At a recent dinner party, we played a game where everyone had to talk about three things they thought changed their lives. I had two moments from my early life: one being the Live Aid concert back in July 1985 (I was 13!) that got me thrilled that the whole world, all of us, were watching it together, and the other was a political assassination of a journalist in Turkey in January 1992 (I was 20!) that taught me that a state can get rid of citizens that insist on looking for the truth. And the third moment I mentioned was Homeland. Because I was a regular academic attending to my own thing until a certain “pesky Brit” disguised as an American POW showed up and turned everything upside down! Homeland made me a Damian Lewis fan for life and I launched a blog in his name almost a decade ago. Go, figure!
Homeland, the show that started it all, premiered on Showtime on October 2, 2011, exactly thirteen years ago today.
Happy Birthday, Homeland! Thank you for enticing us, surprising us, and confusing us with some brilliant writing and outstanding acting. Thank you for giving us the best “impossible” love story ever told on TV, and above all, thank you for bringing Damian Lewis into my life. It is not an exaggeration, not at all, to say there would have been no Fan Fun should there have been no Homeland. And I cannot think of a better birthday card than sharing my own story about how Homeland came along unexpectedly and changed my life for good. Cheers!
Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Homeland (Or How Brody Turned My Life Upside Down)”