Homeland: The Unofficial Guide to Season One and Two

By TVCaps

Homeland has quickly become an international sensation. Viewers across the world have fallen in love with the characters. It has become one of the most critically acclaimed shows on TV.

This guide will help you refresh your memory about all the plots, sub-plots, and characters from season three.

The guide provides a recap of every episode (be warned of spoilers), descriptions of every major character, and a history of the shows production and origins.

Note: this book is unofficial and not endorsed by the creators or producers of the show.

TVcaps is an imprint of BookCapsTM Study Guides. Each unofficial TV guide, recaps TV shows to help refresh your memory for what has previously happened. They feature character profiles, show history, and episode by episode recaps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301392025

Book preview

About TVcaps

TVcaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. Each unofficial TV guide, recaps TV shows to help refresh your memory for what has previously happened. They feature character profiles, show history, and episode by episode recaps. To see other BookCaps™ titles, visit www.bookcaps.com.

Background

Homeland is a US television series made by the company Fox 21, which was first shown on the cable channel Showtime on October 2, 2011.

The show was developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa (who also wrote it, along with Gideon Raff, writer of the original); they adapted the concept of the show from an Israeli TV series Hatufim (meaning literally Abductees but given the English title Prisoners of War). In the original series, two Israeli soldiers return home after seventeen years in captivity, after being captured on a secret mission in Lebanon; a third comrade is returned dead. On being questioned by military investigators discrepancies are found in their stories and a search begins to uncover the truth.

This basic concept was adapted into the series Homeland, in which a US Marine Sergeant is rescued from Al-Qaeda captivity during a special forces raid on a terrorist compound. The soldier, Nicholas Brody, is returned to the USA and greeted as a hero. However, a CIA agent named Carrie Mathison has been told by a contact in Iraq that terrorists have turned a US soldier to their side, and she suspects that Brody may be this soldier.

The program follows the two main characters as Brody tries to settle back into life in the USA whilst Mathison attempts to expose him. There are a large number of plot twists (see Series Overview and Episode by Episode), many of them occasioned by the fluctuating relationship between Mathison and Brody and Mathison's manic depression, which makes it difficult for her to convince her superiors of the validity of her ideas.

The pilot and eight episodes were directed by Michael Cuesta, who is also an executive producer for the show. The other episodes have been equally split between four directors, Guy Ferland (3), Daniel Attias (2), Clarke Johnson (2) and Jeffrey Nachmanoff (2). In addition to the three original writers (Gordon, Gansa and Raff) writing credits have been given to Chip Johannessen (8 episodes), Alexander Carey (5), Meredith Stiehm (5) and Henry Bromell (4).

The show has been extremely well received by both critics and viewers in the US and abroad. It has gained many awards, most significantly five Golden Globes (Best Drama Series 2011 & 2012, Best Actress in a Drama Series (Claire Danes) 2011 & 2012, Best Actor in a Drama Series (Damian Lewis) 2012) and four Primetime Emmys (Outstanding Drama Series/Lead Actor/Lead Actress/Writing, all 2012). Many other awards and nominations, for both acting and technical categories, have been received.

The US website Metacritic, which rates the reviews received by programs in top newspapers across the US, found that both series achieved near unanimous positive reviews, rating 91/100 and 96/100 for seasons one and two respectively.

The show received Presidential approval in 2012 when Barack Obama revealed he watches it on DVD when his wife and children play tennis on Saturdays. Lead actor Damian Lewis (an Englishman) was invited to a White House reception for UK Prime Minister David Cameron and discussed the show with the President. In a later interview, Lewis revealed that he and Danes had signed a DVD set for the President, Danes writing, I was a fan of yours long before you were a fan of ours and Lewis, rather more daringly, From one Muslim to another; he confessed that he spent a long time worrying whether the President would appreciate the joke.

When first aired in the US the show drew an audience of just over one million viewers, but this had risen to close to two million by the end of the first series. Online viewing and DVD purchases have significantly increased these original figures. The show has aired in over forty countries worldwide and enjoyed considerable success, for example, in the UK, where its showings on Channel Four averaged around 2.5 million viewers.

The show is chiefly filmed in Charlotte, North Carolina, partly due to local tax breaks for filming. It also closely resembles neighborhoods in Washington DC and Virginia, where the series is set, but is does not have all the problems associated with filming in larger cities. Concord, NC, was used for part of the second series, and some of the series was shot on location in Haifa, Israel (in place of Beirut).

Despite the general acclaim for the series, there has been some criticism. Dramatically there have been suggestions that Claire Dane's acting, and particularly her facial expressions when not speaking, is overblown. Some critics have also asserted that the plot became rapidly too convoluted and unbelievable. However, these critics are very much in the minority.

More seriously, some Muslim critics in the US and elsewhere have claimed that the program portrays Islam and Arabs in a decidedly one-dimensional and unfavorable light. It has also been claimed that the program seeks to excuse morally dubious or illegal actions by the US (in the program), such as torture