Should you devote 13 hours to the latest episodes of the smash-hit programme about Washington backstabbing? Keith Uhlich has an answer.
“You have to be a little human when you’re the president,” says commander-in-chief Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) in the opening scene of House of Cards’ third season. Not that Netflix’s flagship progamme has ever been much concerned with humanity: no sooner has Underwood spouted his self-serving truism, in another of the character’s frequent fourth-wall-breaking asides, than he unzips his fly and urinates on his father’s grave. That should tell both constant and prospective viewers everything they need to know about the level on which this highly uneven yet absurdly addictive show works best. When a sneering Underwood spits on a statue of Christ a few episodes later – and the son of God actually quasi-retaliates – the abandonment of any and all pretense to realism is similarly liberating. It makes you wish fantasy were the series’ raison d’être as opposed to an occasional audience-goosing flourish.
House of Cards’ cynical presumption is that almost everyone in Washington DC is a carnivore out for blood. It’s easy to believe politicians are always in it for themselves, and it certainly makes for habit-forming fiction. How exciting to watch terrible people do terrible things! That worked in the original UK series created by Andrew Davies (totalling 12 episodes over three seasons), as it does in this much more story-packed remake (now at 39 episodes and counting) overseen by The Ides of March screenwriter Beau Willimon. It helps that this American redux is also one of the best-looking shows on television, with a directorial staff including film-makers such as James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross) and Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa). They push the rock-steady compositions and antiseptic palette established by executive producer David Fincher to expressive extremes.
When we last left Underwood and his icy wife Claire (Robin Wright), they won the White House, following a two-season long series of machinations that included backroom double-dealing, congressional skirmishes, false promises and outright murder. The conspiracy was convoluted, but the goal was clear: the Oval Office or bust. Season three’s overarching theme is “What price glory?” Underwood may have gotten the gold by contriving the impeachment of his predecessor, but he’s now effectively a replacement president with 18 months to build his legacy. As he says repeatedly to anyone within earshot, he has no intention to run in 2016 – and if you believe that, there’s a bridge we’d like to sell you.
Cloak and dagger
Underwood’s most ambitious plan is America Works, a jobs creation programme that, in theory, will give gainful employment to 10 million people. Of course, he’s out to defund the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bankroll the project, which doesn’t sit well with any of his Congressional foes, nor allies. There’s also the matter, several episodes in, of a Category 4 hurricane that threatens the eastern seaboard and seems like it might stop Underwood’s not-so-altruistic scheme in its tracks. (How can a bankrupted FEMA hope to do its job of rescuing people in danger?) But there’s plenty more to deal with beyond riled-up legislators and random acts of God.
For instance, there’s the problem of Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), Underwood’s chief of staff, who was left for dead by beleaguered call girl Rachel Posner (Rachel Brosnahan) at the end of last season. He’s survived his injuries, but is brain damaged and requires physical therapy. The pain of his rehabilitation is also driving this recovering alcoholic to drink. (He starts with syringe-squirts of bourbon before working his way up to full bottle swigs.) And Stamper is likewise obsessed with hunting down Rachel, a plotline that’s tediously drawn out over the course of the 13 episodes.
Stamper is a wreck, and Underwood does his best to feign fatherly concern while slowly cutting him loose. Willimon and his team give Kelly, a very talented performer who’s often had nondescript supporting roles in film and television, plenty of red meat drama to play. A large part of the first episode is dedicated to the character’s months-long hospitalisation, which we see entirely from Stamper’s perspective. When he lashes out at his attending physician, his pain is disturbingly palpable and much more resonant than any of the soapy theatrics that House of Cards usually tries to pass off as hard-hitting drama.
Stamper almost attains the same state of tragic grace as the show’s most complicated character – the late, lamented gubernatorial candidate Peter Russo (Corey Stoll), who Underwood murdered back in season one. But he’s still as much of a ruthless go-getter as his boss, so in the back-end of the season he concocts a ludicrously convoluted plan to get back in Underwood’s good graces, tying up every loose end with a bow and sanding away any and all of his fervent edges.
Flights of fancy
House of Cards is easier to take when it stops being serious and embraces its essential outlandishness. There’s a ripped-from-the-headlines quality to this season that’s endearingly shameless, with its subplots revolving around drone strikes, Middle East unrest and a Russian president, Viktor Petrov (Lars Mikkelsen), who could give his real-world counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a run for his money in the ruthlessness department. (Formerly imprisoned punk rockers Pussy Riot even get to tell off the vodka-swigging Petrov in a satisfying wish-fulfillment cameo.) It’s also wonderful to see the great stage actress Elizabeth Marvel, playing solicitor general-turned-presidential candidate Heather Dunbar, emerge as the season’s primary antagonist. Both she and Spacey have a terrific adversarial rapport that grows in intensity as the all-important Iowa caucus (the season’s endpoint) approaches, with more pyrotechnics likely in future seasons.
But the show’s emotional focal point continues to be the relationship between Frank and Claire, which gets put through the wringer this season. When we first see them they’re sleeping in separate bedrooms, ostensibly because Claire is recovering from a cold. Yet as the season goes on, it’s clear their ascent to power has led to trouble in paradise, something put into even harsher relief after Frank hires a bestselling novelist, Tom Yates (Paul Sparks, one of the most welcome new cast additions), to write a book about the Underwood presidency. What begins as an exercise in hagiography slowly becomes trenchant and revealing, until neither Frank nor Claire can ignore the frazzled state of their union.
It would be nice to report that the scenes from this particular marriage were affecting beyond superficial soap. But despite the best efforts of Spacey and Wright, the Underwoods remain cartoon villains at heart – he the blustering ham, she the stoic ice queen. Where they both end up at season’s end is less the grand misfortune of William Shakespeare – which seems to be the goal – than it is the frothy pap of Danielle Steel. It’s rather pathetic to watch a TV ‘page-turner’ strain so obviously, and ineffectively, for profundity.
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