Homecoming (2018 tv series) Review

[moon_custafer]

Andrew found that Homecoming is now on iTunes—I suppose Amazon still gets some money out of the deal but we can watch it without having to sign up for Prime. Watched the first four 30-minute episodes last night.

The first two eps made Andrew fairly squirmy, with all the creepy shots of institutional hallways, etc (Andrew: "normally I like goose-neck lamps, but those ones are Wrong") but episodes Three and Four, though equally tense and spooky, also contain a lot of wry humour and he laughed his way through them. He especially liked Carrasco vs. the motion-detector-controlled lights in the archives. Shea Whigham needs be allowed to do physical comedy more often. Andrew kept saying he wanted to see him as Inspector Columbo. (I admit that the gifs I’d seen online of Whigham were my main motivation to watch the show)

I could see why they put Stephan James in the role played by Oscar Isaac in the original podcast—they’re very similar types on some ways. We spent a long time trying to figure out where we’d seen Bobby Carnavale before (the Ant-Man movies). This show almost gives you some kind of face-blindness – when Heidi meets with her ex-boyfriend in the 2022 timeframe, neither of us recognized the actor without the stupid beard he’d had in his 2018 scenes, to the point where we both thought maybe he was supposed to be somebody else taking advantage of Heidi’s amnesia to impersonate her ex.

Andrew says Sissy Spacek is the female Nick Nolte and vice versa. Also he pointed out the bit where the incidental music is from The Day the Earth Stood Still (I think I read that all the incidental music is from various mid-century thrillers, to go with the Kubrick-meets-Hitchcock vibe they're trying for.)

I like it when Julia Roberts is allowed to be a character actress, and especially when she’s allowed to be, like, a gothic heroine (basically this and Mary Reilly). I feel like the show is kind of setting Heidi and Carrasco up as mirror-images—they’re very similar personality types, really, it’s just that Heidi’s geekiness is masked by, well, by looking like Julia Roberts.

Looking forward to watching the next few episodes tonight.

Comments

[sovay]

I like it when Julia Roberts is allowed to be a character actress, and especially when she’s allowed to be, like, a gothic heroine

I hadn't heard of either the podcast or this TV series, but Gothic Julia Roberts is a draw.

Bobby Cannavale is also very good in The Station Agent (2003), although my major takeaway from that movie, like most people's, was Peter Dinklage.

[edit] (I admit that the gifs I’d seen online of Whigham were my main motivation to watch the show)

I haven't seen any gifs, but I just went looking for production photos and he reminded me of somebody and I finally realized it was William Daniels as Albert Amundsen in A Thousand Clowns (1965), which I very much doubt was anyone's intention, but does not decrease my interest in the character.

[sovay]

(I think I read that all the incidental music is from various mid-century thrillers, to go with the Kubrick-meets-Hitchcock vibe they're trying for.)

That would explain why my reaction to the show's opening scenes was "what is this, desaturated Douglas Sirk?"

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, Andrew found most of the visuals in the opening episode pretty alienating (see his comment above on the Wrong gooseneck lamps), but I’m pretty sure that was the intent.