#i cropped/brightened these photos while watching gilmore girls which sure was a tonal shift

[itsagutthing]

Places Carrie Mathison Has Lived: New York City Edition

this installment of my carrie’s apartments series is close to my heart because i also live in brooklyn, though not close to carrie. the show actually filmed a scene just a block from my apartment, but for obvious reasons i’m not going to specify which scene. i know, season six is overall meh with the exception of carrie’s blazers, but my lizard brain still goes, “that’s where i live!” so i give it more leeway than i probably should. 

carrie lives in the bedford-stuyvesant neighborhood of brooklyn, which was once primarily home to black and latino families but unfortunately is in the process of gentrifying. some light googling tells me they filmed the interior apartment scenes on a soundstage in another brooklyn neighborhood called greenpoint, which begs the question: why didn’t they just make carrie live there? greenpoint has also been gentrified but is mostly home to eastern european immigrants, so the writers could have avoided the questionable racial implications of carrie living in bed-stuy, particularly when she’s working at a non-profit that promotes racial justice. and greenpoint is also more convenient to her office in williamsburg! i know the answer to this question is probably just “brownstones look pretty,” and there are lots of brownstones in bed-stuy but not in greenpoint, but i’ll still bitch about it.

anyway, we know from quinn’s escape to the bodega in 6.02 that carrie lives close to the intersection of throop avenue and halsey street, which means she lives off of the kingston-throop A and C trains and a sort-of far walk from the bedford-nostrand G. she probably takes the G to work in williamsburg. this is information that’s only important to me, but i love public transit. 

the bike lane sign in the screenshot above reminds me how much i loved seeing carrie biking around berlin. even though nyc isn’t nearly as bike-friendly, i hope she does the same in brooklyn. 

carrie appears to have free reign of the entire brownstone, which must have been two separate units at some point — both where she and franny live and the ~garden apartment~ on the basement level that has both a full bath and kitchen. she obviously can’t afford to rent out an entire brownstone in new york city, even in bed-stuy, so my headcanon is that otto bought it as an investment property and is letting carrie and franny stay in it at a heavily discounted rate.

brownstones are typically long and skinny, as we see here. there are really only two rooms on the first floor: the living room and the kitchen.

i love seeing all of franny’s drawings strung up on the living room wall and her chalkboard/easel in the corner. this fixes an issue i had with carrie’s berlin apartment, which was that there was a weird lack of kid stuff. i don’t think that means anything on its own — we see in 5.01 how devoted carrie was to her seemingly normal life as a mother — but it’s nice to see more little touches in her brooklyn apartment. 

i assume the fireplace in the left-hand corner isn’t actually usable, but it does make the living room look homier. i’m surprised there isn’t more carpeting, since carrie loves a patterned rug. the living room looks a little cold without it. maybe she isn’t done decorating yet, though i think we’re supposed to believe they’ve been in nyc for a few months.

there’s a tv next to the fireplace in 6.05 that isn’t there in 6.01, which is very strange placement. the only furniture opposite the tv is a desk and chair, so there’s nowhere to sit comfortably while watching. i don’t think carrie spends a lot of time watching tv, but that’s still a confusing choice. i do like franny’s fuzzy chair with bunny ears, though. carrie probably ordered it on amazon but i like to imagine her schlepping it in and out of a cab.

now for the kitchen:

one nice thing the show did to convince us that this is an apartment carrie could maybe afford is that it’s not newly renovated: all the kitchen appliances are basic and/or old, and the countertops look like plastic laminate and are chipped along the edges. and there’s no room for the nice cutting boards or espresso machine she had in germany! i always find barstools charming even if they’re just a cheat to make an efficient use of counter space.

my favorite detail in the kitchen is the trio of framed drawings done by franny. again, i love all the “carrie’s a mom, remember?” touches.

the curtains are a gold color and match the curtains in the living room! carrie learned some design lessons in berlin.

even in the daytime the whole first floor feels really dark, which makes me miss the floor-to-ceiling windows in berlin. i brightened the screenshots a lot to see the details, but especially in the living room, the sunlight just doesn’t reach all the way across the house. the lack of natural light (and the fact that they filmed during the late fall) does a lot of quick work to set the dreary tone that persists for the entire season. i can’t help but compare it to the americans, which also filmed in brooklyn in the fall/winter, but at least the indoor scenes in that show were well-lit and generally warmer in both color and tone. 

i associate the early seasons of homeland with warm yellows, probably because they filmed either in the desert or in charlotte in the summertime. the shift to gray winter skies and heavy coats is a little jarring, even with berlin in the middle as a transitional urban, cooler season. 

