"After getting your butt kicked at every level, no, you don't go all
Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer and kill all the bad guys. You go home,
stew, try to get over the loss, and deal with domesticity."

Me too. I'm a sucker for shows that hit a completely different note all of a sudden.

"why on Earth would she blow him off for some stupid family bullshit in the post-kiss phone call?"

Yeah, this "ending" to the Haqqani stuff feels like the shit that can happen in real life. I loved it for that. I have no need for a clean/tidy wrap to the Haqqani storyline.

Yeah, this has been happening for awhile. The earliest I remember is 'The Wire' too, but maybe there's something prior I haven't seen.

Count me in among the shocked. That was the best 'Homeland' has been with the non-action stuff since "Q&A." Easily.

See, I sort of go the opposite. To me, none of the Carrie-Quinn stuff needed to be foreshadowed. I would have bought it way more if that had never been mentioned, and they came out of this nightmarish Islamabad experience and it suddenly clicked.

Apparently I'm higher on this finale then most people. I thought it was phenomenal.

But aiding a terrorist on foreign soil to effect change in a foreign land is a liiiiiiiittle bit different from letting a world-wanted terrorist kidnap the former CIA director and attack a US Embassy just to get a promotion to CIA director.

Yes, if you lower your expectations to "Slower burn 24."

I don't understand it at all. There's maybe a 5 percent chance the writers can explain this in a satisfactory, logical way.

Dear A.V. Club,

The Honourable Woman is on Netflix Dec. 18, so bug everyone you know to watch it.

Yeah, that's a flashback episode that's earned and well-executed. Such an overdone thing in TV now, but you can tell when someone who knows what they're doing does it, and when someone trying to imitate quality TV does it.

I don't understand the thinking behind putting a six-month split between a brand new show you're trying to turn into a flagship, watercooler program. If they wanted to take the Dec-Jan chunk off like a lot of shows do fine …. but why only give your show 8 weeks to infiltrate the TV-watching's conscious, only to yank…

We need more Wee Baby Seamus!

Yes they're filming again in Calgary. But I believe a couple months ago they said this season would be set in the spring. So we'd get some melting snow and even a hint of grass here and there. That was only chatter though, could be incorrect ultimately.

How about they set it in the late 80s/early 90s and hire Timothy Olyphant as young(ish) Lorne Malvo?

I wasn't quite as down on it as you are, but I wasn't super thrilled with that ending either. Loved pretty much everything else though.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently and don't know if I can actually rank the shows. But I think the top tier shows this past year (that I watched, at least) were: