Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 10, 2018

It’s been kind of interesting seeing an evolution of sorts in “terrorist themed” material that has come out in the wake of the initial sensational success of Homeland. Only very rarely had a television series so viscerally captured the zeitgeist of an addled and maybe even paranoid public as Homeland did when it premiered in 2011, ten years after the horrifying attacks of September 11, but at a time fraught with global worries over jihad and quasi-Fifth Columnists infiltrating the United States in order to wreak havoc. As fans of the now long running series will already know, Homeland kind of went off on a number of frankly at times weird detours, including the still hotly debated romance between (then) CIA Agent Carrie Mathison (Clare Danes) and erstwhile prisoner of war Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis). Homeland has put Carrie through all sorts of craziness in the interim, including wresting her away (more or less, anyway) from the perhaps duplicitous clutches of the Central Intelligence Agency, but in the “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” category, any number of other films and television series, all of them perhaps playing “catch up”, have tried to exploit the same foreign terrorist and incipient paranoia strategies that made at least the first two seasons of Homeland so compelling, even as Homeland itself at least partially jettisoned the whole foreign terrorist and resultant paranoia aspects that initially informed the series. This sixth season of Homeland kind of continues the attempts of the last couple of season for the creative crew to have their cake and eat it, too, as Carrie, ostensibly no longer part of the CIA, still finds herself pulled into all sorts of intelligence subterfuge, in plot elements that may strike some as increasingly far fetched. Part of that far fetched quality may ironically be the sixth season’s attempt to capture the zeitgeist of 2016, with a subplot featuring a female candidate for President of the United states, a character who in this version of “reality” actually wins the election (like, not just in terms of popular vote). Carrie is now a kinda sorta social worker, attempting to aid Muslims who are themselves trying to navigate the roiling waters of an American environment that is not exactly friendly to them, in a plot contrivance that is kind of weirdly similar to one of those aforementioned “terrorist films” that has followed in Homeland’s considerable wake, Unlocked, a film which in fact bears several similarities to the overall scope of Homeland).

For those wanting to "catch up" on Homeland itself, our reviews of the series' previous seasons can be accessed by clicking on the following links:

Homeland: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review

Homeland: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray review

Homeland: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray review

Homeland: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray review

Homeland: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray review

Something at least approaching the “is he or isn’t he?” ambience that informed the whole initial arc with Nicholas Brody is again front and center, for a while anyway, as this season introduces a young Muslim man named Sekou Bah (J. Mallory McCree), who is arrested on suspicion of plotting terror when he’s frankly stupid enough to post videos of himself visiting other, previous terrorist sites. Carrie’s quasi-social work gets her involved in Bah’s case, where some of the initial evidence at least does point to the fact that he may have been plotting some nefarious activities. Meanwhile, though, the imminent arrival of the first woman President of the United States, Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel), sets a whole series of background escapades into motion that pit Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) against Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham). And just for good measure Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) is in a world of hurt and may be headed toward the same sort of institutionalization that has haunted Carrie herself, though in one of this season’s more questionable plot proceedings, she agrees to let Quinn more or less room with her and her daughter.

The “is he or isn’t he?” aspect of Homeland’s sixth year is not the only way the show reworks ideas it’s already explored — sometimes repeatedly. The whole “underworld” of the CIA and competing allegiances keep several characters’ motivations masked (no pun intended) at various points, but an ultimate revelation which involves an explosion and an assassination attempt seem almost willfully ignorant of territory that Homeland has already traveled.

While the angsty proclivities that have made Homeland a fan favorite for years now continue to predominate this season, and in fact are largely very successful at creating a feeling of unease and impending doom, some of the other, more frankly melodramatic, aspects just seem like the writers trying to rub salt into as many preexisting wounds as possible. Quinn’s battles with various demons seem like echoes of Carrie’s own roiling psyche, and there’s more drama involving Carrie and her daughter that doesn’t seem to add much to the proceedings other than giving Danes even more material for her unavoidable Emmy demo reel.

Still, this season of Homeland moves briskly, and as with several previous seasons, ends with a kind of emotional wallop as the incoming president starts to make whole scale changes which threaten the futures of several major characters. In other words, it’s life as usual for Carrie Mathison and her coterie.

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. I'm probably splitting hairs as I move from season to season in my reviews and give some years 4.0 scores and other 4.5, but this season looks at least slightly less detailed at times than the fifth season due at least in part to some "artier" attempts by some directors, especially with regard to almost Impressionistic looking framings at times, as well as some pretty heave grading for select sequences, again often in rather cool tones like the ubiquitous deep cobalt blues or slate grays which filmmakers seem to just assume implies spying and subterfuge. That said, there's a lot of very brightly (and naturally) lit material, including some rather nice outdoor location work, where the palette pops quite nicely and detail and fine detail levels are excellent across the board.

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season features another nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which continues this series' generally excellent tradition of nicely immersive tracks on the Blu-ray releases of previous seasons. Once again some of the urban or at least outdoor environments offer the best surround activity, with both a kind of general rabble at times filling the surrounds while other moments offer clear placement of individual effects in discrete channels. This season has at least few moments of explosive LFE, and regular use of things like panning effects. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly and dynamic range is rather wide on this problem free track.

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• On Location: New York City (1080p; 2:10) is a kind of hilariously short piece with very brief interviews and looks at some of the locations utilized this season.


• About Season 6 (1080p; 2:58) is a similarly brief overview that actually includes some of the same location footage seen in the above featurette.


• The Paley Center for Media Q & A with Cast and Creative Team for Paleyfest NY 2016 (1080i; 55:36) includes F. Murray Abraham, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Lesli Linka Glatter, Alex Gansa.

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season has a lot of exciting material in it, but kind of like I felt with the show's fifth season, I personally found a lot of the plot mechanics overly contrived this year. I'm also not a fan of all the sidebars involving Carrie's personal life, especially when they don't really pay any significant dramatic dividends. Fans of the show will no doubt love some of the twists and turns this season takes, but with the series' final two seasons now either about to air or at least in the planning stages, it might be time for the writing staff to really take some major chances and stop revisiting roads already taken. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, Homeland: The Complete Sixth Season comes Recommended.