There was a creepy environment evoked in "Homecoming" that depicted a rogue business corporation's experimental program in reintroducing military vets to civilian life after facing the horrors of war. There was the potential for a strong social message about both corporate greed and an unending string of foreign wars that have left too many young American men irreparably damaged from PTSD.
Unfortunately, the series elected to focus on style over content. For the first eight episodes, the flashback sequences were denoted with a full-screen, while the present appeared in half-screen. But, in episodes 9 and 10, the filmmakers scrapped their aesthetic choice to offer both the past and present scenes in full screen. This choice resulted in inconsistency in a major artistic choice.
While Julia Roberts was effective in the central role of Heidi Bergman, the counselor who crosses the line with one of her patients and is complicit in exploiting the vets, her character was often locked into long and repetitive therapy sessions with Walter Cruz. In what should have been lively, thirty-minute episodes, the pacing was laboriously slow during the counseling sessions.
The two most intriguing secondary roles were those of Walter Cruz's deeply concerned mother and the persistent DOD compliance officer, Thomas Carrasco. Their scenes invariably brought greater intrigue to the drama. Perhaps the best moment in the entire series was the scene in which Carrasco met with the resistant mother at her school. But when Carrasco tripped over a bike rack and fell to the ground, there was a nice human touch when the mother began to recognize that he actually cared about his work and her son.
The final episode failed to tie up loose ends and resolve all of the plot strands. Carrasco did not even appear in the final program. It was all-too-apparent that the filmmakers were gearing up for Season 2, in order completely tell their story. But Season 1 did not provide this reviewer with enough intrigue to return for the next round.
Unfortunately, the series elected to focus on style over content. For the first eight episodes, the flashback sequences were denoted with a full-screen, while the present appeared in half-screen. But, in episodes 9 and 10, the filmmakers scrapped their aesthetic choice to offer both the past and present scenes in full screen. This choice resulted in inconsistency in a major artistic choice.
While Julia Roberts was effective in the central role of Heidi Bergman, the counselor who crosses the line with one of her patients and is complicit in exploiting the vets, her character was often locked into long and repetitive therapy sessions with Walter Cruz. In what should have been lively, thirty-minute episodes, the pacing was laboriously slow during the counseling sessions.
The two most intriguing secondary roles were those of Walter Cruz's deeply concerned mother and the persistent DOD compliance officer, Thomas Carrasco. Their scenes invariably brought greater intrigue to the drama. Perhaps the best moment in the entire series was the scene in which Carrasco met with the resistant mother at her school. But when Carrasco tripped over a bike rack and fell to the ground, there was a nice human touch when the mother began to recognize that he actually cared about his work and her son.
The final episode failed to tie up loose ends and resolve all of the plot strands. Carrasco did not even appear in the final program. It was all-too-apparent that the filmmakers were gearing up for Season 2, in order completely tell their story. But Season 1 did not provide this reviewer with enough intrigue to return for the next round.