I have a not-very-important thing to say about Homeland's first season, which aired about five years ago and is no longer of much interest to anyone.
What I am going to say does not, oddly enough, relate to the fact that Claire Danes seems to be the worst spy ever ("I just know he's bad! Did you see him play imaginary piano with his fingers?" "But do you have any evidence?" "Screw you, Mandy Patinkin!" Then repeat this exchange every five minutes while Claire Danes fails to discover any actual evidence and grows increasingly agitated).
It relates instead to my almost-forgotten, violent, uncontrollable hatred of instrumental jazz. And of all those people who believe that making a character listen to jazz in a tv show or movie will clearly and incontrovertibly communicate to the audience that this character is interesting and crawling with all kinds of unfathomable depths.
The credit sequence is bad enough: it's like something produced by a grade 12 student who elected to do a video essay instead of a real essay for her final project on the fragmented psyche of 21st-century America and how it relates to some dreams she had once. (I fast-forward it now, so all I remember is that at some point, a young girl in a sun dress is stuck in a garden maze and maybe there's a mushroom cloud--or something like that.)
But the worst is when Claire Danes is (a) riding in her car listening to jazz and pensively grooving it up, or (b) preparing to try to romance a secret Muslim she should really still be suspicious of by pouring some wine and putting on some smooth Miles Davis. I feel like every time she listens to jazz, I myself am listening to someone yelling "SHE IS COMPLICATED, DAMAGED, AND SUPER COOL." And instead of believing that, or thinking of smoke-filled rooms and musical innovation, I immediately imagine an affluent, middle-aged white man with a cottage.
What I am going to say does not, oddly enough, relate to the fact that Claire Danes seems to be the worst spy ever ("I just know he's bad! Did you see him play imaginary piano with his fingers?" "But do you have any evidence?" "Screw you, Mandy Patinkin!" Then repeat this exchange every five minutes while Claire Danes fails to discover any actual evidence and grows increasingly agitated).
It relates instead to my almost-forgotten, violent, uncontrollable hatred of instrumental jazz. And of all those people who believe that making a character listen to jazz in a tv show or movie will clearly and incontrovertibly communicate to the audience that this character is interesting and crawling with all kinds of unfathomable depths.
The credit sequence is bad enough: it's like something produced by a grade 12 student who elected to do a video essay instead of a real essay for her final project on the fragmented psyche of 21st-century America and how it relates to some dreams she had once. (I fast-forward it now, so all I remember is that at some point, a young girl in a sun dress is stuck in a garden maze and maybe there's a mushroom cloud--or something like that.)
But the worst is when Claire Danes is (a) riding in her car listening to jazz and pensively grooving it up, or (b) preparing to try to romance a secret Muslim she should really still be suspicious of by pouring some wine and putting on some smooth Miles Davis. I feel like every time she listens to jazz, I myself am listening to someone yelling "SHE IS COMPLICATED, DAMAGED, AND SUPER COOL." And instead of believing that, or thinking of smoke-filled rooms and musical innovation, I immediately imagine an affluent, middle-aged white man with a cottage.
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