‘Homeland’ showrunner defends quiet finale, decries online ‘culture of meanness’

For the most part, Season 4 of “Homeland” was widely hailed as a comeback for the Showtime, which scored a bevy of revisionist appreciations and worked its way back into award conversations after a Season 3 cooling.

The finale, though, with its concentration on Carrie Mathison's familial self-discovery, left some fans a little bit less enthused. Not all. But some.

On the “Homeland” PaleyFest 2015 purple carpet last Friday (March 6), I chatted with finale director Lesli Linka Glatter about the episode and she described it as “risky,” a word I then used with showrunner Alex Gansa, who disagreed.

“It really did not feel risky to me at all,” he insisted, saying that the show had finished its action arc and merely doing action-for-action's-sake would have been “pandering.”

As Gansa puts it, “If you want to watch a story about an escape from a Middle Eastern country, go watch 'Argo.'”

Always prone to awareness of online rumblings about “Homeland,” Gansa said simultaneously that he'd previously had an AP reporter tell him the finale was his favorite episode yet, but he also noted, “Go on the Internet and you will legitimately want to blow your brains out.”

In the balance, when it comes to the roller-coaster of affection for “Homeland,” Gansa admits, “You weren”t an idiot last year and you”re not a genius this year. You”re just a guy trying to make a television show.”

Check out the full Gansa interview above, including his frustration the online “culture of meanness.”

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