Last week Amazon Prime premiered a new 10-episode drama series starring film actress Julia Roberts, which seems to be the streaming service's attempt to enter the awards race now dominated by HBO and Netflix. The plot of Homecoming is shrouded in mystery, even as you're watching it, but I'll try to describe it as best as possible without giving any major spoilers away. Roberts plays Heidi Bergman, a counselor at Homecoming, a private company program designed to help ease the transition of recently deployed military service members back to civilian life. Heidi takes a shine to Walter Cruz (newcomer Stephan James), a new entrant into the program. In counseling sessions, he tells her about the loss of his friend in Afghanistan to a roadside bomb and otherwise bonds with her over a series of conversations. Is there any romantic interest between them? I'll let you watch and figure out for yourself.
Heidi's boss, an eccentric character who micromanages her every move but gives her direction mostly just through phone calls, is Colin Belfast (Bobby Canavale, best known from Boardwalk Empire and a guest stint on Will & Grace). Rounding out the main cast are Sissy Spacek as Heidi's mom, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (I know her from the CBS procedural Without a Trace) as Walter's mom, Alex Karpovsky (from the HBO show Girls) as Homecoming's life skills counselor Craig, and Shea Whigham as Thomas Carrasco, a bureaucrat investigating Homecoming. The show flashes back and forth between Heidi's time at Homecoming and a separate future timeline where she is living back at home with her mom and working as a waitress, seemingly not remembering or at least not wanting to remember her time at Homecoming. Viewers are kept in the dark for most of the season about what exactly happened to cause her career change, but we're slowly given clues that something nefarious happened at Homecoming, particularly involving Heidi and Walter. I'll let you take the journey of unraveling the mystery as the characters do, and what an enjoyable journey it is!
I liked this show for a few main reasons. First, it takes its time unspooling its plot, but it doesn't add a lot of unnecessary filler either. Many Netflix dramas have the habit of running seasons of 13 episodes at 1 hour+, often feeling bloated. Streaming gives directors the freedom to run episodes at just about any length they choose, but this freedom often eliminates the need for them to really edit and trim down their work. Most Homecoming episodes are just 25-30 minutes, making it easily bingeable and keeping viewers engaged throughout.
Second, the direction by Sam Esmail (the creator of Mr. Robot), music, and writing are absolutely mesmerizing. The show has the feel of an old-school 1940s or 1950s film noir, which is enhanced by the tension-inducing background music and the framing of certain shots. Esmail makes frequent use of the split screen during Heidi and Colin's phone conversations, as well as overhead shots whenever possible. Also, the aspect ratio goes from widescreen to full screen as the onscreen timeline switches from present to future. The director was clearly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock in his directing style, even borrowing music from the classic film Psycho. He also seems to relish in simply letting his characters talk to each other. Watching actors talk with no action can sometimes feel boring for viewers, but the writers of this show have a knack for interesting, realistic dialogue that never bores and always advances the plot.
Finally, the acting (particularly that of Roberts and James) is top-notch. In an awards-bait show like this, actors can have the tendency to over-act, sometimes seeming to practically scream for an Emmy or Golden Globe Here, though, the acting is very low-key for most of the season, only really allowing the actors to stretch in the last few episodes. But this doesn't make their work any less compelling. Shoutouts also to Spacek and Jean-Baptiste for making the most of their small but meaningful roles. Real supporting actors allow their leads to shine, and these two, along with the rest of the supporting cast, do just that. I fully expect to see some acting awards nominations to come out of this season (both lead and supporting), in addition to nominations for directing, writing, scoring... the whole shebang.
The ending of the season kind of brought the story of Heidi and Walter full-circle, but it didn't exactly wrap everything up into a neat little bow, which I like. I hate when shows give us a happy ending just for the sake of wrapping things up (I'm looking at you, The Haunting of Hill House). I would love to see a second season, but only if the plot makes sense and only if Roberts is available. She was the heart of the show, after all, although everyone involved should be proud of what they created.
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