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Homeland on Showtime - Page 5

post #201 of 205
1/24/12 at 9:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz View Post

The AV Club's best feature returns.  Very interested to see what Gansa has to say about the finale, deus ex machinas and amnesia.


Interestingly, he notes his regrets about some of the "repetitive narrative strategy" employed in the first season. Hopefully his candor will stretch to the finale.

 

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post #202 of 205
1/24/12 at 9:31am

Yeah, that's what makes these interviews so special.  That they're able to get the writers to a comfortable enough place where they'll admit "yeah, we hit that beat one too many times this year" or "we didn't sell that relationship as well as we'd have liked" as Gansa does at the end of this one.

 

But the best part, imo, is how he (accidentally) throws Howard Gordon under the bus.  He, and I do think it was entirely unintentional, portrays him as this clueless network hack who was fighting to make this interesting cable series into She-24 at every turn.

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post #203 of 205
1/25/12 at 8:05am

Part 2 is up, and Gansa continues to inadvertently throw Gordon under the bus, discussing 24's lack of a plan ("time to reveal the mole, who's it going to be?") and this gem:

 

 

Quote:
AVC: How much research had you done into the intelligence world?
 
Lots of research, although Howard jokes that he never reads a book. I guess I did the research, and then passed it along.

 

He praises Gordon's showrunning ability later in the interview, but I found that funny.

 

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post #204 of 205
1/25/12 at 12:01pm

The honesty about 24 is as good as the honesty about Homeland. It's amazing that 24 had any good seasons at all.

 

He's also pretty clear about why network TV is such a wasteland. Homeland wouldn't have stunk on a network because of the lost nudity and profanity; it would have stunk because a network would have castrated every risk they took. The show would've been unrecognizable.

 

The quick reference to The Killing amused me as well. He avoids directly smacking it down, but the gist is there. Damn that show was awful!

 

Great interview so far.

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post #205 of 205
1/27/12 at 11:00am

 

 

Quote:
Very interested to see what Gansa has to say about the finale, deus ex machinas and amnesia.

 

Not much, really. It seems that the vest malfunctioning and Dana's phone call were elements of the plot in the beginning:

 

Quote:
We always knew that was going to roughly be the structure, and then pieces fell into place: The vest malfunctioning; Claire going to see the family and running into Dana. That was always a very, very big part of the story. And if you look at the season, Morgan Saylor, who plays Dana, hadn’t done a lot of stuff before this, and we knew quite early on that she was going to play a major role in the last episode. So we gave her more and more and more to do as the season went along to get her up to speed, because she was really going to have to carry that final episode and talk her father off the ledge. And that’s what I’m most proud of, how we established that relationship, so that by the time you got there, when she’s on the phone with her dad, at least I completely believe it, and thought she did a fantastic job, and really inhabited Dana’s character with such pathos and such need that was just so moving to me. 

I thought the most interesting bit was about how Baccarin wasn't the original actress to play Jessica.

 

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