#cma*

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! 

i’m going to start with her living room because it’s the room we see the most:

first of all, i love the green brick wall. it’s the first image that comes to mind when i think of carrie’s DC apartment - it’s a great color, adds a little texture, and makes the room look really homey. we also have an ugly striped rug, which was probably on super sale, a less ugly striped throw pillow that almost matches but doesn’t, and a fun paisley throw pillow that could work if there weren’t so many stripes. there is also a comically tiny reading lamp, which is great.

you can also see onto her patio, which has multiple very nice chaises with cushions! there is a 0% chance carrie remembers to bring those cushions inside when it rains, which means they’re probably a little musty. i want that patio. 

there are also a bunch of framed photos scattered around the first floor, some of which i’m going to guess were taken while she was in iraq, based on the architecture. i like the idea of carrie taking great care to print and frame these photos while not unpacking any of the boxes we’ll see in her bedroom. 

this shot shows a few framed photos on the wall, but it’s hard to tell what they are. the first one looks like a building, and the other two might feature groups of people? i couldn’t be bothered to actually look for a better screenshot, so i guess i’ll never know the truth. 

now for her work room/study/location of many a manic spiral:

(i had to include the ~iconic~ timeline shot!) the giant corkboard is both visually striking and hilarious, since i picture carrie having to go to michael’s or whatever to buy enough tiny boards to fill her wall. did the cashier say anything when she bought these ~70 pin boards? amazon obviously existed in 2011 but wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now, so she probably bought them in person.

i like the top shot because it shows that carrie’s tv is sort of centered along her Conspiracy Wall, so i can see her throughout the years half-watching tv and half-studying the wall to see if she can think of anything new to add.

the kitchen:

carrie’s kitchen is kind of boring, since she never uses it, but it’s really big and… has a fireplace? you can see the mantel behind frank in that second shot. what a weird choice. also, the woven basket on top of her stove in that first shot looks like the kind of basket you get in a chinese restaurant when you order a lot of dumplings. what could carrie possibly have in there?

here’s another angle of her dining area off of the kitchen. she has so many shelves! and random pottery pieces! i like to think those are all pieces she brought home from the middle east.

and now her bedroom:

carrie clearly loves to mix prints. i like that the curtains have almost a tree-branch pattern. i also like the painting above her bed but the colors don’t really fit with all the gray on her bedding. i would move it to the living room, and put the painting that’s above the mantel in her little breakfast nook in here. also, you can’t see it in this screenshot but carrie is listening to music using a silver ipod classic, which is the ipod i used in 2011 and still have in a drawer somewhere. the comically tiny reading lamp also makes an appearance! 

this shot is from the pilot and shows that she still hasn’t fully unpacked her boxes, which is a mood. i like that they appear to be unlabeled. 

here’s another angle of her bedroom:

this shows us that she designates different sides of the bed for sleeping vs. listening to moody music, as one does. 

we can also see that her full bathroom is off the master bedroom, which is weird to me. if she has someone staying in the guest room, does that person have to go into her room in the middle of the night to pee? or go downstairs? is there another bathroom off the hallway? how many bathrooms does this fucking apartment have?

on that note, when virgil finds her meds in the aspirin bottle in the pilot, does that mean he went all the way upstairs and into her personal bathroom? instead of the bathroom that we never see on the ground floor but is in the floorplan? that seems like an invasion of privacy, although it’s not super clear how close they are as friends, so maybe it’s not that weird.

inside the bathroom:

carrie has so many hand towels. no one person needs that many hand towels. she also has… scarves on a hook? is that multi-colored scarf the same one she wears in 1.11? i don’t think it’s exactly the same but it looks very similar.

she also has a walk-in closet, which is so neatly organized (look at how nicely those t-shirts are folded on the shelf by her head!) and features a lot of stripes, even though i can’t think of a single time we’ve seen her wear stripes. she occasionally wears dress shirts with prints, especially early on, but otherwise she’s a solids girl through and through. why is she buying so many stripes that she won’t wear?

here’s one last shot of her bedroom, which i love because of the jacksonville jazz poster and the free weights on the floor of her room. according to google, there’s a jazz festival in jacksonville, florida every year so i guess that’s what this is from. did she actually go to said festival, and did she go with anyone? i would read that fic.

starting with the front entryway, i picked this shot because i love seeing carrie’s bike with the seat for franny. it’s classic european mom. i would never have guessed after watching 4.12 that we’d see carrie biking around the city joyfully with franny, but sometimes the universe is kind to me! i like to think that carrie eventually has a bike like that in brooklyn too.

from the entryway, it looks like you can walk immediately into the living room, with the dining room to the right out of frame. carrie’s love for patterned home decor (but not patterned clothing) lives on with this cross-hatched rug, which is a giant improvement from the ugly striped one she had in her living room in DC. i don’t really know what’s going on with those brown stools to the left of the door. i guess they’re decorative, and they look like they’re nice quality, but they seem so unnecessary. did carrie buy them? did jonas buy them? why?

