Homecoming season two review – the mystery box that just keeps giving
Maybe we were first enticed to watch Homecoming (Amazon), adapted from the podcast of the same name, by the chance to see a megawatt movie star on the small screen. Last season, Julia Roberts starred as a counsellor of veterans at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center, somewhere in Florida – at least that’s what the tropical foliage and persistent pelican caw suggested. So why, some years later, was she working as a waitress and giving evasive answers to an investigator from the Dept of Defense? Ultimately though, it wasn’t the star power, so much as the perfectly portioned instalments which had us hooked. Thirty-minute episodes are just so moreish, compared with the usual drag-a-thon dramas.
This welcome second helping opens in a different, but equally distinctive,
American landscape as a woman (Janelle Monáe) regains consciousness in a row boat, adrift on a lake. She calls for help from a shadowy figure lurking in the fir trees, but by the time she’s paddled ashore, he’s disappeared and night has fallen. She can’t recall her own name, much less how she came to be in this place, and the next few episodes are given over to the attempts of this woman – named ‘Jacqueline Calico’, according to the military ID in her pocket
– to retrace her steps. It’s The Hangover, retold as a psychological thriller, only clearly it would have taken more than a few strawberry daiquiris to get Jacqueline in this state.
That’s about as much as you say about the plot of Homecoming season two without stumbling into spoiler territory. That, and the fact that despite Julia Roberts’ absence from the screen (she’s still exec producing), and the addition of new cast members, including Chris Cooper, Joan Cusack and Monáe, Homecoming is no anthology. Rather than introducing an entirely new story for this series, the narrative builds on previous events, venturing out beyond the original podcast for the first time. It’s not until the end of the second episode, however, that we begin to understand how it’s all connected.
Or begin to thinkwe understand. In
Homecoming, what seems absurd – a melon left on a motel bed – can turn out to be sinister, while what unsettles – a fragmented memory of red towels – might be innocuous. Yet, even as this show wrong-foots us, we can be assured that none of these artfully strewn loose ends will ultimately be left untied. In collaboration with original podcast creators and showrunners Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, new director Kyle Patrick Alvarez has maintained the visual tone established by his predecessor Mr Robot’s Sam Esmail. Everything in Homecoming, from plotting to mise en scène, has a certain symmetrical elegance.
The stage-like framing of shots and fondness for overhead pans has been called Hitchcockian, and it is, but there’s also plenty that’s Lynchian about the Americana kitsch interiors and general sense of paranoid surreality. The final scene of each episode is always allowed to play out in front of a static camera, as the credits roll – no theme music, just papers rustling or glasses clinking– as if a modern-day Edward Hopper painting had come to life and been captured on CCTV surveillance. It’s a subtle detail, at first barely noticeable, that seems to grow in effectiveness as the season progresses.
Homecoming’s got style for days, then, but there’s substance here too.
Monáe, in common with first-season star Stephan James, has a face that can flicker between strength and vulnerability in an instant. It’s utilised to contrast the overwhelming might of the US’s military-industrial complex with the tragic vulnerability of individual vets. These guys get a solemn “Thank you for your service” every time they pull up a bar stool, but still struggle to access anything like adequate healthcare. (Incidentally, Homecoming probably owes a beer to Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, for his inspirational casting choices).
Not that civilian workplaces are much better. Homecoming’s send-up of toxic office culture – literally toxic, in the case of Geist HQ – is savage. Here, an undervalued employee like Audrey (Hong Chau) will outwit her nightmare boss only to become the nightmare boss in turn, while ‘You go, girlfriend!’ corporate feminism is easily perverted into just another kind of selfserving exploitation. So often, us viewers unpack a mystery box TV show like this one, only to find it empty inside. Homecoming manages to add layers of meaning and complexity even as its secrets are revealed. It’s the carefully wrapped TV gift that keeps on giving.