To think Carrie from Homeland is the most irritating character on the telly right now?!

[Inboxer]

Trying to drown her own child, dropping drones and pulling her hair behind her ears with alarming force - why do they all fancy her and how does she get a job in intelligence!

Personally, I can't see how the CIA would employ someone with her character's extent of bi-polar disorder in the first place. She's erratic, a proven liability and borderline nutter. She's good at her job though and gets reined in and chucked in a nut home when she oversteps the mark, but I'd like to see a final outcome where it reveals she's been manipulating her own security forces all along and defects to Islamabad.

The pregnancy and baby storyline feels a bit patronising. And pointless.

Argh shouldn't have opened this, gone and got myself a spoiler. Blatantly my own fault but wanted to come and defend Carrie as I find her a really intriguing character. I'll just slope off again now til I have caught up...

I'm not enjoying her as much in this current season. Her behaviour with her most recent "recruit" does rather turn my stomach.

She was best in the first season. She really is a good actor, but right now that character is spinning her wheels.

I agree, she'd never get a high ranking job after shagging brody. And she's utterly unlikable. And now this tacked on romance with Quinn when they've had zero chemistry up to now. PAH!

I have to say, I've come to hate the way American TV shows write their main female characters, they are nearly always fucked up in some way or other. It's so normal to read a thread about how insufferable a female character is, yet it's very rare to read the same thing about a male character. On most of the big shows there is hatred for the main female character. It has to come down to the writing?

And she doesn't check her phone regularly despite being in charge of life and death stuff.

When I watch it I can't help but think "hasn't Angela done well for herself"

I have long been of this very opinion, glad to see I'm not the only one!
Frustrating that one of the few shows on TV with a female protagonist has one that's so bloody irritating, but then at least she's a 'real' 'flawed' character yadda yadda.....
Check out Gillian Anderson in 'the fall' for a female lead who doesn't make you cringe!

Can't stand her and have stopped watching. It's the facial expressions as well I just want to slap her rubbery face. I said to DP when last watching - how on earth would she still have a job?

The horrific suits they have her wearing just tipped me over the edge as well.

When I watch it I can't help but think "hasn't Angela done well for herself"

that's very funny Rudy!

I hate Carrie, it got to the point where we were basically just groaning throughout - so, we stopped. I find Saul pretty charming, but my husband suspects that Mossad has hatched the storyline and passed it off to Homeland (that's the OTHER reason we stopped watching).

I like Saul too. Love his voice and his gravitas and kindness. I wouldn't watch it at all if he weren't in it.

Agree that Carrie is unlikeable and keep waiting for her to see the light and stop being so self-absorbed. The recruit better not get killed .

Also can't believe the way she got her job in Islamabad - a bit of blackmail of somebody vastly her senior and done .

If I were bi-polar I would not be happy about the portrayal either.

Still watching though .

Who's Angela ?

I was wondering who Angela is as well??

Her character in My So-Called Life was Angela, back when she was a teenager.

Oh god the suit!!! This is even bugging me now and I don't care much about clothes.

She seriously needs to address her mental health before she can think about parenting or doing a job with such a high level of responsibility.

Homeland has lost its way - although I thought that last series and then it upped its game mid way through.

I think it is really missing Brody - his struggles with what he thought was right were really intriguing. Same with Quinn and his doubts now. Saul excellent. Also David Harewood's character was great. I'm missing all of the not knowing who is double crossing and backstabbing.

Carrie has become too much of a cartoon I think and seeing as she is the main character it has stifled the entire show.

also read interview with Clare Danes and she seems very pretentious

It just isn't working without Brody.
I only keep watching because of Saul.

I'm not sure you are supposed to like every single person on the telly box though - she is deeply flawed and damaged - she isn't 'nice' and she doesn't always do the right thing - like the CIA

She didn't try to drown her own child - she has attachment issues to the child, who's father she witnessed being hung (or did she) - she had a moment lots of women have of 'OMG it would be so easy just to end this' - I felt very sorry for her at that point.

She has mental health problems but that doesn't make her bad either

I like her character - she raises a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas

'I like Saul too. Love his voice and his gravitas and kindness. I wouldn't watch it at all if he weren't in it'

He is lovely. And his beard is magnificent.

I also watch for Quinn, who had a massive problem keeping his shirt on in the first few episodes of this series

I think Clare Danes is a brilliant actress, she's just perfect for this part.

Yes Carrie is so flawed but it's so compelling watching her manipulate.

I'm really at the storyline with the recruit as its grotesque and I really don't know if that's realistic.

I can't help thinking as a feminist that it's yet another prime time woman using sex to get what she wants as some writers adolescent masturbatory fantasy. But she did it with Brody and I was less perturbed.

I'm disturbed but I don't know what to think really.

She's not meant to be likeable. But I admit I find someone like her supposedly in such a high-powered position in the CIA rather worrying. She's very intuitive and clever, but having a relationship with Brody and having his child, nearly drowning said child, and her latest 'recruitment' techniques are not the kind of things I could imagine someone in her position getting away with. And that's before you mix in her severe mental health issues, which I'm sure would prevent her getting the job she has.

The Quinn/Carrie storyline is not believable. His trauma over his job is though and I think he's a very good actor.

You know, we don't have to like her, or to identify with her. TV, plays, novels etc would be spectacularly dull if they only presented us with generally likeable central characters. I also think there's a sexual double standard as regards likeability in female tv leads - would people feel they had to like her or approve of all her actions if she were a male CIA agent?

However, I have to agree that the writing in Homeland this season has become very lazy where Carrie is concerned. Leaving aside the questionable realism of how someone whose mental health is known by her employers to be so fragile was posted to a series of crucial overseas jobs, the whole writing surrounding her baby is lazy and stereotyped - the brilliant, focused, careerist spy who can handle drone-killing civilians/boffing teenagers/putting herself in danger without turning a hair, can't cope with a baby for an afternoon without freaking out and trying to drown her in the bath and getting herself posted to a warzone so she never has to do bathtime again?

And presumably she looked after Franny herself for at least the few weeks of US maternity leave, so why all that having her say she doesn't know how to change a nappy, and holding her as if she's a 1950s bachelor who's never seen a baby before, even in the distance?

Not blaming either Claire Danes or Carrie here - it's the writing that's the problem.

The whole premise of the series is the lead is 'damaged' in some way. So when Brody was 'done' as a character (which was prior to his death), Carrie had to be damaged....

so many stupid characters in that show. Do you remember Brodie's wife and his daughter Deanna? Carrie is unwatchable. I've just stopped watching it recently because it's so infuriatingly silly.