House of Cards: The Beginning of Conquest


Tripudium ad Bellum!

 "You know what they say: behind every great man is a great woman. And behind every great woman is a great behind!" - Debbie, The Life and Times of Tim, S01E02

This review will concern the final seven episodes of House of Cards season three.




When I last wrote about House of Cards, I talked about how the third seasons seemed to be lagging a little bit. The final episodes half continued and half discouraged this opinion.

Essentially, the point of the latter half of Cards is to set up the battle between Frank and Claire that will occur in season four. After an anti-Russian outburst by Claire and a hurricane washing away Frank's America Works program, things are sent into turmoil between the Underwoods. Claire's UN position seems like it will go the way of disco, and Frank, with nothing to lose at this point, decides to take back what he said earlier in the season and, as we all knew he would, run for President.
Meanwhile, we have the ongoing plot of Gavin and Doug trying to track down Rachel Posner while Doug attempts to get back into the President's good graces. At the same time, Thomas Yates, played by Boardwalk Empire's Paul Sparks, is an author commissioned to write a book on Frank. Finally, with Heather Dunbar being Frank's chief rival in the Democratic primary, Jackie Sharpe, played by Molly Parker, must decide where she will side.

Let the war begin!
The problem with Cards is that for every right step it takes in the plot, a wrong step is also taken. Now, luckily, the right steps are usually in the central plot and the wrong ones in the side plots, but even so, it makes for some lopsided storytelling. Frank and Claire's impending war is one that is nuanced and slow. Starting from the beginning of the season, we see that Claire, ever the unbreakable politician, is starting to feel like a lame duck. Her entire life statement is one that revolves around helping Frank rise to power. And, when her UN position is forcibly taken away by Victor Petrov (errr Vladimir Putin... or whatever), she is again left with nothing but a powerful husband. This tension builds and builds and builds until in the last ten minutes of the season, it can build no longer. The explosion we all saw coming, right on the heels of Frank's victory in Iowa, finally occurs, ending in Claire walking out of Frank, ready to crumble their political empire.

Now, though the arc was well done, I still have a couple complaints about it. Chiefly among these is my problem with Claire going rogue in the first place. Though it's smart to make her an adversary to Frank as she seems to be the only one who could possibly take him down, it doesn't make a ton of sense from a character standpoint. In two seasons of debauchery, Claire has worked with Frank like a well-oiled machine, slowly but surely taking Washington by storm. Why now, seemingly unprompted, has she cracked?

I'll never not see him as the unibrowed, incestual, McPoyle
Then, we come to the sideplots. All throughout the course of House of Cards, they've struggled a bit to make compelling side-plot. This season is no different. Much as I loved Paul Sparks on Boardwalk Empire as the hilarious Mickey Doyle, his character on Cards lacks any drive whatsoever. I'm not sure if it's Sparks's fault or the writer's fault, but something about the entire narrative falls flat. Same thing with Gavin Orsay's plotline. The man who I usually know as Liam McPoyle of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia must go undercover to find out the whereabouts of Rachel Posner for Doug. Instead of being compelling however, this just seems to go on and on and on throughout the whole season. Gavin's character has never really been a clear one, and when he finally finds out where Rachel is, there is no payoff. Likewise, Doug flounders around for most of the season. He works for Heather Dunbar for a brief time before finally murdering Rachel and finding his way back into Frank Underwood's good graces. While rewarding when he and Frank finally were back on the same team, it took too damn long and too damn much irrelevancy to get there.
Where ever did you go, Benito?

All in all, the third season of House of Cards was neither terrible or great. Sure, it had some confusions, such as the sudden writing off of Benito Martinez's Hector Mendoza or the weaker sideplots, but it also had some seriously fun angles. It was a joy to watch Frank and Victor spar off in a war of wills or to see the Underwood marriage come apart at the seams. However, it almost felt like the entirety of season three was exposition, just thirteen hours to bridge the gap between Frank's war on President Walker and Frank's war on Claire.

Though maybe not as enjoyable as previous editions, House of Cards delivered an entertaining, well-acted, and sort-of-well-written thirteen chapters. If the payoff is gargantuan when season four comes out, it will have been worth the difficulty. If not, Cards will truly have some problems.

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