Smallscreen Features

Showtime's 'Homeland' keeps getting better, The Weekend, some thoughts

By April MacIntyre Nov 14, 2011, 22:13 GMT

The alcohol and sexual contact lowers Carrie\'s normally steely guard, and in conversation she slips and mentions the Yorkshire Gold tea that Brody prefers. He is on to her.

Showtime's "Homeland" is hands down my favorite new series of the year. Damien Lewis (Life), Claire Danes (Temple Grandin) and Mandy Patinkin (The Princess Bride) are three incredibly intelligent and gifted actors who have taken this Israeli thriller adaptation produced by Howard Gordon (24) and run with it.

“The Weekend” Season 1 Episode 7 sees Brody (Lewis) and Carrie (Danes) get a bit of a drunken weekend bender at her family's lakeside cabin. 

The alcohol and sexual contact lowers Carrie's normally steely guard, and in conversation she slips and mentions the Yorkshire Gold tea that Brody prefers. He is on to her.

They face off, and she tells him why she suspects he is the turned POW sent back by Abu Nazir (the Osama bin Laden of the series) somehow to facilitate some homeland terrorism.

Saul (Patinkin) has carefully and methodically done the work that leads him to rich white girl-turned terrorist Aileen (Marin Ireland) and wins her trust and intel by sharing his marital woe with Mira (also a "brown" woman like Aileen's "brown" boy), and empathizing with her feeling like an outsider, taking Aileen, who was raised in the Middle East, to his Indiana home where he was the odd Jew out.

The discovery that Brody's POW mate Tom Walker is a shocker, and Carrie learns this too late from Saul, as Brody has severed his affection and ends their conversation with a curt "f*ck you."

The entire cast is given solid writing to work with, and the suspense of who the bogeyman is keeps building each episode, flying in the face of genre cliches and catch-alls.

The material is taught but not ponderous like "The Killing" and downright sexy in the tension built between Brody and Carrie, whose reaction to finding out Brody converted to being a Muslim was exceptional and spot on.

Brilliant series.