How are we all doing on lockdown?
I hope that you are well and using the time productively.
If not, then here is a suggestion for a highly enjoyable binge!
Last week, late at night, I sat in silence here in Dún na nGall.
The rest of the house was asleep, as I saw the final chapter in the tortuous journey of Carrie Matheson.
I was moved to applaud the beautiful ending.
However, I did so silently. It was the sort of acknowledgement that a spy would appreciate.
Homeland, after eight series and 96 episodes, is over.
What follows now are some major spoilers.
So, if you haven’t and you want to watch Homeland then stop reading and go find it.
The first seven series are available on Netflix.
I watched the final offering on RTE Player, and it is across major platforms now.
If you are still here, then you will not mind spoilers.
It is fitting that the series is an American creation of the Israeli original, m Because so much of Carrie’s angst emerges from the situation in the Middle East.
The opening of every episode relates to the events of 911 and suggests a woman with a troubled childhood.
Sher is the embodiment of a paranoid America lashing out after Al Qaeda had attacked them.
Carrie is perfect for a life lived through secrets.
She has initially kept her bipolar disorder hidden from her employers on the CIA.
As the journey develops, she deliberately comes off her meds to give her unique insights.
Tortured and driven, she finds form and pattern in a baffling array of intel fragments.
If James Bond needs gadgets, then Carrie uses up industrial quantities of highlighter pens!
The first three series follows her developing relationship with returned Marine POW GySgt. Nicholas “Nick” Brody.
Carrie is convinced that he has been turned while in captivity and is an Abu Nasir asset.
She is dismissed as a crank in the CIA, but she is correct.
They become star crossed lovers, and this is probably the weakest part of the plotline throughout the entire story.
Saul offers Brodie redemption, and in series three he is sent on an assassination mission to Tehran.
The final scenes are of his public hanging in the Iranian capital is derived by Carrie’s anguish.
By then, Carrie is pregnant with their child.
In the past decade, Claire Danes has worn the character of the troubled CIA officer like a second skin.
My only criticism of the entire project would be in the writing.
The second episode in Series 2 showed Carrie going to Beirut to oversee an assassination operation of main bad guy Abu Nasir.
We are told that this Al Qaeda type leader (a Sunni adherent of Wahhabism) is meeting up with a co-conspirator who a senior chap in Hezbollah.
The very idea that even a fictional Bin Laden would break bread with a Shia is rather daft.
However, actors are not responsible for the script that is handed to them.
Throughout the eight series and 96 episodes, the heavy lifting has been done by Claire Danes as Carrie and Mandy Patinkin as Saul Berenson.
The latter character is Carrie’s mentor and is with her to the end.
He always believes in her, despite his faith being tested many many times by his brilliant protégé.
If Carrie is anguished and, paranoid and driven, then Saul’s shoulders sag with the weight of experience.
He is a brilliant spy but knows that so much can go wrong in his chosen craft.
Quite simply, he has just seen too much of humanity to have much faith left in the species.
Yet, he is a real patriot, not a pretend one who covets the big chair in the Oval Office.
Although Carrie and Saul carry the story through to its conclusion, there have been many able supporting characters along the way.
Murray Abraham is wonderfully evil as Dar Adal, an ostensibly retired black ops specialist.
Always give the best liens to your bad guys and he is VERY bad indeed.
Rupert Friend is also compelling as Peter Quinn, a doomed CIA warfighter.
That he dies protecting a President who then proceeds to shit all over the US Constitution and behaves like a dictator is just excellent writing.
Towards the end of his time in the Homeland saga, it is revealed that Dar Adal had recruited Quinn when he was a troubled youngster and sexually abused him in the process.
In Series 4, Carrie uses sex to recruit Aayan Ibrahim, a Pakistani medical student.
Quinn is in every sense, locked out of the operation.
He berates her, and she says that she is recruiting an asset.
Quinn simply states that she is “fucking a child”.
Aayan is the nephew of Haissam Haqqani, a high-priority target and Taliban leader.
Betrayal is at the centre of all intelligence operations, and that always has collateral damage to human relationships.
Aayan’s uncle kills him for trying to set him up while Carrie watches on the live satellite link.
Claire Danes has been gifted a wonderfully expressive face.
Consequently, she can act a scene without a line of dialogue.
This gives the director to option of allowing a something akin to an internal monologue without resorting to a narrator’s voice-over.
This is long-form storytelling on the screen that is akin to an epic novel.
Moreover, if you were with Carrie every step of the way it was worth it.
