Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood tells the American public they are entitled to nothing in Netflix's "House of Cards"
Last week saw the series finale of NBC's
Parks and Recreation. It was probably one of the most positive (and
progressive) shows about government and politics, getting many of its laughs from the Pollyannaish optimism of Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope. The series was also a contrast to almost all of the current fictional TV politicians who are murderers, adulterers, and buffoons. Whether the lack of nobility in fictional politicians is a reflection of the public's exasperation with the current state of real-life politics, or a loss of faith in government and the American Dream, has been a matter of
some debate.
Based on the novel by Michael Dobbs and the Andrew Davies's BBC series of the same name, Netflix's House of Cards presents a Washington, D.C., populated by easily manipulated self-serving individuals, with Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood being manipulator-in-chief. The series, produced by Beau Willimon and David Fincher, is the merging of a great collection of acting talent with visual style, with the production seeming to imagine itself as a grand Shakespearean tragedy in which the Machiavellian moves of a protagonist continually expand out to envelope and affect the world. But what ends up on screen is more often than not mired in weird plot twists indicative of a daytime soap opera, and odd politics that make little sense to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the subject. All of that is not to say House of Cards is a bad show. It's very watchable, but that doesn't exactly mean it's one of the great prestige dramas on television either.
With season three, the House of Cards takes a very different turn with the story, where debates about policy are more front and center than manipulations. Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock once said that as a matter of history, it is much easier to destroy than to create. And this run of episodes posits a world in which people try to build their hopes and wants for the future on a foundation of lies.
Follow beneath the fold for more.
Fair warning to everyone reading this, but after this point the review will discuss everything in the previous two seasons of House of Cards. Given the binge watching nature of Netflix shows, I'm not going to spoil anything substantial about the new season. So if you haven't watched the first two seasons or don't want even some mild info about the new one, you might want to stop right here.
We’re murderers, Francis. —Claire Underwood
No we’re not. We’re survivors. —Frank Underwood
Most people imagine evil as something "out there." They imagine evil as something waiting in the dark far removed from humanity. But the truth is that bad people are hardly ever "bad" just for the sake of being bad. Rarely if ever in real life do we get the mustache-twirling villain who wants to "fuck shit up" just for the hell of it. Most bad people rationalize their decisions, and actually believe their actions are justified or serve the greater good. Most "devils" don't come with horns, but with smiling faces and ideas that sound good on the surface. And that's true of
House of Cards, which presents a deeply cynical view of human nature and the ends to which "good" people will stay silent or do nothing while monsters claw their way to the throne.
Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood is for all intents and purposes a Faustian character. Frank tempts people with the chance of getting what they desire only for them to realize all too late they're actually being given the rope by which they will hang themselves. For the first two seasons, the audience watches that dynamic take place over and over again. And while Spacey's characterization of Frank can be fun to watch as he sets the game in motion, one of the major problems with the first two seasons was once you got past the character's sardonic wit there wasn't really all that much there. On the grand scale of anti-hero reasons for lying, stealing, and killing, being slighted out of a Secretary of State nomination is towards the bottom of the list. And the characters that surrounded Frank were not really characters or a credible obstacle to Frank's plans. Instead, House of Cards has always seemed like a situation where an asshole is surrounded by idiots, which robbed any of the machinations of tension. Characters were written as dumb, and only existed to be dumb and taken advantage of by Underwood on his climb to the top.
The one exception was Robin Wright's Claire Underwood. The dynamics of their relationship is an aspect of the show that roots the story in a place which gives insight into what Frank cares about beyond just the rote answer of
power. These two characters have desires and goals they've worked together to achieve, and Claire is the only thing Frank seems to genuinely care about. Claire, on the other hand, has bought into the scheming, but she's also shown a moral compass that's slightly less hardened than his. And the big theme this year that's a part of every plot is whether the same skills that allow one to destroy their political enemies can be used to build something substantial. But what happens when Frank's and Claire's desires conflict?
As season three begins, Frank has been president of the United States for six months. He has an ambitious agenda that's going nowhere. His approval ratings are near run-out-of-town-on-a-rail levels. As Frank searches for a way to achieve legislative victories, Claire wants to use her position to start building a record of her own. Standing in the way of both are two obstacles that represent the first credible threats to the Underwoods. Viktor Petrov (Lars Mikkelsen) is a fictional version of Vladimir Putin, with the character being a son of a bitch in his own right, but he's also capable of reading through every one of the Underwoods attempts to control a situation. At the same time, Heather Dunbar (the Ken Starr-esque special prosecutor from season two played by Elizabeth Marvel) returns to offer a political threat to Frank's ideas about continuing his presidency by presenting herself as the antithesis of Frank.
