As Julia Roberts’ first foray into television after a thirty-one year career, it was significant to everyone involved to pull out all the stops in terms of making Homecoming a high-quality affair (particularly Amazon, evermore set on world domination even in the entertainment world). That being said, Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, with all his critical acclaim, lured not only Roberts but also Sissy Spacek (not to mention his other muse, Bobby Cannavale) to the show. With meticulous set design from Anastasia White and Hitchcock meets De Palma-drenched cinematography from Tod Campbell, Homecoming is yet another TV show that has turned the film industry on its ear with regard to what it is capable of doing with the storytelling medium.
Establishing the sinister tone from the outset are the file cabinet meanderings of Thomas Carrasco (Shea Whigham), who seeks former caseworker Heidi Bergman (Roberts) at her current place of business: Fat Morgan’s, a sort of seafood-themed restaurant where she now works as a waitress. As further proof of the meticulousness of the elements of the nitty-gritty, Fat Morgan’s is an allusion to fata morgana, a superior mirage “seen in a narrow band right above the horizon.” That most of Heidi’s life has been a mirage in the past four years is further brought to her attention when Carrasco explains that he’s investigating a complaint from 2018 (for yes, we are now in 2022). Heidi insists she remembers nothing from her time there, including her patient, Walter Cruz (Stephan James), though of course Carrasco believes she’s lying to protect some larger secret. And to an extent, this is true, she just isn’t aware of what it is she’s guarding despite being latently aware deep down that she’s been a part of something horribly wrong and misguided. Thankfully, we have the mechanism of flashbacks to help us piece it all together over the ten-episode period of season one. And it all centers on Cruz, a twenty-something soldier (get it, Julia Roberts) with an ever-mounting crush on Heidi–it must have something to do with the natural eroticism of the patient-therapist dynamic.
As the most ready and willing (like Scooby-Doo) candidate at the facility to make the most of the alleged resources available, Heidi is especially protective of him and his progress, even though it is tied to a more “unhinged” soldier by the name of Joseph Shrier (Jeremy Allen White), convinced that the facility and whoever is running it is going suspiciously out of their way to lay on the Florida thing thick–from serving pineapples at meals to the abundance of palm trees on the premises. Because Walter served in the same battalion as Shrier while in the line of duty, he feels an unshakeable loyalty and bond to him, one that leads him to flee Homecoming in one of the Geist Corporation’s (they’re the ones paying for this so-called “treatment”) vans so as to accompany Shrier on his investigation into whether or not they’re 1) really “allowed” to leave and 2) the environs surrounding them add up to Florida.
When Heidi’s overbearing, strictly bottom line boss, Colin Belfast (Cannavale), gets wind of this development, he chastises Heidi for her lax methods, among them suggesting that Walter bunk with Shrier in the first place to help slowly ease him back into sleeping in his own space. He barks, “We’re treating PTSD like cancer. Something to be eradicated, not managed.” It’s certainly a sentiment that Gob Bluth (Will Arnett) could get on board with, always packing his pocketful of Forget-Me-Nows should the occasion arise to use them (and yes, a Forget-Me-Now is Rohypnol). With his brother, Buster (Tony Hale), a “surviving” member of the military (though it was a “loose seal” that caused him to lose his hand, not any actual combat), it all adds up to Gob being an all too eager opportunist in the bid to take over Heidi’s position, should we get into the slippery slope of melding fan fictions.
As self-described “cog in the machine” Carrasco starts to unravel the strange turn of events that unfolded at the facility in 2018, only just now responding to an anonymous complaint made to the Department of Defense by Walter’s own mother, Gloria (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), he seems to do nothing but get further away from the truth, in classic Hitchcock/De Palma protagonist form.
And no, it isn’t just the characters that emulate those from the oeuvre of these maestros of the psychologically fraught. From the deliberate homage to semiotics with the pervasiveness of the octagon shape (representing an infinitesimal abyss like the shape of the number eight itself) to the hidden pineapple decor (you’ll understand why in episode two) to the boxes within boxes motif representing Heidi’s trappedness, the attention to detail is very much befitting a student of Hitchcock, knowing full well the value of the silent language of symbols in cinema. And now, TV.
Heidi, who starts to force herself to ask more questions, not just of the past, but of her mother, Ellen (Spacek), who she now lives with, can’t seem to shake the unwanted sensation that something has gone horribly awry in her life’s trajectory. Colin, fearful that she might actually remember who he is when he gets a call from her (only at the insistence of her co-worker when Heidi shows her an old phone with many calls from Colin’s number on it), heads down to Florida to pose as a veteran named Hunter, winning Heidi’s trust long enough to ingratiate himself into what she’s up to next, although she seems too timid at first to take any real action. This uncertain, scared of it all mouse is not so far off from the person Heidi used to be while woking at Homecoming, although she certainly has no problem being cold-hearted to her overly into it, met on the internet boyfriend, Anthony (Dermot Mulroney, back with his old co-star in some macabre sequel to My Best Friend’s Wedding, already far-fetched in its storyline to begin with). Nor is she afraid to ultimately stand up for what she believes in–the rights of these soldiers, specifically Walter–to their past. To not have it erased or stamped out as a means to reuse them for the same purpose over and over until their brain eventually just becomes mush. For that’s what it is to manipulate the mind with numbing agents for the sake of tiptoeing around PTSD. And while it might be semi-effective in the Bluth family, Heidi is not one to sit idly by and let the government have its way with their “experiment”–human beings who still have a right to feel the effects of their past. Shitty though it may be.
