Netflix House of Cards (2013)

Spoilers for end of Series 3: a lot of what Claire is going through relates to reexamining her relationship with Frank. The last line of the series is her announcing "I'm leaving" and the trailers for series 4 suggest the consequences of that will become clear.

Maybe she should have done that before crushing so many people for the sake of their shared ambition.

Big difference is that the guilt is clearly catching up to Claire, whereas Frank honestly feels no remorse for all of the lives he's ruined or about to ruin.

In fact season three has mostly been about showing how Claire will actually try and do the right thing at times. She was willing to stand up for the gay American expat who was being imprisoned by the Russians even despite that going entirely against Frank and Petrov's plans, she felt sympathy and tried to support the Russian diplomat who was being blackmailed by Petrov, etc.

The downside though is that it's clearly her flaw, too: she's willing to screw things up if she feels betrayed or taken advantage of, and that's what happened on Frank's campaign trail near the end. So it's admittedly a rather situational empathy.

What a raging hypocrite.

I couldn't help but feel that sometimes Frank had a point that there's a time and a place for righteous actions, and Claire doesn't always pick the most opportune times. I agree with Frank that the gay activist was a coward (though "Glad he's dead" is too far) and a horrible person generally, though I'm torn on whether Claire should actually have responded the way she did to the treaty.

It's interesting to see Dunbar's arc, as she goes down the path towards pure villainy herself having been squeaky clean initially (Frank never was, his first job was for a goddamn drug dealer). How will that continue? And what exactly will Jackie Sharp end up doing? I like the both of them, and Remy too. This show has a good supporting cast.

With the latter, I like that he's a slightly different portrayal of the usual character type. I mean he's genuinely principled, very insecure about his race, in internal conflict between his principles and his feelings for Jackie...he's just so much more than the one-note lobbyist he seemed to be in series 1.

Those would be 'never' and 'nowhere' in his book. When has he ever done anything for anyone else, that wasn't a case of Bait the Dog?

Wait, what the heck did the gay rights activist guy do to be considered a coward?!

"Coward" migh be the wrong word, but I agree with this from our own entry under Unintentionally Unsympathetic on the show's YMMV page.:

Though his protest of Russian homosexuality laws is entirely sympathetic, as he continues talking to Claire the man himself becomes much less so. He admits he doesn't love his husband anymore and made a mistake committing to him (and has cheated on him, too), but stays with him because a homosexual couple getting divorced would be bad for the cause. He also calls his husband weak for being unwilling to take a stand like he does, and when Claire points out his husband is in pain and that refusing to make the statement Petrov wants will just make things worse because he'll be humiliated, Michael doesn't care. And he ultimately hangs himself rather than cooperate. A character that should come across as sympathetic and tragic instead comes across as a self-righteous martyr more interested in the personal glory of dying for his cause than actually trying to fight for it. In fact, Frank probably seems to have the same viewpoint, since his chewing out Claire for taking a stand against Petrov has him saying, "He [Corrigan] was a coward, and I'm glad he's dead!"

One thing I've learned about much of the martyrs and so called "heroes" you'll read about in history is that they've had similar behaviors to Corrigan, including the willingness to forsake or stay with their partners all for the sake of a cause. So I guess while I did view him as flawed, I didn't see him as being completely selfish - just desperate, and perhaps depressed, since he was willing to take his own life to prove a point.

Hell, even Martin Luther King had an affair behind his wife's back, and he's generally considered to be a man above reproach by most.

edited 25th Feb '16 7:43:05 PM by SgtRicko

[[ The Philosophy of House of Cards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2de3LhPxpZU ]]

Huh... odd. No matter what I try to do with the link, it won't combine it with the text. Oh well, at least the link works...

edited 3rd Mar '16 4:31:13 PM by SgtRicko

Try Youtube markup:

EDIT: My work computer's security settings mean I can't check if that actually worked yet, I'll fix it later if it hasn't.

Second edit: Got it. It's the youtube: and the bit after "v=" in the link to get that to work.

edited 4th Mar '16 3:02:49 AM by EruditeEsotericist

It's a very nice analysis, but I feel like it goes easy on Frank. Frankly (heh), at the end of Season 1, I hated him, pure and simple. Likewise, with Breaking Bad, I hated Walter as soon as he let that girl choke on her vomit and die. I only continued the show because of Jesse, really. HOC offers no comparable anchor.

edited 4th Mar '16 6:08:43 AM by TheHandle

Your spoiler tag didn't work.

