Kamasi Washington – "Final Thought" (2015)

When the first episode of season seven of Homeland begins, ex-CIA intelligence officer Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes) is running as fast as she can on a treadmill as some very intense jazz blasts on the soundtrack.

Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison

Carrie is bipolar, you see, and recent events have driven her to the brink of a hypomanic episode.

The camera moves in tighter and tighter on her face as the tenor sax blows louder and faster:

Run, Carrie, run!

*     *     *     *     *

“Final Thought” was released in 2015 on Kamasi Washington’s critically acclaimed debut studio album, Epic.  

It was an inspired choice for the scene of Carrie running on the treadmill.  Carrie has a brilliant and insightful mind, but her bipolar disorder causes that mind to come unmoored on occasion.

Kamasi Washington

The best thing about “Final Thought” is that it sounds like Washington is on the verge of losing control at times, but he never does.  I don’t listen to modern jazz very often, but this is pretty good music – pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Here’s “Final Thought," which starts off slowly but quickly builds:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Size 14 – "Claire Danes Poster" (1997)

I'm gonna pick up some beer

And stay at home

And stare at my Claire Danes poster 

All I really want for Christmas is a Claire Danes poster.  Is that what you're hoping for as well?

Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison

I have a serious crush on Claire Danes, who plays the smart, intense, and bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison on the Homeland TV series.  Right now, Carrie is number one (with a bullet) on my top-40 list of television-character crushes.  

I don't understand why it should be that Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison has the power to hypnotize me.  But aren't crushes inherently irrational and inexplicable?

Claire Danes (age 15) in "My So-Called Life"

I'd like a poster of Claire Danes at any age, and regardless of her hair color.  I'd like posters of her without makeup, or talking on her cell phone as she's coming home from her workout, or walking her dog, or pregnant:

I'd like a poster of her looking like this:

Or like this:

Or like this:

And while you're shopping for Claire Danes posters for me, you can pick up one of these:

Size 14's one eponymous album was released in 1997.  

"Claire Danes Poster," the most popular track on that album, was on the soundtrack of Dude, Where's My Car? – which is inarguably one of the worst movies ever made.  (One fairly typical review of the movie was headlined "Dude, Your Movie Sucks.") 

Here's "Claire Danes Poster":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Merry Christmas to all from all the gang at 2 or 3 lines!

Nick Lowe – "Cracking Up" (1979)

No pills that I can take

This is too real and there ain't no escape

The protagonist of the Homeland television series, Carrie Mathison, is just your everyday smart and obsessive CIA antiterrorism specialist – except for one thing.

Carrie (who is portrayed by Claire Danes) has bipolar disorder, or what we used to call manic depression.

Manic-depressives suffer from mood swings.  At times, they will exhibit extreme elation and be very energetic.  At other times, they may be severely depressed.   In between manic-depressive episodes, they may feel and act perfectly normal.

Here's a collage of Carrie's crazier moments:

Carrie Mathison cries a lot, and for good reason.  When she cries, her face scrunches up, and her lower lip sticks out, and she completely dissolves.  It's not a pretty sight:

Claire Danes is a gifted actress.  (She has the reviews and the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild awards to prove it.)  Like Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Oliver Cromwell, Claire Danes's compelling portrayal of the multifaceted Carrie Mathison – who TV critic Emily Nussbaum describes as "a vulnerable, seductive bully" – includes Carrie's "warts and all."  

And Carrie Mathison has plenty of moral warts.  Nussbaum wrote in the New Yorker that one of Homeland's strengths is that it takes "an unsentimental view of its heroine's worst behavior."  

But despite her failings, Carrie Mathison always fully engages the audience's interest and sympathy.  We never don't care about Carrie.  

Claire Danes is as effortlessly beautiful as any woman I've ever seen on television or in the movies.  But she has little in common with the Hollywood bombshells who are regularly splayed on the pages of lad magazines like Maxim and FHM.  

Nonetheless, her Carrie Mathison is an incredibly seductive character.  There's a look she gives a guy in a bar in the very first episode of Homeland that I don't think any straight man alive could resist.

To quote our old friends Gary Puckett and the Union Gap:

A woman wears a certain look
When she is on the move
And a man can always tell what's on her mind
I hate to have to say it

But that look's all over you

(It certainly is, Carrie Mathison . . .)

