So I decided to push through to the end of the series and make one large final post on Season Three of House of Cards so that this brief chapter of my blogging and TV watching life might be closed, and we can all move on to other things.
And yeah, spoilers abound.
So - when we left off, Claire and Frank were desperately trying to get a UN Peacekeeping mission into the Jordan Valley. Claire lets know the Russians they are serious through a little bathroom diplomacy with the Russian UN Ambassador (President Johnson was famous for doing the same thing, but I don't think it was a power move, I just think it was kind of his way...but I could be wrong. Don't know much about the Johnson presidency), and voila! The UN peacekeeping mission is underway with Russia also supplying troops.
It doesn't go well. The Russians come under attack - the Russians make Claire think that the Russians killed their own men to diffuse the mission, and maybe they did, maybe they didn't. This leads to Frank and the Russian president meeting in the Jordan Valley with all their military gear. Franks wants the Russians to leave the valley, the mission will end, Frank will cave on missile defense, AND to make it all work Frank has to get Claire out of the UN.
This he agrees to.
And that begins the theme of the last 5 or so episodes, the slow dissolution of the marriage of Frank and Claire. As Frank campaigns for president across the country on his America Works package (which had to be halted to the need to divert FEMA money from America Works back to its intended purpose of preparing for a major hurricane, which of course doesn't hit) Claire begins to resent her position more and more.
Robin Wright is surely the star of this season. Where before cracks in Claire's facade seemed like an after thought made by the writers to give the series a lick of extra depth, now that she finds herself in conflict with Frank (and herself, her love for him) her character has become the most interesting to watch. Wright is masterful. At the end of episode 11 (or is it 12?) she is reading a book to school children, campaigning like a good first lady, when President Underwood walks in. With the camera close in we see Claire see Frank, her smile evaporates, and she gives him a version of "the look" -- not the look of love mind you, I'm talking about "The Look" -- that made my knees buckle. I felt that she might come out of the television and eviscerate me.
Anyways, Claire makes the realization that she and Frank are no longer equals, that he has used her to get in power and is using her to stay in power -- as Frank finds himself in a tough race for Iowa against Heather Dunbar, Claire's campaign appearances on his behalf are credited by the pundits as pulling him even against the former attorney general, or whatever it was that she was before she threw her hat into the ring.
At last? Well, Claire makes a request of Frank for angry sex, and he can't comply (they have not slept together, it seems, since he was the president). Frank banishes her back to Washington and after victory in Iowa, as Frank says he needs Claire by her side in New Hampshire, she refuses. She will leave him.
So that takes care of Frank and Claire, what of Doug Stamper, angel of death?
His contacts inform him that Rachel Posner has died. He goes off the deep end. Starts drinking again. Picks himself up, gets clean and sober for about 80 days or so, and uses leverage against Frank's campaign to become Frank's new chief of staff.
You see, Heather Dunbar, it turns out, has managed to be corrupted just for trying to obtain absolute power. With Claire fighting for Frank and cutting down her lead in Iowa, she tries to go Nuclear by contacting Doug to get the journal kept by some doctor in SC that has a record of one of Claire's abortions in it. Doug comes to Frank with the news, proof of loyalty. He is hired back by Frank as his chief of staff.
But is Jedi training is not complete yet. For Rachel Poser is NOT dead, but she is alive, and he must tie up the one loose end from the cover up.
Doug finds her, through macinations that I am too tired to explain. She is living in Arizona, working off the books, and has just purchased a new identity. She intends to move to the North, where there are trees and quiet, and just simply keep to herself and disappear.
Ah, but Doug shows up, kidnaps her and throws her into the back of a van. But she starts to converse with Doug, tell him his her plans, and Doug is very conflicted, his love of her and the trust he has that she probably will vanish and keep to herself, wants nothing more to do with him or Underwood, makes him change his mind. He lets her go. Sets her free and tells her to walk down the road, there is a town 20 miles away.
He drives in the opposite direction. And we are relieved. He is not a total scum bag.
But then, as the dark music wells, he turns the van around. We cut to dirt being tossed ontop of Rachel in her shallow desert grave.
So, all in all, it was rather unsatisfying. Doug has shown himself to be the machine we all feared he was, Heather Dunbar has shown that no pure soul can resist the allure of Washington, Frank Underwood is left horribly weak and unlovable in the midst of his campaign, and I don't know where Claire is going. Maybe she will run against him for President. That would be something.
Worst of all - there is going to be, surely, a season four. At this point, honestly, I am not sure I am going to be watching it. There are surely other things that are better.
One last thought: Either the make up artists did a really good job of aging Kevin Spacey has the stress on Underwood builds and builds, or he ate some really bad fish after Episode 10.
And now -- that's done!
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