There are now two Homelands. The Homeland That Could Have Been, and the Homeland that Is.

The Homeland TCHB includes much of what remains in the Homeland that Is. All of the best elements from Zero Dark Thirty are in. Bi-polar-as-fuck, wall-collage-pasting Carrie is certainly in. Mandy Patinkin’s beard is without a doubt in, but I’m not convinced about his vaguely foreign love interest sticking around for as long as she did without a shave-or-I’m-leaving ultimatum. (There is definitely a pre-one armed man Dr. Richard Kimble vibe, and I never bought Sela Ward putting up with Harrison Ford’s glued pube mess.) The show started to lose me a little with ever-brooding Brody, but I can stomach it. Even Carrie fucking Brody is okay, but it was a major stretch, and was without a doubt the moment where my Homeland perspective went from “OMFG tremendous” to “well, that was fun while it lasted”. The first sex rarely makes a relationship, but it can certainly break it.

But the sex wasn’t the last straw for Homeland. I can put up with Carrie fucking Brody if there is her ulterior motive of proving his guilt. I can deal with Brody fucking Carrie if he’s only trying to infiltrate the CIA. I can stomach Saul fucking Quinn, because yes please. (Speaking of Pete Quinn, I have a working theory that he is the brother of Detective Joey Quinn from Dexter’s Miami Metro. Although I’m likely not the first to mention this, I probably am among the first to consider sending Rupert Friend and Des Harrington a script for a buddy cop comedy called Quinn Bros, airing Friday nights on NBC. Joey’s the Loose Cannon. Pete’s Rock Solid. Together they’re cleaning up the streets of…Vancouver? Salt Lake City? Kiev? Need a good locale.)

But what I can’t deal with is Love with a capital L. If Carrie loves Brody, and Brody loves her back, it’s welcome to Tropeville for Homeland. Without Love, Carrie is a troubled but enlightened modern woman struggling to succeed in Affluent White Man’s arena, hellbent on preventing the next big attack. Without Love, Brody is a difficult to pin down enigma who only gets painted into a particular corner when the plot has been primed for it. But with the dedicated Love that is introduced in vary degrees throughout the 2nd Season, particularly in the conclusion, the male and female leads are forced into well-tread cinematic paths that rarely allow for significant deviation. It’s the kind of will-they or won’t-they Sam and Diane bullshit that turned Friends into All My Children, and Homeland into an also-ran instead of a contender for the Golden Age Pantheon.

Maybe Love wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t running alongside the other residents of Tropeville, the Jealous Other Man (Mike), or the Angsty Bitch Teen Daughter (Dana). I can’t understand pigeonholing characters into decades old clichés when any Golden Age writer worth his/her salt just doesn’t have to. Since the airing of the Sopranos’ pilot, TV writing is judged on how it avoids time tested stock characterizations, and when too many of them start turning up, the air slowly starts to leak out of the Great Big Idea balloon. Most good Golden Age shows have had the Great Big Idea, and most have had above average to fantastic pilots. Homeland fits both categories. But the Pantheon (mine is The Sopranos, The Wire, and most recently Breaking Bad, with Mad Men potentially sneaking in the back door) retain the complicated nature of their main characters throughout (i.e. Tony Soprano, Don Draper), or at least give them an arc (Walter White, Jimmy McNaulty). As soon as the Love is introduced in Homeland, the viewer can’t help but fall back on 40 years of accumulated history defining what Love on TV is.  And it’s especially distressing since obviously those four dudes have penises, and introducing a female character into that fray would have been a particularly galvanizing accomplishment, given the usual treatment of females in supposedly cultured post-modern artistic television.  The creators intentionally cast the Carrie role as a woman.  Why then begin beating the character over the head with decades of feminine banalities when the story just doesn’t need it?  If Carrie had a dick, it may have never reached it’s season 1 peak, but it might also have avoided it’s season 2 cliffhanger plunge.

Which isn’t to say that Homeland can’t still be enjoyed.

It isn’t winning a shitload more Emmys. It won’t crack my Pantheon. But while the residents of 123 CIA-Terrorist Blvd may have lost their luster (aside from Saul, who should be holding out for a new contract and increased screen time, along with the payoff scene where Carrie really does fuck him, or at least suck him off but then complain about getting a jaw ache), I have absolutely no fucking clue where the plot is going.

It has the potential to be an awful, series-killing clusterfuck.

It also could be fantastically unpredictable must-watch TV, if the writing crew has the balls to jump off the tracks that they seemed to find so comfortable in Season 2.

With so many other powerhouses coming to a close, it certainly is nice to be preparing for a Season 3 of show in which I don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck is going to happen.

Here’s to hoping.