[SPOILER WARNING: This story reveals key plot elements from Sunday's season finale. Read at your own risk.]
Homeland's first season finale posed the question: Would traitorous Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) actually carry out a suicide bombing directed at the vice president of the United States?
See where Homeland ranked in our countdown of the Best TV Shows of 2011
The answer...
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1. HOMELAND
The best new series of the year is Showtime's twisty nail-biter of a psychological thriller, an emotionally intense cat-and-mouse game between two damaged souls: Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody, a Marine POW who may have been turned by terrorists during eight years in Iraqi captivity, and Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the unstable CIA analyst who breaks all the rules to get under his skin — and at times under the sheets. (Bringing new meaning to undercover agent). The actors are as electrifying as the storytelling in this taut tale of homeland insecurity, which also features a marvelously restrained Mandy Patinkin as Carrie's melancholy mentor and a revelatory Morena Baccarin as Brody's understandably conflicted wife. Homeland comes from the veteran producers of 24, who have lost none of their knack for sustained suspense, but within this more realistic framework have been able to concoct a thoughtful and gripping meditation on the human toll of the war on terror.
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First, weighing in on two cable movies, one of which thoroughly chilled me and another that left me cold.
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In Homeland, terrorist plots aren't dismantled in 24 hours and the hero doesn't save the day by slaughtering suspects. Ten years after the horror of 9/11, good and evil are sometimes far from black-and-white.
"This is not 24, which had a muscular response to what happened on 9/11," says British actor Damian Lewis, who plays Sgt. Nicholas Brody, the Marine who's become a hero after eight years of imprisonment by Al Qaeda, on the set near Charlotte. "It was a show for its time. Now we live in a world where people are divided about the best way to wage war on terror."
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Cheers to Morena Baccarin for proving she's flesh and blood on Homeland.
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The Brazilian-born actress is best known for her role as alien queen Anna on ABC's short-lived sci-fi remake V. That makes her down-to-earth work as Jessica, the morally conflicted wife of tortured ex-POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) on Showtime's anti-terrorism drama all the more refreshing. As Jessica deals with her husband's PTSD — and grapples with the affair she had with his best friend after she assumed he was dead — Baccarin gives an ...
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