I’ve stopped watching. There is simply too many folks getting hysterical, too many people getting killed, beaten, drugged, chased and blown up to exist side by side with a “Sleeper Cell Terrorist” Plot. I ain’t buying it.

Ok, so Brody the severely damaged POW, is a closet Muslim, who shoots a deer in his the backyard (Bambi was nibbling flowers), attacks a reporter and beats up a wounded Marine buddy and later another Marine buddy/family friend. Has no one noticed how he loses control with each episode. Another episode, he gets kidnapped by terrorist operatives (“honey, don’t worry I just got beat up and mugged”) all while having an affair with the CIA agent trying to catch him. Whew!

Brody has given us too much melodrama to maintain his cover. Carrie has given us too much melodrama to suggest she could ever be trusted to hold down any type of high stress job and everyone else is too paranoid to allow all this nonsense to swirl around them without calling BS on the whole proceedings.

Did I mention, the Vice-President called?…He wants to have lunch.

If you need me I’ll be watching HBO, good-bye.

I’ve been watching Burn Notice since its first season. “No mystery, just love yogurt.”

I also discovered Leverage this year. Awesome heist show, made by geeks. Lots of fun and really smart. Great cast.

Since you appreciate shows with a grand vision, I recommend Babylon 5 if you’ve never seen it before. I finally got around to watching the whole series last year, and it knocked my socks off.

And I disagree – “Breaking Bad” has had bad episodes, but they are easily forgivable.

At that moment, we were signaled that the show really
didn’t care about her as a character that made any sense at all.

The whole idea of her being a beyond-obsessive professional
driven by the horrific guilt-notion that she could have stopped
9-11 if only she’d done something better/faster/smarter, her
absolute NEED for Saul’s support, her absolute need for the
investigation as a thing to make her life make sense, her
endless hours spent doing everything to make this asset
prove useful, to the point of destroying her career/life and
Saul’d love/respect…

..she’s willing to throw that all away for some Brody dick.
Or worse, she thinks she can fuck some intel out of him.
Or most likely? The writers just wanted to up the tension
and really aren’t all that interested in her as a cohesive
character.

I stayed with The Killing throughout because I dug the acting so much, even when the story let me down. But I recently removed The Walking Dead from my dvr queue. If that story were true to itself, the living would be all eaten up by now, too many close calls and too much endless heartache — lost children, shot children, boring jealousies, etc. And if you’ve seen one zombie eat something nasty, you’ve seen them all. Same old, same old.

Re: Homeland, anyone who has see tv before should have known the question of whether Brody is or is not a traitor working in league with terrorists wasn’t going to be resolved in the sixth episode. That as soon as Carrie had let go of her own personal Brody jihad, it would be at the moment the show revealed she wasn’t totally wrong.

As well I think the show has proven that whatever Brody might be, he is his own man, but a man that is definitely still broken, but who is internally labile/mutable.

Luckily they cast Demien Lewis in this part and he is one of the few actors who can both reveal/conceal layers of character so brilliantly, that they just might be able to stretch that premise into multiple years of story, though I think it might have benefited from an eight episode season like Oz or Bored to Death, instead of a full 12.

OTOH, almost nothing was expected of “Hell On Wheels”, and it’s pretty enjoyable on its own merits. Though he’s completely in character for the time–Mark Twain could have written him–I keeping picturing Ian McShane asking Colm Meaney if he ever thinks of dialing it down a little.

And that’s about it. Even The Wire had the ridiculous final season.

The second season started out OK but then went off the rails with the whole River Song arc (the only episode I liked in the second half was “the God Complex” which was awesome). Once again the finale was just disappointing. The whole River Song is Tinkerbell was worse than wishing really hard can save the Doctor bit in last year finale.

Thankfully the Christmas special looks really good this year and Big Finish Audio audio adventures continue to be awesome.

Aren’t all television series prone to a clunker every now and again? I watched my favorite, “The Sopranos” again earlier in the fall. I was in Season Two and a friend who hasn’t seen the show but who’s endured my endless praise showed up to my place unexpectedly. There was a scene at one of Tony’s front operations, a trash-hauling business. To establish this scene, the director chose some bass-guitar-heavy song while the camera moved past a menacing, barking German shepherd that was chained to a tractor. My friend: “I see what you mean about ‘the genius nuances and subtle nods to some of film’s finest.’”

And what exactly are you saying that Homeland should be a one-dimensional show? No great drama is about one thing and one thing only.

Whoever said there were no bad episodes of Mad Men, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under (which was never that great of a show anyways) must have been watching something other than those series, because all those shows have produced their share of dismiss-able, unconvincing installments.

I’m not saying Homeland will remain a great show. It seems to be going down a very iffy, possibly cliched path, but you can’t beat up on it before it gets there. And you certainly have no right to beat up on it after delivering just one episode you didn’t like.

In general, Matt, you’re being a drama queen.