Homeland Insecurity

To say the United States has lived in a cocoon of paranoid over-reaction for the past decade or so is perhaps an understatement. What 9/11 really seemed to accomplish more than anything was to give credence and deference to media-fueled mass hysteria. There was no logic or reason to how this country reacted to that tragedy. On the one hand we launched several ill-considered wars which when combined now represent the longest conflict in American history. But that wasn't all; we also managed to gut the constitution in what now seems almost a whim (the very rushed Patriot Act). This is all the more remarkable given that throughout the entire Cold War when the world was a heartbeat away from total nuclear destruction, we somehow managed to preserve, protect and even cherish our freedoms.

Homeland Security came into existence two years after 9/11

The latest headlines can attest to the fact that we're doing more spying now than we ever have before - even more than during the Cold War. People don't seem to question the motives or rationale behind this unprecedented level of paranoia - but they should. Let's put this into perspective; every year more than 10x as many Americans die from gunshot wounds (self inflicted or otherwise) as did during 9/11. Put another way, in one year more Americans will die from guns here at home than died in both the entire Afghan and Iraq wars combined.

Like I said, there's no logic to what's been going on here - its more or less crazy...

Season 3 has taken Homeland in new directions

Crazy, like say, Claire Danes' character in Homeland. Homeland is a Showtime series which is in its 3rd season now. Up until this season it was something we only watched while traveling - where hotels only had Showtime and Showtime kept rerunning these episodes over and over again so you really couldn't miss it. We didn't like it during season one or two and part of the reason was the principle of the thing. It seemed like a combination of the most paranoid theme of the Cold War (The Manchurian Candidate) combined with all the worst aspects of the god-awful Fox series, 24. It was about as much fun to watch as getting the Rapiscan at airport security.

But then something changed this year. The show shifted from its terrorist paranoia to a deeper focus on the Intelligence Community in general and began highlighting many of the secondary characters. More than that, though - the plot began to focus more and more on Carrie Matheson's (Danes) inability to separate mental illness from intelligence practice. This has proven much more entertaining on many levels. It allows the show to poke criticism at itself and the larger sense of national paranoia while still shifting more towards a traditional spy thriller format. Another key aspect to this season's success was the decision to put Brody (Damien Lewis - you remember him, he played the straight-laced hero Captain Winters in HBO's Band of Brothers) on the back burner. Brody in this series, is the Manchurian Candidate and quite frankly he didn't play role so well anyway. We've had two movie versions of the Manchurian Candidate and in the first one Frank Sinatra (who wasn't the candidate) was the star and in the second Denzel Washington was (although Liev Shrieber playing the candidate did a good job).

Danes, Lewis, Baccarin and Patinkin

Lewis, while a competent actor, doesn't have great range and when he does try to break out of his normal character he comes across as though he is struggling a bit. Claire Danes on the other is perfectly convincing as both a desperate agent needing to be heard and as a stark raving looney - she's got range.

Rounding out the cast this year are Mandy Patinkin, Morena Baccarin and F. Murray Abraham (yes, that guy from the Mozart movie - Salieri). All of these folks are simply stellar; Mandy Patinkin is one of the best character actors in the business and Morena helped make Firefly the classic that it's become. All in all, Homeland seems to have done a very effective job of reinventing itself this season - becoming a much more reasonable drama.

The question is; will the U.S. do the same? (and someday emerge from this collective paranoia)



Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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Dead Like Me Comes Alive

Sometimes we may sound overly critical but we do in fact have a great number of things that we actually enjoy. We've decided to focus the next few posts on some of our favorite TV series - some of which we discovered years after they left the air through Netflix.

Dead Like Me is an example of one of our recent finds. We completely missed the series while it was on Showtime (we were either too busy at the time to watch much television or in a Cable Rejection phase) but we found it this year while browsing through Netflix. It turns out the show's creator Bryan Fuller, had also developed one of our all time favorite shows "Pushing Daisies." He had also worked on Star Trek Voyager. That's some resume.

It also seems somehow appropriate to review a show called Dead Like Me which features the lives of Grim Reapers on the eve of the Apocalypse.

The Season 1 Trailer of "Dead Like Me"

The premise of the show is unusual - it also somewhat presages what you'll see if you decide to watch Pushing Daisies. The main character dies in the pilot episode but that's OK because she doesn't really go anywhere - death is the beginning of her story. Georgia, the main character rediscovers life through her new role as a grim reaper and through a proxy life she establishes as an undead girl trying to make ends meet. Needless to say, the premise alone was intriguing - but what really grabbed us was character development and the offbeat humor present in most of the episodes.

The show also sports one of the most original opening credits sequence and musical score that we've ever experienced - the music by the way was composed by Stewart Copeland - former member of the Police.

How could anyone resist this title sequence?

Each of the characters in the show represent seemingly real people - albeit somewhat quirky but real. Oddly enough the least interesting character is Georgia but that's because she's acting as a bit of foil or straight man through most of the series while observing the world around her. Mandy Patinkin plays a bit of a foil himself but often devolves into his own quirky directions on many occasions. The cast assembled for the show is very talented with standout performances coming from Mandy, from Callum Blue, from Laura Harris and from all the actors portraying Georgia's family. Georgia's co-workers at her new found office career are pretty fascinating as well - it's a large ensemble effort.

Callum Blue launched his career on Dead Like Me

We suppose that the somewhat dark humor on the show may not be to everyone's tastes - or perhaps it may be an acquired taste. We do believe that most of you will enjoy it though. There is something altogether therapeutic in being able to laugh at death or the circumstances revolving it and of course we're seeing another way to view life as well in most of the plot-lines. We give Dead Like Me our highest rating and we weren't the only ones who thought so - fans of the show helped to bring most of the cast back for a movie version of the show in 2009. And if you check out the ratings on most of the movie review sites you'll see Dead Like Me coming close to the highest ratings possible.

Someone asked us a fairly interesting question the other day - they said "why do studios & TV networks always cancel the best shows after one or two seasons and then run the crap like Two & Half Men for decades?" That's a good question - perhaps we need grim reapers to help us weed out the wretched programming and make room for more shows like this.


Copyright 2011, Raving Reviews™

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