I read somewhere that season 4 and it's wrap up was a return to what the show was intended to be -- a show about Carrie and her personal struggles? Wait --- WHAT?! nobody and I mean NOBODY watches the show for Carrie, and certainly not her personal trials and tribulations.
Well said. If that's what they claim now, then I charge them with bait-and-switch. They promised Homeland, a series about protecting the USA from overt and covert terrorism. I'm willing to sit thru
some personal issues, particularly if there's a minor fallout on their jobs, or something like that. But this series used to be not mainly about putting anybody's personal struggles center stage.
When I celebrated the departure of Brody's whiny daughter, and even, in a way, of Brody (his death was a whimper by any standards) in S3, I did not realize they were getting ready to emasculate Quinn by making him sentimental about Carrie. When he stood up for Carrie in S2 (to David, the acting CIA Director), it made him look logical, even magnanimous. Now they are trying to turn that into mush.
And they are getting really sloppy - they are not bothering to create believable situations to advance their pre-determined story-line, so it looks forced:
- They want to set up Season 5 (US 'assets' in Pak threatened by terrorists who have the list), so they somehow contrive to get the list into the hands of the terrorists (a CIA director hands over that list of many assets for one person who's sure to be killed minutes later - really??!?).
- They don't want Quinn killing Hakkani (again, because he's needed for S5), so they have Carrie wandering aimlessly but accurately right at the gates that have the explosives at the exactly wrong time!!
- They don't want Saul dying, so he drops (!!!) off his hand gun at the most ridiculous moment, when anybody would know he should hold onto it, just because.
It used to be many notches above 24. Not so any longer. And that's pretty damning.