newcomer James makes Walter much more than a guinea pig. These performances and a solidly intriguing story make Homecoming worth your down payment. Stay the course and you’ll get a nice payoff as well.
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Oct 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Esmail is one of the few directors who takes full advantage of the medium, imbuing ordinary objects with menace--a trio of vending machines, fruit being harvested--and distorts sound to pluck your paranoia. There are tracking shots in the first four episodes that play like homages to Alfred Hitchcock. As for Roberts, I’m not about to sit down for a film marathon--but I am down for the rest of Homecoming.
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Oct 22, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It takes a few episodes for Homecoming to start showing its cards, and the focus is on unspooling the mystery rather than building the characters, so emotional depth is sometimes sacrificed in order to keep the narrative freight train chugging along. But it is an awfully good mystery, after all, with each episode lasting just long enough and teasing us just enough to keep us hooked.
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TV Guide MagazineMay 26, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Homecoming build to a shocking and satisfying finale that you're not likely ever to forget. [25 May - 7 Jun 2020, p.3]
May 21, 2020
Season 2 Review:
This second season may not be as ambitious as the first, but it is very satisfying as a bingeable work of suspense. Seven episodes may seem like a random number, but it’s exactly the number needed to tell the story being told, and I appreciate the commitment to keeping it lean, especially in this age of hashtag–Releasing Snyder Cuts.
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Nov 5, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The result is a television series that’s frequently breathtaking. Each frame of Homecoming feels meaningful, and most feel at least vaguely familiar. ... As Homecoming unfurls its mystery through 10 half-hour installments, the stylistic choices can seem more like aesthetic overdecoration than vital components of something fully cohesive. ... It has the potential to expand its story in a way that melds the narrative organically with Esmail’s stylistic flourishes, rather than layering one on top of the other.
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Nov 2, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Season 1 of Homecoming supplies two fine roles to Julia Roberts--or, rather, one superb role, that of the disappointed American hero Heidi Bergman, on two time lines. ... Every episode of Homecoming, each crisp half-hour installment, is a compact exploitation film, spinning an anxious yarn about systematic abuse.
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The show grows warmer with detail and behavior, even as the style stays chilly. Julia Roberts is a good actress, one remembers, and she’s surrounded by rooted, delicate performances from (among others) James, Spacek, Whigham, Alex Karpovsky as a counselor and Jeremy Allen White as a member of Cruz's old unit who suspects that all at the honeycombed Homecoming Transitional Support Center is not what it seems.
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The pace is deliberate in “Homecoming,” but the show is rarely boring thanks to the visuals and an investment in the characters. (After episode eight, when a major reveal happens, “Homecoming” gets a little draggy, but by then invested viewers will carry through to the end.)
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The series is based on a podcast fictional series created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, who’ve helped Esmail refashion their audio-based narrative (a collage of tense phone conversations and other snippets of recorded evidence) into a terrific, tightly strung tale of deceit and memory.
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Oct 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The first four episodes do an eerily good job of making us wonder why Heidi can’t seem to recall her time at Homecoming, and just what the heck happened there. The sound design of Homecoming is intriguing, as you’d expect from a series based on a podcast. ... The cast also keeps "Homecoming" watchable, with skillful performances that keep a fine balance between drama and thriller, spiked with moments of weird humor.
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Oct 30, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Roberts and James have abundant chemistry, which is crucial for a thriller built so much on two people just talking. The plot is intentionally slow to start, so the early episodes lean heavily on atmosphere and on how likable Heidi and Walter are together. Roberts and James more than deliver the latter, while Esmail is all over the former.
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Sep 21, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Just when you might become frustrated with all the vagueness of the mystery and the hints of conspiracy, the writers deliver a solid step forward. It helps enormously that the episodes are a half-hour long, undoing any potential for ponderousness. It’s a pleasure to see Roberts stretch her legs on TV, particularly in her scenes opposite James, where her heart is most evident. The two clearly have a strong chemistry, one that is not necessarily romantic, and they are surrounded by a fine supporting cast.
