I don’t want to get into my own thoughts on last night’s season finale of Homeland too much, because this post is more of a discussion post for our readers: A jumping off point which you folks can use to talk about last night’s show (plus, one awesome Tweet from Jean-Ralphio). I will say that, I’ve been really down on the last half of season two of Homeland, but last night’s finale totally redeemed the show for me. Critics (as you’ll see below) have been mostly mixed to positive, with many agreeing that the bombshell (literally) saved the show, while others feel that it further eroded the viewers’ trust, while still others are taking issue with the fact that Homeland has become a show too focused on the Carrie and Brody love story.
Whatever. I loved it, especially after that disappointing Dexter finale.
Here’s what some other critics and Twitter personalities thought of the finale. Please feel free to share your own opinions on the comments.
The last few episodes had been such a mess that the finale arrived with the show already screwed up, and now the hope was something much harder to achieve: we wanted “The Choice” to retroactively make the stupid parts of recent weeks somehow much less stupid. And amazingly, it did accomplish that. — Alan Sepinwall, Hitfix
Say what you will, but y’all have to admit –That was a clinic in bullet dodging. #SlowClap #Homeland — Damon Lindelof
“I have to give “The Choice” credit for chutzpah and tactical smarts. It flipped the show upside down and may have given it a new lease on life.” — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture
“Was beginning to think tonight’s #Homeland season finale was oddly uneventful and then boom, I lost control of my bowels.” — Alex Goldschmidt
“Like an overload of love, money or fine dining, more of a great show sometimes can be a little too much. The only thing worse is less. — Alessandra Stanley, NYTimes (is that a dig at Dexter?)
“To remain a brilliant, top-tier show, Homeland needed a miracle in the season two finale. It didn’t get it.” — Tim Goodman, THR
“Instead they concocted a terrorist attack that, were it to happen in real life, would fundamentally rewrite America’s source code, and used it just to uncross their star-crossed lovers so that they could live to fight and fuck and flee another day. In every way it’s a grievous misreading of what made this show matter: pushing the examination of the War on Terror, and the audience’s ability to continue to like its fundamentally good-hearted protagonists in the face of their morally and emotionally disastrous actions, as far as they can go. They chickened out.” — Sean T. Collins, Rolling Stone
““The Choice” cannot erase “Homeland’s” flaws, but it does cement its standing as a great show.” — Cindy Davis, Pajiba
“The tension of this finale was deftly achieved; it really worked: every time Carrie and Brody went into a clinch, I expected one of them to shoot the other in the back.” — Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
“I liked the episode, and I think it mostly works as a finale, hence the high grade. But it’s also the kind of episode that ultimately erodes trust. ” — Todd VanDerWerff, The AV Club
“What the finale did do, very cannily, was to reëstablish the bond of trust and secrecy between Carrie and Brody (the engine of the show) and to create a new one between Brody and his daughter Dana. But don’t ask me what Carrie is going to tell Saul: another manic breakdown? Got swept up in a “Battlestar Galactica” marathon? I kid, but the joke is on me, because I will be front and center for the première of Season 3. So farewell for now, “Homeland,” the best bad show on television.” — Michael Agger, The New Yorker
At moments of exasperation, I think, to borrow a phrase from Saul, this is “the smartest and the dumbest” show I’ve ever known. Brilliant for tackling national fears of the day, silly in its depiction of the starry-eyed CIA agent losing herself to a triple agent. Smart for weaving domestic family tensions with global action/adventure in a Hollywood way that captivates an audience, dumb for manipulating the cat-and-mouse game too far beyond reason. Exasperating, but addicting. — Joanna Ostrow, Denver Post
