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My DVR recorded a sneak peek. Looks like an all new cast?

Watching it now, waiting for it to end. Tedious. Go back to the couples screwing around and trying to hide it from the roomies.

Paraphrasing Grantland podcast: "Carrie needs to show she can do her job in ways other than fucking a teenager." "Problem is Claire Danes."

Carrie's shouted at Quinn, Fara and Lockhart. Which of her co-workers still like her? After moping back home mooning over her, Quinn doesn't even look like he'd hate-fuck her now. Are the writers and producers trying to show some downward spiral, first almost killing her own kid, then using questionable tactics and repeatedly screwing up on the job? That's been going on for awhile and she keeps getting more chances to make mistakes. Not only more chances, she's getting more authority. At this point, if Haqqani perpetrates a terrorist attack, it's on her.

This is a monumental fuckup. They get Saul captured and they don't get the terrorist. And they don't even take out any of Haqqani's men, who are also on the hit list, because of the 3 SUV shell game trick? Come on, they're taping it the whole time so it would be easy to figure out which one had Saul. But not only does Carrie stay as station chief, she gets to run more missions. Oh and some plagiarizing professor outsmarting the CIA and the diplomatic corps. He not only gets into the CIA station chief's apt. but he eavesdrops on Carrie dressing down Fara and easily tails her, even though she went with a driver.

In S1 or S2, Carrie was seen talking to a woman whom she was managing as a honeypot for some Middle East targets. So all of a sudden she decides to be hands-on? Maybe because she couldn't get enough of Brody, she decides why let others have all the fun?

Not only is she CIA pretending to be a journalist, she's the one who ordered the drone hit which killed his family. Yeah Aayan is really going to be on board when he finds out the truth. Carrie is going to have to use the stick approach sooner or later, like how she took a hard line with Brody, getting him to confess, telling him he's a traitor. Then went back to fucking him.

OK Carrie's magical pussy got Aayan to admit the uncle isn't dead. In the mean time she was MIA when they needed to trail the sheik, who was taking an abducted Saul into noman's land. Bravo. And speaking of outlandish plots, if the ISI really abducted a former CIA director like that, the CIA wouldn't be running clandestine operations in Pakistan. Drones would be filling the skies and raining down bombs. The ISI may be in league with the Islamists but they wouldn't overtly take such hostile actions against the US. But you have to remember this is the show that had some top level Iranian intelligence official sneak into the US, kill people and then be sent back by the CIA to spy for it.

Well Showtime is running brief promos saying Jan 11 is the premier of the new season. That would be less than a year since the end of season 3? Much shorter gap between season isn't it?

Not choosing to U-Turn is an attempt to avoid being U-turned in a future leg but it's not guaranteed immunity. Did the mother and daughter team think strategically to eliminate a team or did they act emotionally because of the team they had that flare up with the team? Another team might use the fact that they U-turned to justify U-turning them.

With the cancellation of The Bridge, FX might not give as long a leash to this show either. Maybe they should plot out an endgame for this season.

Saw a Paris episode with a French realtor. The hunters were a couple of opera singers and they could only afford to live outside of Paris, a 12-minute train ride away.

I don't see any evidence that Carrie has any equivocation when it comes to the things she does. She can't stand being wrong, having the bad guys get one over on her (and the CIA and the USA, in that order). In fact, when she gets to mix work with pleasure, for her it's a bonus!

Carrie didn't look at Aayan and decide to seduce him. That was her strategy from the beginning, encouraging Farah to touch him when she first made contact with Aayan. Seems that's the only play she has in her playbook.

You wonder how CIA agents feel about how they're being portrayed by this show ...

Misti had a smile throughout the time she was struggling. Maybe it was nerves or she's more prone to smiling a lot. It may have been bravado, about being the best team ever. He did seem more chastened after the poor showing. When he was doing the parking space one, he said he can't see another team passing them up at it but that may have been more to buoy themselves up rather than boasting.

Pakistani's object to depiction of country in Homeland: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-16/pakistan-homeland-unrecognizable-pakistani-author

Some are making pointed comparisons to The Honorable Woman, which supposedly doesn't try to wedge in a romance in the middle of a spy story. We know Brody was suppose to die in S1 originally but stayed on the show for 3 seasons, possibly due to network interference. So to go back to the well again would mean this creative team is out of ideas about spies and terrorism, more interested in providing some exotic backdrop for a soap opera.

So they keep the Brody-Carrie romance alive too long and now they want to set up another pairing the first chance they get? Carrie is good at making her bosses let her do whatever she wants but not so much with anything else, including being a spy. So maybe if she has these intense affairs, it'll make her appealing?

I give him credit that he's studied the previous games, thinks the physical tasks are easier than the mental detours. Of course, that might work to the advantage of teams with two males though. But he's set a big goal, to set all time TAR records and thinks the other teams will be targeting him. How much of it is ego and how much bravado?

This episode makes me want to visit Scotland, though the Shetland Islands are pretty far from Edinburgh.

I was meh on all the promos that Showtime has been running for months. Wasn't aware of the Rashomon comparisons or the pedigree of the creators. Setting the season pass.

I'm surprised they're allowing such a long gap between the last challenge and whenever this new RW airs.

If you live in these big European cities, you're already doing a lot of walking, unless you can afford a car with a driver. Otherwise, the parking becomes onerous to deal with. So you walk a couple of miles and bring home groceries and you have to walk up 4-5 flights of stairs? It would get old real fast. Many buildings, if there's any kind of room, will have elevators retrofitted, even these tiny ones which can hold maybe 2 or 3 people right up against each other.

Did Carrie have some debate about whether to have the baby at the end of S3? I don't recall it. She didn't seem to deal with pregnancy well, because we remember all the pregnancy test kits she had, as if she kept retaking it because she didn't like the positive results. Is she drawn to where the action is or running away from something? She has this compulsive, overinflated sense of responsibility. She missed 9/11 so she can't let it happen again. Now where's the compulsion, just hunting down various terrorists on the hit list?