Remember when “Homeland” used to feel so extreme?

It’s just been bonkers, right? It’s hard for our show to compete with the screeching absurdity of what’s happening in our actual office. It’s like escapist television now — like a balm, a tonic. It used to be a harrowing, dystopic vision of the truth, and now it’s relaxing.

Where do we find Carrie after such a tumultuous season finale?

She was shocked and horrified in the very last beat. She was grieving throughout Season 6; it was kind of a ghost story with Quinn as a dead man walking. And then she realizes that the president, who she had been so allied with and believed in emphatically, betrays her and reveals herself to be a fallible, potentially dangerous leader. So she’s once again on the outside looking in with some disgust and a lot of concern.

And her bipolar disorder?

We learn fairly early on that lithium, which is her panacea, her miracle drug, is no longer effective. Then she finds herself needing to save the world again, and she won’t have time to experiment with other medications in a sane, scientific way. And she is forced to use street drugs and self-medicate.

The show’s story lines often have uncanny parallels to real-life politics — for instance, a conspiracy theorist populating social media with fake news. How do the writers manage that feat?

Every year we spend a week in D.C. in “spy camp.” We all meet in a club in Georgetown, and from morning till night, we talk to a whole coterie of characters within the clandestine world who have real insight into what’s happening. And they are able to illuminate what’s going to surface as relevant in a year’s time. It’s incredibly valuable and terrifying. We have an amazing crystal ball.