If you follow Damon Lindelof on Twitter, you know that he's a huge fan of both The Walking Dead and Homeland (two of the best shows on television).  So when I spoke to him at the recent Star Trek Bad Robot press day (and during a follow up phone call), we talked about the success of The Walking Dead and his thoughts on the Homeland season 2 finale.  While Lindelof is not involved with either show, he's a passionate fan of both and thought you might like to hear his thoughts.Note: Massive Homeland spoilers are discussed. Do not read unless you are caught up.Collider: I think season three of The Walking Dead has been incredible. Whatâs your take on it so far?Lindelof: Iâm a massive fan of the comic book and have been since the very beginning, and [comic creator Robert] Kirkman and I actually found each other and befriended each other in a pre-Twitter era just because I let everybody know who was listening how much I loved his stuff. So then when it got made into a TV show and I started watching itâitâs almost impossible to separate the two ideas, there is just only The Walking Dead. I know a lot of people say, âWell thereâs the comic book and thereâs the TV show,â but my feeling of fondness for it is really that show can kind of do no wrong. That being said, itâs been doing a tremendous amount of things very, very right, and I think that whatâs exciting about it is that it can aberate from the comic book in really exciting ways, like Merle and Daryl, for example, who arenât in the comic book become wild cards in that universe because they never existed in it before. So I do feel like anything can happen on that show and itâs tremendously exciting, but not at the cost of the big thematic leap. Whatâs interesting about that show is, you feel like the zombie thing has just been done to death; itâs just a dead trope, no pun intended, like thereâs nothing new to say about zombies. But I think that that idea ofââThe Walking Deadâ is not the title for the zombies, itâs the title for the survivors, and the show plays in this ambiguous moral space of at what point are you no longer a human anymore? What behaviors will you engage in that are essentially sacrificing your own inherent morality or ethical sense of being? And wrapping that all up in some sort of very satisfying package where also zombie arms are getting torn off and heads are rolling and all those other things are happening, I think itâs an enormously tall order. A lot of the time as a geek, I will experience this thing where I was into something that was niche-y and cool, and then if it becomes successful in the mainstream, I feel bitterness towards the people who are now accepting it because theyâre Johnny Comes Lately. Itâs like the Seattle thing where itâs like, âIâve seen Nirvana play for four years in small club and now you thing âSmells Like Teen Spiritâ is their first song? Go fuck yourself!â Thatâs the way that youâll feel when you first hear about Scott Pilgrim getting made or something like that, and then you go âOh but itâs Edgar [Wright], so itâs gonna be okay.â And then you sort of switch over to âI want this small little niche thing to reach widespread success,â the fact that thereâs 10 million+ watching The Walking Dead every week and itâs a genre show that even on a network would be Top 10, or number one demo status, thatâs amazing. Thatâs something that even Lost was never really able to accomplish in its heyday of being overtly genre and nobody cared, in fact the more genre Lost became, the more it tended to alienate a certain subset of viewers, but people accept the crazy zombie show at face value. In fact itâs picking up viewers, and thatâs because the showâs so damn good. The [ex-showrunner Frank] Darabont and the [current showrunner Glen] Mazzara and all that aside, I really feel like Kirkman doesnât get his due in terms of creating that world and populating it with really fascinating characters and interesting, original ideas that feel like theyâre familiar enough if youâre a fan of the post-apocalyptic zombie genre, but you do feel like youâre seeing it in a way that youâve never seen it before.The ratings are stunning. Have you heard anything from studios or creative people in terms of maybe certain networks are loosening up to ideas that were maybe too radical before?Lindelof: I definitely think anytime a genre show is successful, it opens the door to genre. Thatâs the nature of the beast, it happened with X-Files, it happened with us, it happened with Heroes, and now itâs happening with The Walking Dead, and thatâs always exciting if youâre a fan of genre storytelling. But at the end of the day, nobody knows what the hell anybody wants to watch or they would only create hit shows and there would be no shitty shows. I donât know what the history of The Walking Dead is, but if itâs anything like the history of Mad Men or the history of Breaking Bad, several other places passed on it before AMC said, âOkay letâs get me some zombie.