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Homecoming (Not): Season 1
In Episode eight (of ten about 24 minute shows), a Department of Defense (DoD) agent (Shea Whigham), a former social worker and counselor, Heidi, (Julia Roberts), and a psychopathic, proprietary defense contractor, Colin, (Bobby Cannavale) converge at a Tampa, Florida "homecoming" Center some years after it is closed.
The Center had maintained it was a training site to help returning combat veterans in the often tough transition home. But we soon discover that to be pretense and lies, and witness how a well-meaning do-gooder, Heidi a counselor for the soldiers, is caught in the web of deceit and exploitation.
In fact, Corporate interests are out to make money from the military. It costs, we are told, $100k, to fully train a combat soldier. That kind of investment, hence, would call for a long shelf life for a warrior, not a career cut short by the “invisible” (psychic) wounds of war. As the story unfolds, we realize there is no true homecoming to be had, but rather that the men are being subjected to a chemical cleansing, a deletion of their combat memories, in order to recycle and redeploy them to war. But that information is kept secret from the soldiers, their families and even those hired to presumably counsel them for lives out of uniform and back in their communities.
The plot revolves around a returning veteran, Walter Cruz (Stephan James), with serious war-related trauma and troubles, while looking as handsome and put together as a male model. But his pain runs deep. He is chosen to enter the Homecoming Center, and begins a program where experimental drugs are delivered tastelessly in his food. That's the real intervention, not the weekly counseling sessions (flawlessly rendered by Ms. Roberts) and the Center’s faux role playing job interviews (like to work in a shoe store). We observe the budding attraction between Walter and Heidi, likely though unintentionally meant to amplify the pharmacological effects of the drug being tested to erase memories, especially those traumatic to the soldier and apt to end the man’s military utility.
The DoD agent has received a complaint from Walter’s mother, who senses something bad is happening to her son. The investigation uncovers too many contradictions and denials. The criminal and cruel reality of the Homecoming Center, even though now closed, begins to surface.
There is no statute of limitations on tampering with Vets. Initially, the agent gets little support from his supervisor who decides he has no firm evidence; yet in a dogged, career bureaucrat fashion he plows ahead. He can smell the rot that has been papered over, and wants to bring justice to those shamelessly indifferent to the men who have served.
Since every force has an equal and opposite reaction, the corporate bad guy, Colin, sets out to thwart discovery. He falsifies his identity and doubles down on his deceit by romancing Heidi, who is a key link to the actions of the defunct Center. Her life has become limited to waiting tables at a diner, and living with her mother. Something has changed her, and eroded her soul. To make matters more troubling, we learn that she too has had her memories from the Center driven underground. A period of her life, a time when she practiced as a professional, has gone missing.
But our minds are not that malleable. It is very hard to create a Manchurian Candidate, a person chemically or psychologically altered to forget trauma or obey the tyranny of others. Fragments of memory persist, disquiet occupies the mind.
The reckoning unfolds. The combined forces of a DoD Special Investigator and a woman caught in the cross-hairs of lies and exploitation are a powerful duo for ferreting out the truth. Heidi wonders if she was complicit in the evil.
We are swept along by fine writing, exceptional acting, and keen directing. You can loose sight of the fact this is a Series, which means there cannot be a fully satisfying denouement.
Though we do get to see some justice prevail: it should be hard to get away with attempted murder - of the mind, not just the body. The relentless gears of bureaucracy can grind down just about anything, including corporate malfeasance. Colin is finished as the lies are exposed; he is declared by his boss as no longer …”a problem solver…{but a} problem .” And Walter, thanks to Heidi’s sacrificial actions, is spared redeployment.
In a near to final scene, an electric connection that cannot reach a power tool Walter is using to work on his remote cabin, his haven from the past, serves as a metaphor. To lengthen its reach he goes to town for an extension cord, and to the diner for a cup of coffee. There sits Heidi, map in hand, enacting Walter’s cross-country dream, which he had entrusted her with. Her journey of (re)discovery has come to rest in the middle of no where. The reach of their connection has been restored. She recognizes him, the fragments are coalescing, Yet, when he sits down across her in the booth, can he not know her? Only the table setting reveals the truth.
The closing scene gives us, as well, the socket for the plug to Season 2, should Amazon turn on the power.
