In the season finale of Homeland, everyone is a pawn in someone else’s power play.
Sadly, Homeland can’t leave well enough alone and soon falls back on narrative shortcuts.
The episode’s triumph is the way it continues to observe the fallout of large political actions.
Crafting a season around fake news and alternative truth is all for nothing if characters lose sight of what’s real.
The episode eerily and effectively depicts how stories can be orchestrated and flipped on a dime.
The episode plunges head-on into the murkiness of doubt that even the show’s heroes act like villains.
By episode’s end, most of the show’s key characters have re-invested in the things that most matter to them.
The episode hurtles forward without giving its characters a chance to reconsider their positions.
The latest episode of Homeland is clear, measured, and deliberate in its critique of American policies.
The episode demands that its characters question their ends-justifying-the-means ways.
The latest episode of Homeland proves the series is all too comfortable playing the long game.
Homeland’s season-six premiere provides a plausible dissent and voice for those who’ve been silenced.
The season finale of Homeland lingers almost uncomfortably long on the survivors.
Homeland should talk less, and trust that intimate scenes will serve to demonstrate or explain the larger themes.
Homeland falters when it focuses on the contrivances of its big-picture plotting, but they lead “New Normal” to a powerful ending.
Despite the implication of the title, “The Litvinov Ruse” is no trick.
The episode closes with Carrie finally making the connection that Allison so desperately sought to cover up.
The writers either need to relegate Allison further to the sidelines or figure out a way of complicating her.
That desperate need for someone to understand and stand beside us: That’s parabiosis.
Homeland is too wrapped up in its own allure to deliver on the story it started to tell in previous weeks.