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A toast to the the lucky ladies of Westeros! Yours is a continent teeming with options for the modern woman. Will you choose to be "intelligent" as your king suggests and "do what [you’re] told"? Best-case scenario: You don't hate your chosen h...

When we first met Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, they were on a bit of a hot streak in their little corner of the Cold War. Their work seemed simple, straightforward: sleep with some men, shove others into the trunk. They'd been undercover so long th...

At some point, amid the unrelenting gore and Pollock-esque blood spatter of last night's episode, my mind began to disassociate from my body, like Hershel's fatted calf being cleaved from the rest of him. The Walking Dead has wisely transitioned from...

Of all the subtle course-corrections showrunner Alex Gansa has made to Homeland since the pilot, my favorite might be the de-emphasizing of jazz. Carrie's extensive Coltrane collection was, at first, a helpful shorthand for her anarchic brain. But as...

The biggest concern going into this bifurcated final season of Breaking Bad was always about structure. When Tio's bell tolled for Gus, it made for explosive television but risky long-term planning. Other than the predictable bonds of morality, famil...

"I don't imagine it'll be a story fit for children," the grim, Greta Gerwig-ish warrioress Yara Greyjoy declares, while being Littlefingered by her fancy brother on horseback. The savage babycide of last week certainly should have made that clear for...

It's standard practice for television shows set in unfamiliar milieus to provide what are referred to as "POV characters." Think Tim/Jim in either version of The Office, or a pre-preggo Peggy Olson on Mad Men: sympathetic newbies whose encounters wit...

"The agency is a funny place, very insular. It's like middle-schoolers with clearances." — A former CIA official, as quoted in the Washington Post, 12/10/12 "What is all this squishy bullshit?!?" — A formerly living CIA official,...

Jessica Brody has just spent nearly a week trapped in a luxurious CIA penthouse making do with semi-decent wine, making time with her extramarital action figure, seeing her daughter freak out over spilled milk, and watching her husband choke back tea...

A month or so back I paid a visit to the Homeland set in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'll be writing more about my time there later this week, but I thought it was worth mentioning now since the scenes I watched being filmed all aired last night. Due ...

Right up there with buzzkill spouses and eager-to-cuckold best friends, the overstuffed tack board has become one of the premier television cliches of our time. From the steady nobility of Lester Freamon to the neon inanity of Beauty & the Beast, co...

Homeland is rightly lauded for many things, but humor is rarely among them. To be fair, topics like terrorism, mental health, and the unhygienic, lonely smearing of peanut butter onto crackers are not the stuff great comedies are made of. But was I w...

Exactly one year ago Homeland aired its seventh episode. Titled "The Weekend," it marked the moment the freshman series went from good to great. It happens that way sometimes, in TV, when the panicked crush of production finally catches up to the pro...

In fine-dining restaurants — places that serve the sort of thing that wouldn't interest Carrie Mathison (i.e., food) — it's traditional to serve a tart sorbet or granita as a palate cleanser. It's a way to bridge the gap from one set of r...

The best thing I've seen in a movie theater so far this year was an intimate conversation. It occurred about a quarter of the way through The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson's invigorating and infuriating three-hour tone poem about a guy who thinks with...

One of the more eye-catching portions of my friend (and recent podcast guest!) Sean Howe's new book, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, occurs early on when Stan Lee, the mustachioed architect of the Marvel Universe, declares that the secret recipe for...