that door behind carrie goes out to a set of stairs and their little backyard/patio:

it’s common, if a little depressing, to have bars on first-floor windows as shown in the second shot above, both to child-proof an apartment from the inside and to prevent break-ins. our first view of franny for the season is through those bars, but i’m not entirely sure what the symbolism is supposed to be. carrie already feels a separation from franny, maybe? this shot especially feels super foreboding.

carrie continues her trend of killer outdoor lounge furniture (remember the multiple chaises on her DC patio?) with the wooden chair with blue cushions right outside the back door. there are also more potted plants than i believe carrie would purchase/remember to water, especially in the winter, but maybe she figures if they’re outside they’ll get enough rain to survive.

i don’t have a lot to say about the patio itself other than i’m jealous that carrie has outdoor space.

inside by the stairs/front entryway is a framed berlin jazz poster which makes me inexplicably happy, and follows the same trend with the jazz posters she had in her DC apartment. it’s hard to tell what’s in the photos, so i’m choosing to believe they’re pictures of places she and franny loved in berlin, including some of the two of them taken by jonas. there is absolutely a photo of franny and carrie at the birthday party we saw in 5.01 where carrie’s wearing that balloon hat.

we don’t get to see a lot of the second floor, but i’m going to assume it’s just franny’s room, carrie’s room, carrie’s weird conspiracy closet, and a bathroom.

franny’s room is very colorful, with the rainbow sheets and rainbow polka dot curtains. it makes up for the dreariness of the first floor. behind carrie in that second shot is franny’s star lamp, which i love but have many questions about. it’s obviously an allusion to brody, of which there are many in season 6, probably because they’re in new york city and brody would have never served/been captured/turned/bonded with carrie if not for 9/11. assuming that carrie purchased this lamp for franny with brody’s memory in mind, does franny have anything else that’s star themed? if not, why this lamp? did carrie explain to franny that stars make her think of franny’s father, or is it just a secret nod for carrie alone? how often does carrie talk to franny about brody, if at all?

now we move to carrie’s conspiracy closet:

i’ve been in enough brownstones to know that sometimes there are strange inexplicable tiny rooms, which is what we have here. i’m sure this would be advertised as an office space on streeteasy but it really looks like a glorified closet with a confusing number of doors leading off of it. i count three total including the one saul came in — what are all these doors? i think the one on saul’s right goes to franny’s room but i don’t have a great spatial brain and i’m not confident about that assessment.

this conspiracy board reveal was kinda anticlimactic since very little happens with it, but i still felt like i needed to include it as a separate room since carrie clearly spends a lot of time here. 

i wish we got to see carrie’s bedroom because i love to scrutinize the art she has, but sadly we’re limited to franny’s room. i’m going to assume there’s a full bath up here somewhere, and a half bath downstairs that we don’t see. 

finally, we have the basement apartment that carrie allegedly rents out on airbnb. in real life it likely would be marketed as an entire unit separate from the two floors above, but since otto owns the entire brownstone / is in love with carrie he’s just letting her do whatever she wants with it.

the full kitchen is what convinces me it was supposed to be an independent unit — no one has a stove and sink and lots of cabinets in their basement. like we saw in carrie’s kitchen, none of the appliances are fancy and the countertops are nothing special, which makes the room look kinda drab but does help sell the idea that carrie could actually live here. there’s also some water damage in the corner by the fridge. i’m not sure why they decided to be realistic in season 6 — can we all recall carrie’s unnecessary two-bedroom townhouse in DC? — and it’s not particularly fun to watch, but i’m not mad about it.

the living room area of this basement actually looks cozier than carrie’s living room, with all the pillows and the exposed brick wall. i have a weakness for exposed brick walls, as we know from carrie’s DC apartment, and here it goes pretty far to make the space look homey. the couch looks like it matches the chair on her patio (with the wood frame + blue cushions), so does that mean the patio chair is meant for normal indoor use? why is it outside?? 

as we know from her berlin apartment, carrie really loves a two-curtain combo with a sheer under layer. these are dark green, similar to the navy ones she loved in berlin but not the same. i do like the thought of carrie taking her navy curtains with her from germany and relegating them to the basement to avoid the constant reminder of her past life, but i also have no desire to think about what it would mean that quinn ends up living in the basement with her jonas curtains. so those must be new! 

in summary: musings about carrie’s role in gentrification, the color palette of the show, berlin jazz poster + photos, franny’s art on the walls, star lamp, a basement living room that’s cozier than carrie’s actual living room!