Looking back, I really do feel like
I’ve been using too much plot summary up until this point. I’ve
decided that I’m still not going to avoid spoilers, but I’m
likewise not going to dwell on explaining things that don’t
directly affect my opinion of the work. This is certainly an episode
for which the ending doesn’t seem especially important, as it’s
merely an exclamation mark on the themes of the previous hour.
Homecoming is like a time
capsule, and it’s not easy to talk about a decade after it was
made. It embodies the despair of the mid-2000s, and the backlash
against Bush in the aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq. It hits
pretty much every hot button topic of that era, including the Florida
recount, the ban on photographing dead soldiers, Karl Rove existing
and, of course, the WMDs that weren’t there. Practically the only
moment of the episode that isn’t politicized is when a
zombie is asked for his ID before he can vote, which I find
retroactively hilarious.
David Murch (Jon Tenney), a
presidential speech writer, who tells a grieving mother on national
television “if I had one wish, I would wish for your son to come
back, because I know he would tell us how important this struggle
is.” This is picked up by the President as a talking point…until
it actually happens. American soldiers begin rising from the grave,
not to eat flesh, but to cast their ballots for the President’s
opposition.
Naturally, this creates chaos in the
President’s administration. It’s suggested that only soldier’s
discontent with the war are rising, because if they died for a cause
they believed in they would be at peace. So, they have hundreds of
zombies walking the streets, many bearing obvious death wounds,
shocking the American public, and telling everyone that they were
“killed for a lie.”
It’s not really surprising that Joe
Dante directed this. Gremlins is pretty light on actual
scares, and wasn’t exactly subtle in its humor. While Robert
Picardo is awesome as a fictional counterpart to Karl Rove, I
seriously doubt the real Rove would actually brag to his coworkers
that he sold a war on “horseshit and elbow grease!” Hell, the
entire episode is full of pundits who yell loudly about how they’ve
deceived the American people in the middle of their offices.
The only character who seems remotely
believable is “Jane Cleaver” (Thea Gill), and she’s realistic
mainly because she’s impersonating Ann Coulter. It’s kind of
hard to go over-the-top with that. Hell, I’d actually be more
surprised to find out that Coulter did believe the stuff she
was saying.
It’s well made, certainly, but the
biggest problem with this episode is simply the question of who it
would appeal to. When it was made, yeah it was awesome to watch for
anyone disgruntled with the Bush administration. I feel that today
hating only one side of the political spectrum seems almost quaint to
most people, and whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in the
first place feels like a debate that’s played out.
For me, personally, the episode is like
reverse-nostalgia. As a liberal, I remember the Bush years as a
miserable time, and this episode is just a reminder of why I hated
those years. I imagine someone who felt otherwise would likely just
be offended by the material, and someone too young to remember just
wouldn’t have anything to relate to, and would probably just take
it as a black comedy.
So, all I really have is, if this
sounds like it would appeal to you, awesome, watch it! Otherwise, it
probably isn’t worth your time.
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