â Because the idea of like in a repressed economy, in a time of recession, who wants to see that? Who wants to see the dirty, gross people straggling through a post-apocalyptic United States thatâs overrun by zombies. And the answer turned out to be everybody. Everybody wants to see that.Warning: Massive Homeland spoilers are discussed. Do not read unless you are caught up.Season two of Homeland ends in a way that Brody may or may not have done something. Do you watch it live as soon as it airs, and what were your thoughts on the season two finale?Damon Lindelof: I watch it very close to live. My wife and I put our son down at like 7:30, and then we got and watch Homeland. I think it starts at 7 if youâre watching it in HD on DirecTVâa shameless DirecTV plugâso pretty close to live because you wanna stay off Twitter.Youâre preaching to the choir on this one.Lindelof: But hereâs kind of my take on it: somebody moved Brodyâs car. Thatâs all it comes down to for me. Putting all the emotional and character stuff aside, which is woven into that show and left intentionally vague, so the idea of what is Brodyâs level of complicity in terms of the bombing on the CIA, thatâs the question that youâre putting in front of me, my answer to you is someone moved Brodyâs car. Because Brody parked his car in one place, and then he went in to the funeral and sat at the funeral, and then someone moved his car! This is a fact and it wasnât him, itâs an undeniable fact. So the question really is, was Brody working in concert with some other agent of Abu Nazirâs who moved his car for him so that he could feign ignorance, or is he completely and totally innocent? He claims his innocence a couple times, most compellingly I think to Carrie in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, and had they not left that room they both would have been killed. Doesnât Carrie get up first? Or does he get up first?Heâs looking a little bored like âHey I wanna get out of here.â I donât remember if he signaled or if she does it, but I think it starts with him.Lindelof: Right, either way I think Brody is good, but heâs not a trained CIA assassin. And so weâve been with him in moments where weâve seen him be genuinely anxious, like when heâs killing the tailor, and I just canât belive that he could be sitting there so close to the explosive and not be sweating it at all. Like he just seemed to have no idea that it was going to happen. And then Carrie is obviously asking the same question that you are, when they basically wake up in the office right after the blast has gone off and she draws down on him and she says âI think you did this,â heâs able to convince her that he didnât and that this was Nazirâs play all along. Certainly there are black holes in the show. For that period of time that Brody was gone what did he and Nazir discuss? I know that thereâs a very popular theory out there advanced by Emily Neusbaum that the entire Skype session between he and Nazir negotiating for Carrieâs life was all just played for her benefit so that Brody could maintain his cover as a double agent inside there. My brain starts to hurt when I follow sort of the logic of all of it, but I continue to hear [showrunners Howard] Gordon and [Alex] Ganza saying, you know the message that theyâre giving in interviews is the story that theyâre really invested in and interested in telling is the doomed romance between Carrie and Brody. If they were saying, âThe interesting story that we want to tell is âCan you really ever trust someone?ââ then Iâd be like, âOkay, I donât know what to make of Brody here.â But I kind of feel like, the larger issue is in season three of the show whatâs the messaging that we received at the end of season two? Binary question: Is Brody going to be a major part of the third season of the show, or is he not? If the answer is âheâs not,â then I think Brody didnât blow up the CIA, and if the answer is, âhe is,â then the answer is he probably did blow up the CIA. Because if he didnât blow up the CIA, thereâs really no story left with that guy, is there?Well I think part of the story could be the hunt for him.Lindelof: But how is that interesting?This is the other thing I wanted to address, when you have contracts with certain actors and theyâre signed on for five years, sometimes the network obviously doesnât wanna get rid of somebody whoâs winning awards or is a fan favorite or is involved in a popular relationship or something. If the creators want to veer away from this but the network wants to keep an actor on the show, how does that play out?Lindelof: I donât know David Nevins that well and I donât know Howard Gordon and Alex Ganza that well, but I do believe that Howard and Alex have earned the right to tell exactly the story that they want to tell, and if they wanted to write Damian Lewis off the show, [I believe] that David Nevins would be okay with that because he has a reputation for being very friendly with creatives. So I donât think that a network could force that big of a thing on someone, and if they had we would have seen evidence of it in the finale.I do think, though, that the show has done a phenomenal job at advancing story very quickly and moving it forward.Lindelof: I feel that way about most cable drama, though, where the idea of being able to tell seasonal arcs over 10 or 13 episodes, itâs all killer no filler.If you missed Lindelof talking about how he won't be writing the Prometheus sequel or how he's now writing 1952 with Brad Bird, click the links.