But many of the show's flaws are still here. Spacey and Wright do amazing work with the material, but the inherent nature of the show works against expanding too far beyond territory already covered. Frank is not a sympathetic character, or that deep of a character, and neither are many of his adversaries. So really this isn't about rooting for one side over the other as much as seeing the twists and turns of where things go. For the most part, whether or not Frank is going to win is a foregone conclusion. And when the show tries to get us to care about Frank, it's laughable. There's a scene in the second episode of this season where Frank is sobbing on the floor, and unsure of what to do. It leads to an encounter between Frank and Claire that's punctuated by an operatic crescendo that had me giggling because of how ridiculous it played.
In the end, House of Cards can be a fun show to watch, especially when you can binge on it in one weekend. But many times the writing doesn't match the acting, and the result is a show that's "empty calories."
“Love. That's what you're selling. Well, I don't buy it."
- The West Wing: This season in a lot of ways plays like a version of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing where the idealism of the Bartlet administration is replaced by people who are corrupt to their core. They even have a sinister counterpoint to Bartlet's church rant in "Two Cathedrals," where Frank has some choice words for Jesus and is incapable of understanding his sacrifice on the cross. And, depending on how you interpret the scene, God seems to respond to Frank.
- Issues: This season of the show touches on drone strikes, unemployment, the Stafford Act, gay rights, sexism, relations with Russia, and Middle East peace. The way the show deals with those issues range from within the realm of possibility to no way this will ever happen. Mikkelsen's Petrov is fun to watch in how he totally outmaneuvers Frank. But Petrov is also at points comically broad in how he compare to the person he's based on: Vladimir Putin. And when House of Cards decides to go the celebrity cameo route by throwing Pussy Riot into the mix of a state dinner, the situation goes to the "no fucking way" category of believability.
From Reid Standish at Foreign Policy:
In a recent interview with New Times, a Russian news site, Pussy Riot’s members said Petrov didn’t quite capture Putin’s essence. “Petrov is more of a little tsar,” Alyokhina said. “He is too jolly for Putin, of course.”
- Exposition: The surreal breaking of the fourth wall by Frank is still present, but a lot of the exposition for the character's internal feelings is done through Tom Yates (Paul Sparks). Yates is a writer brought into the White House by Frank to document the "America Works" jobs bill and the Underwood presidency as a biographer. The relationship between Yates and Underwood becomes a bit more intimate as the season progresses, as he gets closer and closer to Claire and Frank's past. And the intimacy that Frank denies himself is one of the most interesting aspects of the show.
- You're entitled to nothing: Trying to make heads or tails out of fictional depictions of political process is always problematic to begin with, but when they go so far to the ridiculous it can sometimes pull you out of the story. The West Wing took liberties with the debates surrounding hot-button issues, but they were largely within the ballpark of reality. The politics of House of Cards largely strains credulity. Frank's biggest legislative "achievements" are screwing over teacher's unions and raising the retirement age for Social Security, with both being achieved over the objections of the Republicans. So who in the hell is the base of the Democratic Party in the House of Cards universe? A big part of this year's plot is Underwood's jobs bill through which he plans to guarantee to everyone who wants one a job through subsidies to business and increasing the size of the military. Frank wants to pay for it by gutting entitlements. It's a ridiculous policy and ridiculous to think any Democrat could win a caucus or primary, let alone the general, after destroying Social Security. There's a lot of times while watching the show you'll ask yourself why would the Republicans oppose this?
From Todd VanDerWerff at Vox:
The series takes place in no known political reality.
I used to cheekily describe the show's political universe as "a Politico comments section," because it seemed governed less by political science than it was by old conventional wisdom about bipartisanship at all costs and politicians caring more about power than policy. And that was fine for the show — that political universe is more dramatically interesting than ours.
But season three takes place in a world where Frank has decided to pivot hard to a policy position he cares deeply about — universal employment. This is all well and good, but the show constantly reveals how little it cares about any political reality with the way the story unfolds.
- Legacy: The sense you get from Spacey's portrayal of Underwood is his policy initiatives are not some scheme as a means to an end to consolidate more power. They are genuinely what Frank believes are the best policies to give people a job or solve the crisis in the Middle East. But everything crumbles. No matter how hard he tries to cajole or manipulate his way to the result he wants, the dynamics that worked to get him to the presidency are totally incompatible with governing and building something that lasts.
- Damaged people obsessed with creating something they can't have: The first episode answers the question of whether Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) survived his attack at the end of season two. The storyline that results from it connects with both Frank's and Claire's overall journey in season three. All of these characters want to use the power they have to create or control. And all of them, for one reason or another, have to let go of something they desire to move on ... and they can't.
From Joshua Alston at the A.V. Club:
The audience remains Frank’s most cherished confidant, and he uses his designated moment of reflection to explain himself in an aside to camera: “I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice, but I have to do these sorts of things now. Makes me seem more human, and you have to be a little human when you’re the president.” The line highlights the maddening contradictions of our democracy, in which we refuse to elect presidents who don’t betray their frailty and fallibility, then use those very qualities to crucify them once they settle into the job.