Great Danes

Carrie-ing on. Geddit?

Whoa! What the frig have you been doing if you haven't been watching Homeland? Seriously, it's the depressive's telly of choice thanks to the goggling acting of Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the bi-polar, Sargent Brody-shagging/hassling CIA agent.
The series ended this week with Mathison choosing to undergo Electroconvulsive Therapy in an effort to rid her of her burgeoning illness. And, by Christ, it was the best depiction of a woman with mental health problems that I've ever seen. Seriously, there were moments when I forgot it was telly and I thought I was seeing into my own fevered mind. It made me do a little wee right there on the sofa.
Soaringly manic at one point, crashingly depressed the next, Danes' Mathison was a masterclass in what it's like to be fucked over by your own brain. While watching Danes go through all the stages of bi-polar disorder I had tooth-curling flashbacks to the moments when I have been engorged with panic, crippled with confusion, verging on hysterical, enflamed with rage and, finally, rendered physically and mentally immobile by impenetrable layers of darkness. 
Why in the fuck is it so rare to see anything like this on TV, outside of some Channel 4 come-and-see freak show? Because Danes' acting wasn't just a parroting of the realities of mental illness, it was done with what seemed to be a complete understanding of what it's like to feel scared, abandoned, angry, lonely, isolated and desperate. 
And, get this, it also made me feel ever so slightly proud to have a wonky noggin. In the grasp of her mania Danes managed to crack the conundrum that had dogged her and her colleagues throughout the series. I felt as if I'd been thrown a bone and reminded that while mental illness can be crippling there are lights along its long tunnel too. 
In those last few episodes of Homeland Danes' Mathison turned into some sort of idol for me. Not because she is superhuman, skinny and staggeringly glamorous, but exactly because she isn't. She's juggling her job with her mental illness and, just like the rest of us, the cracks show, gape and then you fall in. 
Thank fuck for that. Just when I, as a sufferer of depression, was feeling ignored by the world Homeland came along and gave me a teeny tiny voice. I can only hope that Danes' portrayal makes that voice louder and louder with every episode that passes.