In one of the final scenes in Moscow, this book is seen on Carrie’s desk.
I immediately noticed the reference and retrieved my own copy to have another perusal.
I highly recommend it.
With a nod to Ed Snowden Carrie had written her autobiography as a CIA officer.
She has clearly dissed the Agency in her book and openly admitted that she had betrayed her country.
In the dedication, she states that she hopes that one day her daughter Frannie will understand what motivated her mother.
As Saul retrieved the first dispatch from Moscow and we heard Carrie’s voice telling him to “stay tuned”.
We were then taken to an auditorium in the Russian capital where Carrie, listening to music beside Yevgeny Gromov her GRU handler, allows herself a secret smile.
He thinks that he has won.
However, he is mistaken.
Instead, he’s being played by a brilliant spy.
Well, that’s a triumphant wrap!
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Loved Homeland. Up there with Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, The Americans and The Sopranos.
Given the absolute shitstorm that the current board at Ibrox has created since 2012 it’s little short of amazing when you look at their internet sites with fans talking up the new kit supplier, giving the benefit of the doubt to Kingco, minus King, by stating that the board will certainly have completed ample due diligence on the new kit boys.
Any worries about an outfit selling tennis shirts at £100 a go moving into a sector where less than half of that is the norm for a football shirt will also have been adressed in the contract small print they say!
As we know Rangers and their legal eagles are shit hot on these matters.
Aye, just like the due diligence carried out on the then board’s behalf re a certain Craig Whyte. Remember him, Motherwell billionaire with wealth off the radar according to an award winning exclusive from Jacko.
As we know there are very few real exclusives out there these days as the speed of the internet lets those left behind catch up very quickly.
Also claiming as your own exclusive as Jacko did makes you look like a complete arsehole when the story contains no supporting substance whatsoever and is just one big lie.
No matter the award winning Jacko, instead of being fired on the spot for telling fairy tales, had a little bonus in that month’s wage packet for the considerable bump that his exclusive gave to circulation numbers.
It did make me ask the question ‘if telling outright lies can add extra customers, why not just lie all the time?
The reporter gets a bit extra in his pay packet and his immediate boss shares the glory and the limelight as his guy brings home the bacon.
It’s absolute proof that the media, can say or print anything they want, with those responsible being rewarded when in any other walk of life they would have been sacked on the spot for making it up as they go along.
If you think you’ve heard all this before…bear with me.
Accuser : We have irrefutable evidence that lies were told and there was wrongdoing of the highest order.”
Defendant : ” If you have evidence…it is imperative that you produce it for verification and discussion.”
Accuser : ” We will release the evidence when we are ready to do so.”
Defendant : ” That is unacceptable and in order to add gravitas to your statement you need to produce the evidence now. ”
That was a brief transcript of contact between Donald Trump’s Government and the World Health Organisation.
Quite simply….The USA has openly accused China of causing the Pandemic and claim to have evidence to prove it…and the WHO has stated that the evidence must be produced.
It beggars belief that this scenario actually took place .
Thank God there is nowhere else in the World that would come up with something like this.
Spoilers, ffs. Only watched 1 episode of season 8
Sorry mate…still worth a watch ‘though….and yes…The Butler did it…:0)
In the garden shed. With a pick shaft!!
Sorry Phil, got to disagree with you on this one. Apart from the fact Clare Danes looks like she’s doing a painful jobby throughout the series I found it to be shameful US propaganda about why they’re endlessly bombing shepherds and weddings in the name of “freedom”.
The episode called “the drone queen” very clearly calls out that US policy.
As far as I could make out The Drone Queen episode highlighted that the US president was incensed that a video of the illegal strike on the farmhouse existed and was uploaded to YouTube – not that the strike itself had murdered innocent people.
For that to be the one attempt (in 96 episodes) of a mainstream tv show to highlight US crimes against humanity emphasises the notable lack of visibility the public are offered.
It’s the same rationale that sycophantic broadcasters like the BBC give when asked why they don’t provide air time to people who tell the truth, like Chomsky or Pilger. “We’ve has them on our shows”. Yes, once a decade at 2am on a Tuesday.
It’s the illusion of a broad range of views. The same as 1 in 96 is barely tackling the issue, especially as it’s main point is shame and anger at being found out, not for committing the actual crime.
Later in that season when Carrie went off her meds (in Germany) she was faced with the awful reality behind the term “collateral damage”.
You may recall it was one of her beautiful mind collage sessions.