But Carrie's dominant characteristic is her bipolar disorder.  Claire Danes prepared for her role by thoroughly researching manic depression, and that preparation shows at the end of season one of the series, when Carrie has the mother of all manic episodes.

She takes clozapine, an antipsychotic drug that is used to treat bipolar disorder.  But her pills aren't powerful enough to prevent Carrie from descending into madness – a descent that concludes with Carrie receiving electroconvulsive therapy (formerly known as shock treatment):

It's painful to watch the psychological disintegration of the smart and intense Carrie Mathison.  But when her character becomes convinced that she has utterly misjudged the man who she believes to be a dangerous terrorist, she changes from someone you can't take your eyes off into someone it is hard to watch without averting your gaze.

Here's "Cracking Up," which Nick Lowe released on his 1979 album, Labour of Lust: 

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jimi Hendrix Experience -- "Manic Depression" (1967)

Manic depression is a 

Frustrating mess

Instead of déjeuner-ing at one of the many expense-account restaurants in the trendy downtown Washington, DC neighborhood where I work, I usually bring a homemade sandwich to lunch.

I used to read a book at my desk while I ate that sandwich, but recently I've been watching cable-TV series, one episode at a time.  

First, I went through all 62 episodes of Breaking Bad (which I recommend highly).  Next, I went through the first four seasons of Justified and the two extant seasons of House of Cards.

Currently, I'm alternating episodes of Entourage (which I recently wrote about) and Homeland.  

Claire Danes as Homeland's Carrie Mathison

Homeland stars Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, an intense and dedicated CIA antiterrorist operative who has a big secret: like her father, she suffers from bipolar disorder – a mental illness that used to be called manic depression because it is characterized by mood swings.

Andy Greenwald of Heartland observed that Carrie Mathison breaks a cardinal rule of television, which is that a female character isn't allowed to be a mess.  

Carrie is a real mess when she is going through a manic phase.  The signs and symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder include rapid speech, agitation or irritation, inflated self-esteem, risky behavior, careless or dangerous use of drugs or alcohol, and promiscuity.

Carrie exhibits all of those behaviors.  In other words, she sound alike the perfect girlfriend! 

The manic Carrie is promiscuous with a capital "P."  Her go-to move is to get into a slinky little dress, slip a phony wedding ring on her left hand, head out to a jazz club, and sip tequila at the bar until Mr. Right comes along and . . . well, you can guess what happens next.

(If you're wondering why she puts on the fake wedding ring, that's so the guys she picks up don't get any ideas about having an actual relationship with her.)

Carrie in disguise

The first time we meet Carrie in Homeland's pilot episode, she is returning to her house early one morning looking a little worse for wear after a one-night stand.  She takes off her slinky little dress, takes off her fake wedding ring, and hurriedly performs her toilette before throwing on a work outfit and heading off to attend a briefing at CIA headquarters.

Carrie's toilette is about as basic as a toilette gets: she deploys an electric toothbrush, then gives her private parts a quick swipe with a wet washcloth.  

(The Brits call that move a "whore's wash," and watching Claire Danes doing that so casually and matter-of-factly is quite startling.)

Good advice!

I almost forgot to mention that Carrie does one other thing while getting ready for work: she scarfs down a clozapine capsule before heading off to the office.  Clozapine is a schizophrenia medication that is sometimes used off-label to treat bipolar disorder.

If you're asking yourself why the CIA would allow someone suffering from bipolar disorder to work on the front lines of the war against terrorism – which is a pressure-cooker job if there ever was one – the answer is THEY DON'T KNOW BECAUSE CARRIE HASN'T TOLD THEM.

Carrie goes completely off the tracks at the end of season one of Homeland, then decides to take drastic measures in hopes of controlling her illness.  We'll talk more about that in the next 2 or 3 lines.

"Manic Depression" was released 1967 on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's startling debut album, Are You Experienced.  Other songs on that album included "Purple Haze," "Hey Joe," "Fire," "Foxy Lady," and the title track -- which technically isn't the title track because its title ends in a question mark while the album title doesn't.

  

One writer said that Are You Experienced "altered the syntax of music . . . in a way I compare to James Joyce's Ulysses."  Both Are You Experienced and Ulysses are groundbreaking and unique works, but there is one big difference between them: the Hendrix album is fabulous, while Ulysses is – like Carrie Mathison – a mess.

Here's "Manic Depression":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: