‘Homeland’ not be what it seems

By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it

Only now, a decade after 9/11, would a network likely attempt a drama series such as “Homeland.”

Another threat of terrorism on U.S. soil informs the purposely intense, grim Showtime drama premiering Sunday, Oct. 2. Executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa invoked a post-9/11 world in their work on Fox’s“24,” but they draw a much more direct bead on the theme as CIA agent Carrie Mathison (played by“Temple Grandin”

Emmy winner Claire Danes) pursues just-rescued American POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis, “Band of Brothers”), suspected of turning and now plotting an attack at home.

It’s not an impossibility, as very recent history suggests. Extra security was ordered for such cities as New York and Washington, D.C., on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.The reason?

“Credible” information warned of another potential attack ... and an American was believed to be among the would-be perpetrators.

“It was more something that we reacted against,” Gansa explains of “Homeland” and its genesis, “the idea of being brainwashed or sort of turned in a magical way. It felt false to us, and the issue we wanted to explore was that even if you are turned, you are not really a terrorist until you commit an act of terrorism.You come back from the war, from this captivity, and there are still a lot of questions to resolve in your own mind about whether you might go through with what you’ve been asked to do.That’s where the drama lies, we think.”

“My So-Called Life” alum Danes agrees, adding that her “Homeland” character’s complexity made the project “impossible to ignore” for her.“She is at times dangerously bright, and formi- dable and focused, even compulsive and myopic. But she’s also very sensitive and vulnerable, and that juxtaposition is interesting.”

Claire Danes stars in “Homeland,” premiering Sunday on Showtime.

Carrie is guilt-racked, too, believing she missed clues that might have enabled her to help avert 9/11.“I can’t let that happen again,” she says in the “Homeland” debut. Erring on the side of caution is totally acceptable to her, even if others think she might be looking for things that aren’t there, as with the attention she pays to Sgt. Brody’s presumably nerve-related hand gestures during a televised news report.

“Actually, my first roommate in college was a CIA officer for a little while,” Danes notes, “and she’s the most innocuous, benign person, of course. I was telling her that I was going to play this role — ‘I’m going to play a CIA officer, and she’s bipolar’ — and her immediate response was, ‘Oh, she sounds very isolated. That’s a lonely character.’ And I was like,‘Yep.’ It provides her this incredible perspective and vantage point, but it also causes her suffering, and she needs to resolve that.”

Web Links

Television’s favorite crime-fighting serial killer is back Sunday on Showtime with the season premiere of “Dexter.” Click on www. sho.com/site/dexter

On Monday, Fox’s“House” begins its eighth season with the good doctor in deep trouble, but that’s nothing new. Get ready for the latest medical misadventure by clicking on www.fox.com/house/

BY JACQUELINE CUTLER

Carla Hall was a Girl Scout in Tennessee when she discovered how much she loved to cook. Her first dish was an apple dessert with an oatmeal, cinnamon and sugar topping. And yes, she did earn a merit badge in cooking.

Since, Hall, famed for saying “Hootie-Hoo,” has mastered thousands of far more complicated dishes but still loves making desserts. The two-time fan favorite on “Top Chef” returns to TV this week as a host of ABC’s daytime show “The Chew.”

Hall, who bursts into song regularly during a conversation, is simply fun. She’s been an accountant and a model, and she danced while a student at Howard.

She joins chefs Mario Batali and Michael Symon on the show. Among her contributions will be teaching something critical in kitchens: how to save a disaster.

As a self-described “recovering caterer,” Hall says when problems arose, “we would flip the script, change the plan and made it into something else. If you have a disaster, you have no time to thaw. Go to plan B.”

Even after graduating from Maryland’s L’Academie de Cuisine and working as a sous-chef, executive chef and caterer, Hall knows that mistakes happen. It’s how people recover that matters.

Her worst cooking problem was as a caterer, when she made chicken for a children’s party, and it was not cooked. “The recovery was just stall out and get the chicken back in the oven,” she says.

Another initially baffled her; one day she baked her grandmother’s pound cake.

“I had been doing this cake every day for five years,” she says referring to when she had a lunch catering business. Now the cake didn’t work.

“I was on my hands and knees,” Hall says. “I went into the storeroom and