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May 22, 2020
Season 2 Review:
When Monae loosens up with Chau (when the material allows it, that is), the series discovers a valuable human element. Conspiracy thrillers can be about people, or they can be about plot, or they can be about both, which is very, very difficult. At its best season two manages both.
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
You dive into the deep end of this pool and struggle to make it back to the surface, not because you have to (although in my case I did) but because you can't. That's obviously good, also occasionally frustrating because Homecoming can be parsimonious with information. ... Then, there's Roberts, who is superb (and always is).
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Homecoming can be annoying, slow or confusing at times, but its final few episodes are so gripping, well-acted and well-written that you may get swept away and forget what annoyed you in the first place. Roberts starts to show her incredible range as a performer, turning her emotions on a dime and filling up the small screen with as much magnetism as she ever did on the big one.
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May 26, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The second season of Homecoming never entirely justifies its own existence. Kyle Patrick Alvarez, who takes over as the director of every episode, doesn’t have predecessor Sam Esmail’s visual flair or his sense of showmanship. ... But the way it tricks its audience into siding with the wrong character is its best and most intriguing trick.
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RogerEbert.comOct 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
With great ideas, an interesting mystery, and a phenomenal ensemble, the only thing holding Homecoming back from the top tier of current television is a common issue with streaming service shows--pacing. Even at ten half-hour episodes, Homecoming drags its feet a few too many times, sinking back into valleys after notable peaks in episodes four and eight. It could have been a masterpiece at five or six episodes.
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May 19, 2020
Season 2 Review:
While Homecoming’s second season lacks the intensity and mystery that made season one a hot watch, the acting, the craft, the expansive world building, and the ensuing themes of corporate greed and military malfeasance make this newest installment a worthwhile albeit unrealized capper.
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May 21, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The new season’s second episode picks up the story from season one, untangling confusing character turns and detailing how events came to pass in a brilliantly-executed bit of plot jujitsu that avoids retroactive continuity. ... The remaining five episodes then backfill character information, which fails to be as compelling as season one’s plot.
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May 22, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Everyone's cobwebbed in a way-too-busy plot that replaces simmering office park absurdity with dystopian triple-reverses. [Jun 2020, p.88]
ColliderMay 18, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Unless you’re a diehard Homecoming fan, Season 2 will probably disappoint. It’s not that Homecoming Season 2 isn’t as bingeable or well-acted or stylish as Season 1; it most definitely is all of these things. But after screening several episodes, it’s hard not to come away feeling like you’ve just watched what effectively amounts to a neat little epilogue rather than a continuation of the first season.
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The PlaylistOct 5, 2020
RogerEbert.comMay 21, 2020
Season 2 Review:
There are moments of greatness in those three and a half hours, most of them in the engaging performances of the cast. However, one can’t shake the large shadow of the first season. Less narratively ambitious in every way, season two feels like an echo of something that didn’t really need an echo.
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May 21, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 of the psychological thriller (streaming Friday in seven episodes) isn’t nearly as captivating or complex as its predecessor. Rather than advance the story significantly (or startlingly), it functions more as an afterthought or a predictable epilogue. And although it adheres to the spooky, paranoid style of the first iteration (minus Roberts’s character, and also minus Sam Esmail’s direction), it simply isn’t mysterious enough to satisfy. Its coolness has gone cold.
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May 19, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The show doesn’t come up with a credible way forward, instead stumbling through familiar story beats with less gusto. It resembles, perhaps, one of its own characters after undergoing the amnesia-inducing treatment at the show’s center — certain of where it is but unclear on why, familiar in appearance but emptied out of spark.
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May 19, 2020
Season 2 Review:
It all feels very rudimentary and thin, especially when the narrative could have become a real and complicated exploration of trauma, identity and the way traditional mental health resources are failing veterans. The whole series is an exercise in taking the potentially significant and rendering it incidental. ... The writing is spare, the directing bland, but at least there's pleasure in watching the actors.
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