A not so clear but very present danger

There's no question Homeland has reached a broad audience, including the President it seems. Bill Clinton apparently brags that he turned President Obama onto the show. But, after watching the first season over a long weekend I have to wonder what Smokin' Joe Biden thinks of the Showtime series, as it is the Vice-President, amiably played by Jamey Sheridan, who comes across as the "bad guy" in this elaborate spy thriller.

While the creative team credits an Israeli television series, Prisoners of War, as its inspiration, it seems The Manchurian Candidate lurks in the back of their minds. The story revolves around a American POW that isn't quite the returning hero he seems, but to the writers' credit there are so many compelling twists and turns in this series that you soon forget the link.

Homeland plays out more like a 12-part movie than a serial, with each episode dovetailing into the next, as we watch Carrie Mathison, a feisty CIA agent, try to figure out the next strike of a notorious al Qaeda leader, Abu Nazir. All she has initially to go on is a tip from an Iraqi informant that an American prisoner has turned and Nazir plans to use him. Lo and behold, Sgt. Brody pitches up 10 months later in Virginia, having been found by a Delta team on a raid deep in enemy territory.

While the show delves deeply into the domestic lives of all the characters, like the Israeli television series, the creators ratchet it up several notches by indulging in gratuitous sex and creating a tremendous amount of suspense, as you would expect from Showtime. However, the writers also create a great sense of ambiguity and moral uncertainty, all too often missing from such shows.

Nazir isn't a faceless terrorist, but a compelling figure explored mostly through a series of flashbacks as we learn about Brody's eight years in captivity. Damian Lewis, with his shock of red hair and pale blue eyes, embodies his role as the "good sergeant." The CIA agents are flawed characters, but steadfast in their belief they are serving the greater good of the country. Claire Danes is virtually unrecognizable as the bi-polar Claire who painfully breaks down during the course of the first season in her obsessive quest to foil Nazir's plot. But, my favorite character is Saul Berenson, impeccably played by Mandy Patinkin, who gives the show its gravitas.

There is an interesting aside in the last episode where Sgt. Brody equates the American Civil War with the Jihad being waged on America, only with a decidedly different set of allusions. I think the creators are trying to show how this pernicious War on Terror has driven the country apart, using the concept of "Homeland" both in the literal and allegorical sense of the word. I give the writers a lot of credit for using television to expand on this subject rather than create just another forensics series.

Like so many spy thrillers these days, Homeland has its CIA consultants and aims for a high degree of verisimilitude, even though the writers appear to stretch credulity at times with some of their plot twists, especially in the culminating episode of Season One. I suppose that has a lot to do with the success of the show and the need to keep the story running when it appeared it would come to a cataclysmic end. The Vice-President can breathe easy at least for one more season. But, apparently not everyone is happy in Beirut.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

James FergusonMarch 26, 2013 at 11:12 AM
Anyone watching this series? I think it raises a number of intriguing issues, not least of all no reference to the President, only the VP who appears to be calling all the shots in the CIA, although the time frame is 2011.

It seems to me that the creative team has gone out of its way to avoid any reference to Obama. Not sure who they modeled VP Walden on, but he does have the jovial quality of Biden, but appears to be a manipulator like Cheney. I guess they purposely wanted to keep viewers guessing.
avrdsMarch 27, 2013 at 5:31 AM
Not my sort of show. I watched Newsroom and enjoyed it (except for those pathetic female characterizations), but generally if I watch t.v. series, I prefer the British variety. I'm tempted by the Netflix remake of House of Cards, but even that probably isn't as good as the English original.
James FergusonMarch 27, 2013 at 7:32 AM
Women are strong characters in this one. Claire Danes is great!
James FergusonMarch 27, 2013 at 8:42 PM
One of the things this series does is drive home the point that we are fully engaged in a "war on terror," with very sophisticated enemies. How true that is is anyone's guess, as of course this information is classified ; )

Dispatches from Vilnius

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