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| Peter Quinn |
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| She frowned a lot |
Homeland was always Claire
Danes’s show. Yes, Damian Lewis hung around for a bit and Mandy
Patinkin won't give it up but it was Carrie Mathison who effectively led the thing, had the ideas, took the initiative. However
flaky or off the wall she acted (when she forgot or decided not to
take her meds or sometimes even when she did), we trusted her. She
took risks, often utterly uncalculated ones. And like that other
heroine of our TV times, Buffy, ‘She Saved the World. A Lot’.
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| So did he |
What amazes me is that when
Peter Quinn arrived, I really resented it though I wasn’t sure why. I think I
must have seen Rupert Friend in something else and not liked him. I was worried
that the plot would now follow some hackneyed romcom trope, where he
would start as the antagonist to Carrie, then there’d be an
interminable ‘will they, won't they?’ stage before they realised
they were in love. (There has been a whisper of this attachment on
Quinn’s side; Carrie as we know makes a series of bad decisions
about who she sleeps with, frequently putting her life and the lives
of others in danger. In fact, talking about The Lives of Others,
I considered Sebastian Koch a better match). I thought it
implausible that someone like Carrie would fall for the by-the-book,
straight-arrow, in-league-with-management guy. I saw him as just
another obstacle Carrie would have to surmount. Despite great lines like 'Is there no line, Carrie? Is there no
fucking line?' I still didn't like him. And I didn’t trust
him. At all.
But now he’s the reason I watch.
I have to give credit to Rupert Friend
and the writers for this incredible but somehow, because of their
consummate skill, entirely believable character arc and story
trajectory.
Particularly since the gas attack and
the resulting catastrophic brain injury, but in truth a little before
this, Peter Quinn has had me mesmerised. He’s like another person.
In a total tailspin, on a downward spiral (funny how you never get an
upward spiral) that seems to last forever, barely pausing for breath
on the descent. And just when you think things couldn’t get any
worse, things get worse.
This paranoid, damaged, broken creature
(played with such aplomb by Friend) is who I root for now. Carrie
who?
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| Angela in My So-called Life |
For
several seasons, I was bored with Homeland, only loyal because Carrie’s stops and
starts remained intriguing. How would she get rid of that annoying
Peter Quinn? I didn’t have much patience for Saul. Danes has hardly
put a foot wrong since the wonderful, could-never-be-overrated My So-called Life (a semi-gratuitous clip here, so emotional, my heart breaks for Brian, thrills for Angela), which I recently
watched all over again on YouTube (and it didn’t disappoint),
through Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (with Leonardo
DiCaprio) to Homeland (with the tiresome and pointless Stardust the exception to the rule, and even that at least
produced the glorious 'Rule the World' by Take That) but now,
astonishingly, it’s Peter Quinn who has me hooked. Each time the
credits roll, I can't conceive an hour has gone by. I’m like
‘Already?!’
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| Increasingly unkempt |
Similar to the halting progress Quinn makes dragging his bad leg, I gradually became attached to him. The fatalism, the heroism, the tragic
mistakes (poor Astrid), the self-pity, the despair. Every time he
survives, I cheer inside. There’s a certain romanticism about his
decline and the more unkempt, ragged, desperate he becomes, the more
I like him. As his stubble grows, as his eyes glaze over from some
unwise high, as he does something crazy, foolish or both, as he
realises the consequences of the crazy, foolish thing, as everything
falls apart for him as a man, it’s all coming together for him as a
character.
With Carrie effectively sidelined by
motherhood, Peter Quinn has become the heart of the show. Bloody and
let’s face it, not unbowed, down and somewhat out, he’s the one
out on a limb now. Shaky but steadfastly loyal to Carrie even when he
imagines she’s betrayed him, he keeps vigil. It seems to be their
fate to continually save each other’s lives without the other
noticing or acknowledging it. Friend’s performance is so
startlingly true, so affecting, his hauntedness so haunting, I’ve
changed my mind completely. I believe in him as Peter Quinn. And Carrie has changed her mind too: 'Quinn, the last two years, everywhere I
went, I looked for you. I tried to find you. I never stopped thinking
about you.'
So it’s taken a few seasons, a few
cataclysmic errors, a heap of occasionally justified paranoia. Each
setback, each stumble, each misunderstanding, each minor triumph, I
experience with him. Shot at, underwater, we all hold our breath till he resurfaces Rasputin-like. I feel his pain, his frustration, each new degradation. As
he grasps for a word somewhere now out of reach, I yearn to supply
it. The doubt, the battles, the defeats, I live with him … and it’s
Peter Quinn I trust to save the world now.
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| Rupert Friend |
[Quinn makes me feel like this song lyric:
[Please note that I didn't always pay proper attention to Homeland so may have got some facts wrong.]
[Poem on Quinn here: https://poeminawhiteribbedvest.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/vanquished/.]
[For more on acting, see secretsquirrelsays on Law & Order, Cold Case and Versailles.]