Her German partner walked in asked her if all of these people had been killed.
They had and Carrie had given the order.
His reaction was our representative in the room.
Carrie, without the pharmaceutical balm, was consumed with shame and guilt.
It’s a fictional drama. Not factual. The writer Can write it any way they want, to earn a living. It was written Primarily for USA consumption. To make money.
You write one if you want, making the USA out to be the bad guys. See who buys it and finances it onto the screen.
Nobody wants to know if drones are taking out Al Queda funerals or weddings.
Oh and they’re not real people at all. It’s actors. There isn’t a Broad on meds, she doesn’t exist.
I just checked Netflix, and the it’s not there. You said that the first seven seasons were available there?
Yes. The first 7 seasons.
Is it possible Sevco’s Whistleblower is actually who they were in cahoots with to spike the SPFL vote?
Is it possible the Whistleblower was someone who thought he had fixed a result, In the championship, when his dastardly plan fell apart with Dundee?
Was the guy you can rely on (not) to fix a vote promised a brief at Ibrox?
When the vote went the other way was he outraged at his failure and loss of a sinecure at Ibrox? As furious as a woman scorned?
Hell hath no fury like a mother-in-law with a burnt dinner.
The amount of times you see accusations of corruption in Scottish football coming from the blue side is growing by the day.
The ultimate evidence of corruption of course will be Celtic confirmed as SPFL champions for the 9th season in a row.
Stand by for the loudest howling at the moon ever from Rangers fans and their media friends many of whom are still in thrall to the Ibrox brand despite the days of succulent lamb being well gone. Why, I have no idea.
Corruption in Scottish football? I’m with them all the way on that one. Lets have a wee look at the extreme cases, the ones that we know about that is!
Jim Farry-single handedly blocked the registration of George Cadete for reasons known only to him.
The LNS enquiry- mlud came to the conclusion that paying more money to attract better players conferred no actual advantage on the field of play. The EBT payments were subsequently deemed illegal by the courts and the beneficiaries are being chased by HMRC for tax due on the payments.
Bryson at the SFA affirmed that the EBT recipients registration with the governing body was ‘imperfect’ but legal thus the stripping of the trophies won during the EBT years was taken off the agenda.
Not sure where imperfect sits in the SFA rule book. I always thought legal or illegal were the only calls?
Ogilvie. What can you say? Never conflicted, according to himself, who either lied to Chick Young about his £96k EBT payment or Chick made the story up completely off his own bat when he informed his readers that good old Campbell’s EBT monies would barely cover a good night out in Glasgow.
Given his time at Ibrox he knew where all the bodies were buried, about the side letters, the hiding of evidence from HMRC and the SFA.
Perhaps he should just have had a word with himself?
The fraudulent 2011 Rangers UEFA licence awarded by the SFA despite the overdue, unpaid tax on the Wee Tax Case which, according to the evidence led at Craig Whyte’s trial, everyone knew about apart from the SFA.
As of today no one has been charged with what was clearly a criminal fraud as potentially millions of pounds is the prize for a team qualifying for the Group Stages of the CL, which opportunity would have gone to Celtic if Rangers had not lied about their tax status.
As for whoever signed the application on behalf of Rangers no doubt the SFA has long since banned him from any involvement in Scottish football and informed UEFA and FIFA accordingly.
Although that’s not something that us ordinary Scottish punters are privy to.
Now lets have a look at what that fella Doncaster has been up to, it must be truly awful in comparison with whats gone before.
Let the secret dossier see the light of day.
The reason Hacks and radio and tv pundits lie through their teeth for Sevco is because the Directors of those outlets are Sevco supporters and everyone is scared for their job.
That’s really all there is to it. Sevco fans and sympathizers in senior media roles.
The media is spiked and needs cleared out.
Phil you have a fantastic memory to recall back over the many episodes. Credit to you. With regards characters in the series I was very disappointed with the ending for Max. A guy who I always liked and who I thought did not really enjoy the the rough and tumble of the spying game. Great show sorry it’s over. Sunday evenings will never be the same.
Sevco holding onto the evidence against the SPFL for another two days, for no reason, thus clubs will only have five days to review it before the EGM which Sevco called.
Surely that’s not enough time and the EGM must be cancelled until the evidence is issued and at least 28 days have been spent considering it before a vote?
Sevco brazenly trying to railroad this EGM.
The only thing untoward with the SPFL vote was the secretive WhatsApp group conspiring to fix the result. T’Rangers, Hearts, Inverness, Stranraer, Dundee, …..