And Frank isn't supposed to be likeable, especially if you have a sense of morality and believe in the system he's corrupting. He's... he's actually a LOT like Trump, the more I think about him. The way he's running the campaign, the way he regards his own voter demographic, the way he values his name and legacy above all else... it's him. Hopefully not the murderous part too.

And I really don't want to look at the comments section for the youtube vids or news bites for the series; my guts telling me that Trump's fanbase would be retarded enough to both miss the point and think that Frank would actually be great presidential material.

OMG I never realized.

Well, at least Frank has a veneer of civilization and class.

This series shocked me at the very start. I did not know Lucas was returning, and he's in the very first shot.

Good news though, I liked him.

Hey Its That Guy Randal Flynn is a Military Officer planning strikes for the Underwood Administration

....It was a prequel all along???

Just finished the new season. Pretty great return to form after how lackluster season 3 was.

Much better than S3! Plenty of twists and turns, and way better than the "Let's have Frank do things and then have it blow up in his face every single time without exception" thing that summed up the plot of S3. I mean that was some serious Villain Decay after his not being able to put a foot wrong in the first two series.

Lots of unexpected things, among them the fact that almost every single character of any significance in the last three series turns up again. Walker, Tusk, Oren, Janine (who I was entirely expecting given everyone else), even the dead ones like Russo and Zoe). The only exceptions that I can see are Linda, Adam and Matthews.

More spoilers: I was bang on about Meechum's death, though I hadn't expected Lucas to be the one to do it. Makes sense that they would use the latter's death for plot ends, and I was right about Meechum being important enough to make a shocking kill without having any serious plot relevance.

I was distraught about Meechum's death due to being a total shipper (well, as much as you can ship something that already happened) but I can't admit it wasn't a logical plot choice. Still, I WANTED Meechum to become important some way or the other.....

Yates seems to be a replacement (Meechum would be rolling over in his grave given how much he hated him, haha) for doing the triad plotline with a character with more depth. They seemed to have dropped him hitting on Frank though.

Anyway, ASIDE from the death of the unforgettable legend Agent Edward Meechum, this was a good season. It did a better job of distracting from the fact the writers have no idea what the Underwoods actually want to DO with power. Like, the gun control bill. It didn't seem like some kind of tactical maneuver, so perhaps they actually wanted to pass it for its own sake, but the show has so invested in their scheming that it's hard to feel like they actually support anything they do with their power for its own sake.

Doug is messed up, but it's great. "Fixer" characters like him are often portrayed as cooler than cool; it makes sense that someone so devoted to doing this kind of work for their boss would have a pretty shitty personal life.

I look forward to President and Vice President Underwood bringing on World War 3 to spite all of humanity for their weakness.

Finally got a chance to finish watching Season 4 myself.

The short, spoiler-free, TL;DR version is that this is a BIG improvement over Season 3; Frank is indeed back to form and everyone else too. Claire gets a ton of spotlight, Doug is his creepy old self, and a ton of characters from the previous seasons - pretty much everybody, in fact - return in some form or another.

And finally, it's starting to look like Season 5 might be the final season. The Underwood's schemes blew up in their faces big time thanks to Hammershmidt finally linking together all of Frank's past deeds, and now their desperation to mark a legacy - even by war - means they themselves probably know their Presidency will end in shambles at some point in the near future. I'm guessing that we're going to see Frank copy his British counterpart more closely at this point, since I recall Urquhart using war and aggressive political stances as a means to defend his grip on power near the end.

Season 5 trailer

SPOILER WARNING: Here's the electoral map they show at 0:35 in the trailer, if anybody is curious.

Oh nice, the fifth season.

edited 6th Jun '17 12:11:55 PM by VeryMelon

So how was this new season? Did they hit it out of the park, or make you say "thank God it's over"?

Claire is now the President of the United States, and Frank is very likely going to be jailed, with Claire not even wanting to grant him a pardon despite her promise. Looks like its going to be purely downhill now for Frank.

Well, what goes around...