<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Homeland has been suffering an identity crisis for a while. Brody should have blown up at the end of the first season along with the bomb he was wearing. That would&amp;#039;ve sent a clear message that the show was willing to take chances, and it would&amp;#039;ve removed the training wheels that is Brody. By keeping him around, the show has never had to really figure itself out. Last season came the explosion that finally did take away Brody, at least for now, and in its wake was left the most curious season premieres I&amp;#039;ve ever seen. And by curious, I mean listless but to a degree that is so extreme that it seems like there must be something else going on. The show has lost its way, and it seems to be running low on the energy required to do something about it. This episode felt like a waving of a white flag. It&amp;#039;s interesting that while Homeland is starting up again right as Breaking Bad is coming to an, both shows have still managed to arrive at the same point: fallout. (Slight BB spoilers in the next two sentences.) Both show&amp;#039;s male protagonists have gone into hiding while their families remain behind to pick up the pieces. On Breaking Bad, the world we&amp;#039;d been inhabiting was shattered in a single episode, and the one that followed felt so dark and alien that is was as though we were watching a whole new show. Homeland&amp;#039;s aftermath, on the other hand, doesn&amp;#039;t feel all that different than what came before. Even though the Brody family has lost everything, there&amp;#039;s a strange lack of consequence to their scenes. Jessica is out of money now that the government has cut off Brody&amp;#039;s military benefits, and she&amp;#039;s had to move in with her mom. But other than her hair being longer, her low-key reactions to life&amp;#039;s latest curveball are about the same as always. Dana tried to commit suicide between now and when we last saw her but since depressive angst has been her default character trait from the beginning, it again doesn&amp;#039;t register as much of a change. If anything, her life is on a bit of an upswing. After slitting her wrists, she was sent to a facility where she got a boyfriend and a shiny new skill to add to her resume: sexting. Carrie, meanwhile, is back to her lower-lip-quivering, lithium-quitting-while-rationalizing-why-it&amp;#039;s-okay, Beautiful-Mind-collaging ways. A special committee has been assembled to investigate the bombing. This committee apparently wants to take down the whole C.I.A. and they want to use her to do it. She&amp;#039;s being drilled day and night \u2014 except one version requires alcohol chased by a shot of self-loathing. She&amp;#039;s intent on proving Brody&amp;#039;s innocence, which is made more complicated when someone in the CIA leaking to the press that she was seen with him moments before the explosion. Carrie&amp;#039;s professional reputation is once again on the line but this time even Saul doesn&amp;#039;t have her back. It&amp;#039;s a variation on the same themes we&amp;#039;ve seen before, only rearranged in a slightly different order so that the resulting picture feels forced together and off. In the past, when an episode was too heavy with filler, there was always at least Saul. Even his scenes dragged last night, though. It turns out that he needs the balance of a Brody-level storyline as much as Carrie. This show has struggled with coming across as the fakest when it bases its plot turns off real-life political situations, and that was especially the case last night. It was weird watching Saul suddenly be the voice of, like, the entire American government and military. Even the one potentially emotional payoff of the episode \u2014 when Peter Quinn mistakenly shoots the little boy \u2014 echoed Brody&amp;#039;s backstory. Brody was turned after young Issa was killed by a U.S. air raid. I don&amp;#039;t know what Homeland has coming up next but I&amp;#039;m hoping it can get back on course. As of now, it&amp;#039;s seeming like one of those loose sign post arrows that kids keep turning in the opposite direction than where it&amp;#039;s intended to go. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a24977/homeland-recap-s3e01/>