From a source which will remain a secret….( not Donald Trump ) my wife and binged on the final season of Homeland last week…and it didn’t disappoint.
Compared to another favourite of ours ( Game of Thrones) I thought the ending knocked it out of the ball park…whereas the other one…didn’t.
Oh and, for the avoidance of doubt, I said to my loved one…minutes before Saul got the book…
“There is no way Carrie has turned….I’ll bet you she ends up “….well you know the rest.
As for finding faults…well that’s not my bag….I accepted the series as a high class piece of drama…which excelled to the very end.
I’ll be very surprised if there’s not a follow up…eventually.
Are there really still people who believe that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on 9/11 ?
I suppose it is a fictional story ……
All I know is, I got stuck in NYC for three weeks. I was due to fly back to Heathrow on the BA flight that day. Whoever was the mastermind of the events that day, it’s as a result of CIA interference/incompetence in their black ops activities globally.
I havent seen this, Phil – but on your recommendation, I’ll give it a go. Do me a favour, though… I haven’t watched Titanic yet, so dont spoil the ending for me! 😉
A very well built ship.
The finest craftsmanship from dignified chaps.
Totally rivetting…
And hot rivets at that…if you were a Tim.
Aye. And the original panelling for the Captains cabin/office is in the Boardroom at the Dome of Debt.
Wonderful actress though Claire Danes is, eight series down the line I still see Gollum every time I look at her. It’s the big eyes. My apologies to her and anyone with a crush on her.
Charger I had no idea about the panelling….how did you know about that. ?
Read about it years ago. Decades maybe. Just one of those things that sticks in your mind. Can’t remember where but if comes back to me at any time I’ll post it. Jeez it might even have been pre-internet.
Superb twist at the end …..when did you realise what she was up to?
Had me until the end.
Only when Saul starts to examine the book.
Awesome
I thoroughly enjoyed Homeland but if there was any hint of realism about it Carrie Mathison would have been booted out the CIA, in jail or dead long before season 8. 🙂
Character wise I think Saul Berenson and Peter Quinn were by far the best of the show.
The thing I liked most about the ending was it leaves it wide open for a return in the future but I suppose that depends on the success of everyone involve post-Homeland. Personally I’m a bit gutted it’s ending, much the same as I was when The X-Files original run finished all those years ago.
Of course, artistic licence and all that.
That is why I made reference to Tim Weiner’s excellent “Legacy of Ashes”.
All writing is metaphor and Carrie in Homeland represents the collective mood of post-911 America and their futile “war on terror”.
As soon as the book was delivered. Suspected something at the landline phone call but didn’t know what. As soon as the book was delivered I said to my wife, “There’s a message for Saul in the spine.” I also think she changed bags with the woman in the ladies loo. Not sure though I was distracted at that point and it’s a fairly old trick.
There WAS a bag swap in the toilets.
Obviously, Carrie was meeting with her asset.
A pre-arranged RV.
They both had the same bag and Carrie spotted her going to the restroom.
That’s where she got the intel for the S400 back door.
Ah! The old bag swap! Ach, we’ve all done it!!! Seriously though. She paid a lot of attention to that woman heading to the loo so I thought something was going on between them.
I will miss it. The Americans gone. Homeland gone. Criminal Minds gone. I’ll be devastated when the Blacklist goes eventually. Or worse still, Peaky Blinders.
Just binge watched the first series of the Irish production Blood. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Killing Eve incidentally features THREE of the best actresses on TV in my humble opinion.
Now I’ve just written a power of television for someone who in normal times rarely watches it. Didn’t actually realise how engrossed you can get in some of these things until you binge watch them.
Phil can the SCOTTISH spfl just call the EGM
Off.
Clearly sevco have to pay for this shite.
Orange order or LODGE rules don’t cut it here.
Y are the governing bodies allowing this.
This is just to drag out time for more
Season BOOKS to get sold.
There is clearly a deliberate attempt to stall
Putting our game frew unnecessary time lost
Listing to their crap.
Wot would happen if they go bust.
It is clear that money’ and the glib king must have total control over the BOARD.
He is not there but it’s clear he’s bossing
The BOARD with a WhatsApp chat with
BOARD all doing what they are told.
Safety gloves and masks cleaning eneything
That’s passed through you door everything
Don’t take a chance cleaning eneything.
Hail Hail troops
Anyone interested in the real CIA should read Douglas Valentine’s ‘Operation Phoenix’ and ‘The CIA As Organised Crime’. Superb.