the door handles in this apartment are all really high. can franny reach them? why are they at least six inches higher than a normal doorknob?

it’s nice to see the little beanbag chair in the shape of an elephant for franny because overall, there’s a weird lack of kid stuff in this living room. carrie and jonas look at a box of books at one point in 5.12, which is the episode this screenshot is from, but i would expect to see more toys, even if they’re just stacked against a wall or something. it’s possible carrie sent a bunch of franny’s toys on otto’s private plane when she flew to maggie’s house. that’s what i’m going with for now, since no one else cares!

here are more angles of the living room during franny’s birthday party. i’m obviously legally required to include these shots of carrie wearing a balloon hat, because they’re adorable. in the second shot, you can see that basically the entire wall — both the living room and the dining room on the far left — is made up of windows, which make everything look so open and warm. i would kill for that much sunlight in my apartment. 

i also like the curtains, with a sheer under-layer and heavier solid navy to actually block the light. the same curtains are also in the kitchen and master bedroom, which makes the whole apartment feel cohesive. i can rationalize this great design choice as carrie not wanting to pick out multiple colors/patterns, and figuring the navy will work well throughout the house, which it does.

here’s a full shot of their dining room. the chairs don’t look particularly comfortable (and don’t match for some reason? this fits with the carrie i know and love) so i’m going to assume they usually eat in the kitchen, and only use the dining room for special occasions/if they have company over. the table looks like expensive solid wood, and i want it.

here’s a shot of the navy curtains in the kitchen, with a little table in front of the windows. you can also see the island stove, which really stresses me out. there are too many angles from which you could possibly burn yourself. and franny might not be tall enough to be able to reach the burners but that still seems like a bad idea with a toddler. we know carrie doesn’t really cook, but my headcanon is that jonas likes to, with a dishtowel thrown over one shoulder because i think that’s hot.

on this counter it looks like there’s a butcher block cutting board (two?) in the corner, which is much fancier than i’d give carrie credit for. jonas probably bought it. there’s also a bread box behind the cake, which i only recognize because my british friend had one in her kitchen when we were growing up. is this a uk/european thing, or are they just not popular in the northeast US? 

also, those cabinets look really high, even if they’re just for long-term storage. i would be too short to use literally any of them, but i like the sliding doors.

now for franny’s room:

i love that carrie put up the flag banner thing from franny’s party. that seems like the kind of thing she would put up and forget to take down for months. i see a stuffed elephant on the shelf above franny’s head, which is consistent with her elephant beanbag chair in the living room.

i included the bottom shot just to show that carrie’s love for patterned comforters lives on. and the little cloud-shaped pillow is a nice touch.

i just think this shot of carrie and franny and jonas all sleeping in the same bed is cute! so i put it in because i can do whatever i want. their bed looks really comfy.

here we can see the navy curtains that are also in the living room and kitchen, which again i think really tie the whole apartment together. i’m taking mental notes. the comforter is plain gray and seems more masculine than carrie typically leans, so i wonder if she bought a new one when jonas moved in. part of me is tempted to try to make the color meaningful — the gray mirroring carrie’s ambivalence towards all the memories of her old CIA life rushing back in both 5.01 and 5.12 — but also men on tv basically only have gray or navy comforters, so it might not have been a Statement.

this woodsy print hanging on carrie’s bedroom wall opposite her bed made me think of all the stark desert photography she had up in her DC apartment, specifically one picture she had in the kitchen. is that a purposeful contrast? or just a suggestion about new life/possibilities?

off of carrie and jonas’ bedroom is an office/study, which makes me very confused about the shape of this apartment. if this office exists, is there also a secret third bedroom where jonas’ son sleeps when he comes over? let’s say yes but not think too hard about where it would be.

here, jonas is drinking whiskey out of a decanter, like a douchebag. must you, jonas? i think the bookshelves mostly hold legal books, since the yellow spines look like editions in a set. it’s a little hard to tell but i think this room has the same navy curtains too. carrie must’ve gotten a bulk discount or something because at this point it’s comical. i included this shot because i love this particular conversation — it moves so quickly from jokes about laura to emotional reassurance. also i love that instead of sitting on jonas’ lap when he pulls her towards him, carrie full-on straddles him. 

people probably criticize him for saying she doesn’t need to vet secret documents etc and say he doesn’t understand the pull the CIA has on carrie, but i would argue that he’s exactly what she needs at this point in her life: he shows her that she’s capable of living a happy fulfilled life without the crushing weight of war zones and mortal peril. they were never going to last forever, but carrie’s relationship with jonas shows important emotional growth and i’m as proud of her for it as i would be if she were a real person!

in summary: navy curtains, so many windows, weirdly high door handles, a very stressful stove situation, and a celebration of jonas. we never see a bathroom so i don’t have to sit and think about access to it like i did for carrie’s DC apartment!