-only like five people read this blog, so who's getting mad at me?
-Netflix released all 13 episodes at once, so really, the time that it takes to watch them is completely up to the viewer. You don't know--maybe I watched the first episode in February and have been purposely watching two episodes a month? Maybe that's the time it took for me to adequately study the characters and the pacing and LOL WHO AM I KIDDING A MARATHONED THIS LAST WEEK
-I only bother writing things on here that have got me feeling passionately one way or the other, and HoC falls into this category, so here we go.
When Netflix released the first season of House of Cards, I was intrigued, but I never committed to watching the show until the Emmy noms came out and it became clear that it was worth watching. I figured it would be--can you realistically see Kevin Spacey tying himself up to a turd? Plus, with the first two episodes directed by David Fincher (and the rest of the season maintaining the look and tone he created), I knew the show was in good hands. So...what were my thoughts?
Let's do a quick summary just for people who may be reading this with no knowledge of what House of Cards is about. The odds of that are slim, but hey, whatever. Anyway, Kevin Spacey is Frank Underwood, a Democrat Congressman who, in the first episode, is backstabbed by the new President, who promised him a position as Secretary of State but ultimately decides to go with someone else. This is what sets the tone for the season--if the President can use him and toss him out with leisure, why can't he play by the same rules, which are no rules? In politics, what is the point of being honest and trustworthy if it'll only get you trampled on? I'm not suggesting that Frank was a good, moral guy before episode one, but you get the sense that, after the first hour, things have been taken to a new level for him, and he's ready to fully embrace the ruthlessness that it takes to reach his full potential in Washington.
So there we are. I don't want to go any further than that because this is a review, not a summary, and there are so many twists and strangely-handled plot points that I'll probably get confused if I try to recall everything.
I'll say this upfront: House of Cards, technically, is good. It's not a bad show. It just could have been better, and if I can pin its shortcomings on anything, it would be an apparent lack of planning.
In the last episode of the season, Zoe, Jeanine, and Lucas sum up Frank's motives from the beginning as if he had this grand master plan. But, after watching thirteen hours of Frank's actions, I don't get the sense that everything that happened was meant to happen. I get the sense that the writers never sat down and planned the plot points of this show. It kind of reminds me of Lost in a way--yes, that show dealt with mysticism and smoke monsters, but it also suffered from lack of planning, and the writers, just the writers on HoC, thought they were so smart that they could write their way out of any situation. For both shows, it's just not so.
At the end, we are supposed to be thinking, "Oh my, Frank is such an evil genius, Zoe and Jeanine just said that Russo's demise was Frank's plan all along, and it has to be true because they literally just said it in a bit of clunky dialogue." House of Cards never fully committed to portraying Frank as a character always in charge, though. If it had, I would buy that, but there are several big moments in the season where he messes up. He's a driven character, but he's fallible. Not everything he plans pans out. Am I supposed to believe that evil genius Frank, who could plan such an elaborate scheme, can't handle a CNN debate with a union guy who's not even that bright? When this happened in the show, I appreciated it because it was presenting us with the fact that Frank wasn't as perfect as he appeared to be (and as he thought he was). He can look like an idiot on television. By the end, though, this doesn't fit, because he's supposed to be a perfect political genius again. The writers need to chose one or the other--is he a brilliant guy who occasionally messes up, or is he a perfect genius who always gets what he wants?
My main issue with HoC is the Peter Russo storyline. After the failure of the Watershed bill and Russo's tumble off the wagon, we are hit over the head with the fact that THIS WAS MEANT TO HAPPEN! Frank wanted it to! But, when it's actually happening--and before it happens--we are given no signs at all that it was planned. For a show with a main character who breaks the fourth wall to tell us such obvious things as, "Everything depends on these next few moments" when speaking to Vasquez about Matthews leaving the vice presidency, why would he keep such a secret from us? At least give us one of your lingering looks, Spacey. I'm not saying the fourth wall format means we must know everything that's going to happen--that would mean there's no tension--but there's no sense whatsoever that everything happened according to plan. Frank is legitimately galled when the bill doesn't pass. We're told later, after the fact ("tell, not show!" apparently), that Frank wanted the bill to pass so that the timing of Russo's downfall would be at the last second, requiring a big name like Matthews to run to hold the seat for the democrats. During the actual events, though, the audience has no hint of this. We are led to believe that Frank wants Russo to succeed, most likely because he'll have a man with considerable power under his thumb.
