Reset

The new TV season is upon us and I'm slowly but surely checking out the new shows.  So far nothing has caught my attention enough to go into the regular rotation, but give it time. Meanwhile, it's interesting to see how some old shows are coming back.  Two in particular that I watched on Sunday, Once Upon A Time and Homeland.

As I noted last season, Once Upon A Time, created by a couple of Lost producers, and utilizing Lost's flashback structure, is a fairly ridiculous show, featuring bad writing, acting and plotting.  I was surprised I kept watching.  But to give them credit, they surprised me in the finale.  The whole premise was a modern town named Storybrooke containing fairy tale character stuck in a curse where they've forgotten who they are.  You might think when they remember again, the show ends, but no, heroine Emma kissed her dying boy Henry and true love wiped out the curse.  So the question over the summer was what next?

Now we know.  Everyone in Storybrooke remains fully aware of who they are, or were, but they're still stuck there, since evil queen Regina's curse wiped out fairy tale land.  (Would they want to go back--don't they like cars and computers, etc.?  I should add Emma is a pretty big ingrate--you think she'd be thrilled to find her parents, who are a prince and princess, but she's mad at them for abandoning her.) And with Mr. Gold having reintroduced magic, the same power dynamic continues.  Gold and Regina are enemies, though it's not clear which is the "bad guy." Also, they both have a voice of conscience holding them back--Henry for Regina (I guess she does care about him, as opposed to what the pilot claimed) and new regular Belle for Gold. (Speaking of voices of conscience, isn't Jiminy Cricket happy to stay in Storybrooke and remain in human form?)

Meanwhile, the show has kept the divided structure.  Turns out some of fairy tale land still exists and (in a Lost-like twist), they're not in flashback, but are living in the present.  They're also self-aware in that they know all about Regina's curse.  In a further twist, Emma and Snow have been sent there with no way back. Not yet, anyway.

So the stories and structure continues, except everyone is wised up. Sort of odd. It's still silly, but I might keep checking it out to see where it goes.

Homeland, on the other hand, is a compelling show that's been top notch from the start.  It just won a bunch of Emmys, including best drama (which maybe it didn't deserve but only because of excellent competition), so the question is can it top a great first season.  Like OUAT, it also had a first-season finale that changed everything.

In what many fans (including me) considered a copout, the Marine hero Brody didn't blow himself and the Vice President up.  Instead, he won a seat in Congress.  Meanwhile, heroine Carrie got some ECT and lost a lot of her memory just as she figured out that her target, Brody, was in fact a terrorist.

So how do they start up the action again?  They worked it out pretty well.  Brody is getting pressure from terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir to do some dirty work and at the same time his wife discovers he's a Muslim.  But it's Carrie's story that matters.  She's out of the CIA, of course, since she was nuts and lied about it. But now they need her, as an old contact in Lebanon will only speak to Carrie.  She's busy planting her vegetable garden and doesn't want to go back, but she does her patriotic duty, only to find she still loves the life.  The question, I guess, is how long will it take for her path to cross with Brody again.

What I found especially intriguing was a major plot point had Israel bombing Iran's nuclear plants.  The producers of the show must be aware there's a real possibility something like this will happen in real life.  If it does, no one knows what the results would be, but they might be unpleasant enough that we wouldn't want a show reminding us of it.