Anyone who has already watched the premier episode of Homeland, season 6 knows that it has become something of a comedy.  The hard-bitten, bipolar, tough, and brave-beyond-description Carrie Mathieson is now, suddenly, a pro-Muslim activist in Brooklyn, defending young men she now believes have been erroneously arrested as potential terrorists.  Talk about a personality change.  Now she is a walking, talking victim of Stockholm syndrome.  Psychobabble hardly describes what the writers have done to this character – from international anti-terror heroine to simpering member of something like CAIR in under a year.

Worst of all is what the writers have done to the best character in the series, Peter Quinn.  Quinn was the cleverest, bravest, and most endearing person on the show.  At the end of last season, he was barely alive due to a sarin gas attack by terrorists who had taken him hostage.  The cliffhanger was: would Carrie let him die, as he requested in a letter to her?  Carrie should have let him die, but she didn't.  Now he is back as a pathetic shell of his former self.  It would be heartbreaking if it were not so stupid.

Quinn is at a VA hospital and entirely ill cared for – a slap at the VA or shoddy writing?  Hard to imagine that a man of Peter Quinn's accomplishments for the CIA would be so easily cast off to the criminal inclinations of VA orderlies.  This storyline is horrible either way.  We all know the VA needs to be radically transformed, but does our government treat its finest men and women this badly?  Or is this just a tacky plot twist?

Most hilarious is the writers' assumption that Hillary was going to be the president-elect when this first episode aired; it is set a week before the inauguration!  From this first episode it is hard to tell if the first female president is going to be a figure of fun, a president to be mocked, or a competent actor on the world stage.

The election results may have thrown these writers and producers into a tailspin, but the season is likely already completed.  But then some are Israelis, so perhaps they are ahead of us all.  We will have to wait and see.