- Network: SHOWTIME
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 2, 2011
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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Homeland's fourth season feels as fresh, important and relevant as yesterday's news--or tomorrow's news. A bracing, intelligent start.
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Its downward slide shows signs of leveling off by the end of Sunday’s opening two hours. Danes’ Carrie is steelier than ever, her heart hardened to near-concrete while going about the exhilarating business of eliminating terrorists no matter what the collateral damage.
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We're getting the character we knew she was capable of being, with the added layer of new motherhood.... Admittedly, it's too early to declare definitively that Homeland is back, but I will say it's back to being a show I'm looking forward to watching, rather than one that made me angry as it lost its credibility mostly and lost its way completely.
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Early episodes are strong, if not as shattering as the inaugural season.
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The rebooted Homeland promises to be an engaging, streamlined CIA thriller with a few big ideas about America and the war on terrorism.
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[The show’s writers revert] at least once to a Carrie who maunders on pathetically during a trip back to America, as she evokes loving memories of the psychopathic Brody for her infant daughter—a truly unbearable scene, fortunately brief. There’s not a lot likely to dim the attractions of this Homeland with its energized spirit--not to mention the implacable Carrie, capable of mounting a war on terror all her own.
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As Carrie ruthlessly, recklessly pursues answers to how they got into this mess, at peace only when she's at war, Homeland regains much of its dramatic power by taking us far from home and making us wonder that if someone like Carrie is our best hope, should we just abandon hope?
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The first three hours of the new season that Showtime made available for review suggest Homeland is up for new challenges that move the show somewhat closer in tone to “24” while still maintaining a prestige sheen that it’s smarter, less formulaic and more believable than the Fox terrorism drama.
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If the season turns out to be primarily a complex Middle East thriller, that could still be entertaining. Homeland has just set us up to want more.
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All the silly family drama has finally taken a back seat to the CIA wheeling-and-dealing that made the show so damn scintillating in the first place. I’m as surprised as anyone, ladies and gents, but Homeland is back.
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For the current version of Homeland, action scenes rapidly intercut with political ruthlessness look to be exactly what the show needs to sustain its worthiness.
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By episode 3, Homeland starts connecting. A murder mystery becomes intriguing, key franchise assets (including Mandy Patinkin's Saul) are plugged directly into the main narrative, and a new agent (Michael O'Keefe) provides a welcome spark.
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New characters open up intriguing new avenues to investigate Carrie's ability to operate effectively.
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The show feels new again, but that doesn’t mean it feels fully refreshed, nor is it immune to painting itself into the same sort of corners it got stuck in before.
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It's good again. Not great, but good: smarter than you expect, more patient with its storytelling, less interested in the characters' plotting and counter-plotting than in their often miserable inner lives.
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You'll still need to suspend disbelief to accept her as someone the CIA could trust again, much less as anonymous enough for clandestine work. But if you can make the leap, it looks as if the post-Brody world still has stories worth telling.
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There is a lot going on this season, but the focus is back on Carrie.
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Homeland shows signs of coming back to creative life.
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It is still psychologically astute, but it has become a much more straightforward, and largely effective, spy show. If you do not want to let Homeland back into your heart, that’s understandable. But maybe let it crash on your couch for a probationary period.
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The show does feel as if it has extricated itself about as well as could have been expected from the corner into which it had been written.
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The series has some work to do to extricate its characters from the hole it dug in season 3.
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There is a flatness to the supporting characters--Saul's wife and Carrie's sister are now garden-variety Prestige Cable nags--and a measured predictability to the overall story that drains too much tension from even the sight of a wig-free Corey Stoll. Yet Mandy Patinkin and F. Murray Abraham are still fantastic, the show still employs top-notch directors and Homeland can still rustle up an atmosphere of tense isolation when it needs to. All in all, many of the tin-eared elements would more or less tolerable if I were still intrigued by Carrie Mathison.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 197 out of 247
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Mixed: 18 out of 247
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Negative: 32 out of 247
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Oct 7, 2014
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Nov 25, 2014
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Oct 6, 2014