But in the grand scheme of things, Frank's plan was for Russo to implode, so that Matthews would run, and the VP spot would be his for the taking. It was his plan all along. You know, because they told us after the fact.
The murder of Russo by Frank rings so false to me that it almost ruins the season. I get the motivations behind it--Russo was a threat because he wanted to come clean and admit everything. Still, it doesn't seem like something Frank would do, even for the small fact that he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to do the dirty work. Why wouldn't Stamper, the guy who usually does the dirty work, do this act for him? Frank is too powerful to be wiping his prints off at a murder scene. Plus, someone on some other message board pointed out this little gem--Frank left Russo in the PASSENGER'S SEAT! That would seem odd, right? What's the purpose of shifting over from the driver's side to the passenger's seat if you're killing yourself? Basically what I'm saying is that murdering someone and leaving no evidence behind is a difficult and risky thing to pull off, and the Frank established in episodes one through ten would delegate that kind of thing to Stamper.
The reason Frank kills Russo is for pure shock alone. It wouldn't be as emotionally shocking if Stamper were to do it because Stamper isn't Frank, the main character of the show. This ushers in the show's other weakness: nearly everyone but Frank is sorely underdeveloped. The only exception was Peter Russo, who quickly became my favorite for his layered, oftentimes painful storyline, but, as the men on Duck Dynasty like to say when someone exits a scene, "he gone". Claire and Zoe are supposed to be very layered and complex, I'm sure, but they're just not. Claire is there to help Frank because she, like him, is ambitious and ruthless and doesn't care much about collateral damage. I was intrigued by her decision to go against him in the education bill storyline, but she didn't stick to it, and in the end she's the same woman we met in episode one. Frank's unquestioning ally.
I'm assuming Zoe Barnes is supposed to be likeable, but I despise her. For most of the season she's an opportunist with no empathy who simply wants to get ahead, but in episodes 12 and 13 she does a 180 and suddenly decides to do some real journalism as if she really cares about getting the truth out to the public. Just like Frank offing Russo, I don't buy it. I see no reason for Lucas to be drawn to her either...she's a straightforward, unfunny, cold woman who we're supposed to think is talented but who is only where she's at because she has participated in a corrupt sexual relationship with a bad man.
The rest of the characters--Christina, Stamper, Vasquez, the president--are throwaways, because we only know them in their relationship to Frank or, in the case of Christina, to Russo. I'm sure the writers think otherwise and that they've assembled this great cast of fully-fleshed characters, but they're wrong. They've placed so much focus on Frank that they've gone astray with everyone else, and really, Frank is so one-minded and driven that the audience has no tangible understanding of him either. He's not someone we understand or really relate to. He wants power. That's it.
House of Cards deserves the nominations for acting and the win for Fincher's directing, but I'm glad it didn't win over Breaking Bad for Outstanding Drama Series. Breaking Bad is a show with characters we fully understand and empathize with. Walter White, while brilliant, is fallible, and the plots are true to life. Walt may have plans, but they don't always happen the way he wants them to, and when life intervenes he has to think quickly and adapt. Frank Underwood gets everything he wants, and everything goes according to plan because he's the main character and the show is about him. He's an evil genius, even when he's not, and his elaborate plan involving Russo had been planned from the start because that's what the gang of ragtag bloggers tell us in the end.
The first season of House of Cards gets a B- from me for those reasons. If I could sum it up in one sentence, I'd say this--House of Cards has a problem with telling, not showing.
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