If it seemed like I was getting down a little - okay, a lot - on House of Cards in my previous posts, it is because I forgot the number one rule when it comes to House of Cards:
Don't ask why.or how or where or....just don't ask anything.
Don't ask why it is so important that Frank get his peacekeeping mission in the Jordan Valley. Don't ask why the Russians see that as a threat. Don't ask where Claire found the time to learn French, or Russian. Just let the various schemes and plot mechanisms twist and turn and turn and buckle in for the ride.
In the case of Season 4, the ride is a bumpy one. Frank's presidency can't quite get off the ground, because as mentioned before the world around him seems to no longer bend to his will. Everything played itself out exactly as Frank wished in the first two seasons to get him to where he is now...now nothing seems to go quite his way.
In Episode 4, when he tries to get attorney general Heather Dunbar out of the democratic primary by making her a supreme court justice, taking the place of the chief justice who has early Alzheimer's, she sees right through him (it helps that she is a friend of the justice). She tenders her resignation, and announces that she is running for the Presidency.
In Episode 6, as Frank and Claire find themselves in Russia once again matching wits with the cold President Petrov, the jailed dissident at the center of the negotiations commits suicide. This gives Claire the chance to criticize the Russian president, the deal (which has to do with the release of the dissident, the UN mission in the Jordan Valley, and missile defense) unravels.
And in Episode 5? Frank seems to get some of his mojo back, deciding to go on the offensive and finding a barely legal way to fund his program. Frank Underwood is always most watchable when he is on the move, rather than butting his head again and again against unforeseen obstacles. It's what makes these three episodes better than the first three (that and the suspension of my disbelief).
Meanwhile, the jilted Doug Stamper has found a place on the Heather Dunbar team. Doug is one of the best characters in the show, limping around like an angel of death, offering the pure Heather Dunbar a man who at least knows everyone in Washington. For the moment she is well above the dark side of what Doug can do for an employer (i.e. destroy opponents through unscrupulous means and hide the bodies), but I wonder if he will drag Mrs. Dunbar into the mire of Washington. Or maybe he is positioning himself as a mole for Underwood...
Some deeper thoughts:
The series plays well on the frustrations of the American people with their government. You have an over powerful legislature butting heads with a congress that seems to stymie his every move. Nothing seems to get done. Kind of sounds a lot like another place I've hear of....I even wonder if American Works is a proxy for the Obamacare program.
Second - this series is always going to put the viewer in an odd place. Frank is fairly odious, you want him to fail. And yet you want him to fail in a certain way. It isn't enough to see him fail through procedural means, or see him get voted out. He has to fail in some kind of spectacular, Scarface "Say Hello to My Little Friend" kind of way. Not dissimilar from Breaking Bad. You know that Walt can't get away with it all, he is going to die. The question is how?
But when will the ultimate denouement finally come? I'm guessing not in this season.
Stay tuned...
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