DIEGO'S NOTE: The intro to this House of Cards review discusses slightly spoilerish things relating to Homeland so if you're not caught up on that, here is your SPOILER warning for that show. Spoilers for House of Cards because it's way too difficult to discuss everything that works/doesn't work without mentioning as much as possible.
Homeland became a critically acclaimed show in its freshman year on Showtime, with some people claiming we may have already found the successor to Breaking Bad on our hands. The show stumbled in quality in Season 2 a bit, with Season 3 having more in common with a soap opera than a show once discussing the ethics or current state of espionage. It misunderstood what the audience was drawn to in the series. HINT: It wasn't the relationship between Carrie and Brody. It was how they were playing each other and trying to constantly gain an edge and how they were polar opposites, imperfectly representing the damaged agents caught in the crossfire of the War on Terror.(1)
Thankfully, in its fourth season, Homeland course corrected itself into remembering where its true motivations once stood. The beauty of something like Homeland's redemptive season, much like its first, is that every character, every story point, every action beat means something in the greater context of a seasonal arc. There are no extraneous plot developments just used to sparse out time to fill out a gap between scenes in episodes. Something like Quinn dating his apartment manager is helping us ease into the mind of this assassin turned drunk.
So why does anything happen in House of Cards this season? I mean, beyond the writing Gods towering over Francis Underwood. Why does he come into conflict with these people? It's odd to have a first season of a show composed of a man crawling to power, and helping us understand his motivation, but now the show feels almost entirely void of emotional association. Minus Claire's final decision to leave Francis in the finale, I can't think of a single moment that felt earned through character or thematic resolution. But even that's not quite it (though these are mostly big issues).
The problem is the conceptual misunderstanding of House of Cards itself: it's not as smart as it pretends to be. House of Cards boasts a star studded cast and tight writing in its first season and a half, but it is ultimately glorified schlock. We watch for the impressive twists and turns in narrative with new players constantly playing this political game. That just leads into more issues with the series.
An ever-revolving door of characters is fine if the characters are able to match charisma and show some value to the show, other than just being pawns for Frank to play like fiddles and leave in the dust. After season 1's well-rounded cast, no group of actors has been given sufficient material to work with. Their characters are all either dead, in prison, or no longer important to the story. The new ones can't prove a match for Frank Underwood's political maneuvers.
Newcomers to the series, Kim Dickens and Paul Sparks, injected some much needed life into the series supporting cast (though I am a big fan of the Jackie and Remy characters). Kim Dickens is always good to have around but after a great introductory episode as a tough-as-nails journalist who is a force to be reckoned with. Then she spends the rest of the season in bed with Paul Sparks' washed up novelist, as he gets to tag along with the President to write about AmWorks. At least they're both getting noticed (2).
The season opens with Frank literally pissing on his father's grave, implying all we've come to know is about to pissed away, opening the doors for untapped potential in the world of HoC. So naturally, they choose to ground themselves in real world politics.
Aspiring to tackle serious political conflicts is admirable, but the writing feels out of its own depth. Given what we know of Frank Underwood, he doesn't care about mass approval unless it grants him more power. His rise to power is ruthless and cut throat, leaving a trail of corpses and careers dead at his feet. But then the show tries to paint him as a human being while still keeping with his unstoppable machiavellian persona. It tries to have it both ways and comes off as half-baked. Attempting to humanize Frank Underwood isn't an enormous problem if they didn't go to lengths to make him an unstoppable force of nature in political conflicts in the previous 2 seasons. Sure, he butts heads here and there, but there's never a true sense of dread. The writers have gotten high off their own supply of Underwood and can't conceive any new characters to match him.
Then there is Claire Underwood, "bae goals" if there ever was one. Unlike Frank Underwood, Claire has an ultimate flaw that feels organic to herself and the world she is surrounded by: Claire has a moral compass. In spite of the rest of the season's "give and take" uncertainty regarding themes and character motivations, you know where Claire is headed as a character. The inevitability is palpable and her final moment of the season is a highlight. No more leaving Russo to die, and no Zoe in front of trains, The biggest WTF moment comes from Claire realizing Frank has no intention of keeping her as his equal. Would she have done the same? Possibly. That doesn't make the development any less exciting.
Onto more (slightly) real world politicking, I appreciate the mockery of Putin by the ever-awesome Lars Mikkelsen, and he's probably the biggest foe the Underwoods have faced, but there's still not much to him beyond necessity of plot. When the Putin stand-in edges one out over Frank and Claire, it's because we're the writers say so. HoC has never dealt with the realm of our reality but this guy is basically a Bond villain (one could make the argument the current Russian president qualifies as such).
I touted on twitter that I was a fan of the Doug Stamper character because I can't wait to see this sniveling weasel finally get what's coming to him. The writers miscalculate our investment in this man as they try to humanize him through introducing us to his family, involving him in a one-night stand with a beautiful woman, deciding not to kill rachel, to decide to kill Rachel after all, only to ultimately fall back into where he started last season. What the shit kind of dramatic character plotting is that? From the outset we know his only driving force is to return to the Underwood's good graces. The predictability is severely detrimental to the overall enjoyment factor the show touted so powerfully in the first season and a half. And I even put on tumblr just how engaged I felt once again as a viewer. That all seems to have faded away by the end of the season, with hope of one last hurrah in those final moments.
Like all these highly serialized shows, House of Cards is probably playing the long game with these stories and that probably relates to why this season feels like Season 2.5 instead of a whole picture unto its own. You can do cliffhangers, but you have to satisfy the greater need for the story at hand. So what exactly happened in House of Cards this season? Really, not much. There weren't any moments where the writers dropped the mic on the audience apart from Claire's final decision.
Is this a bad season of television? Only towards the end. At it's worst, you want it to just die already. At it's best, you won't want to wait to see what happens next. At it's most consistent, it's a decent casual viewing experience.
House of Cards represents my favorite/least favorite Fincher productions. The production is behemoth in scale and the acting is raw in its delivery. There's a precision to the show as a production but nowhere near as much concise ideas in the direction or nature of said ideas. If you're going to be trashy Fincher production, I say go all out (HELLO? GONE GIRL JUST HAPPENED LIKE 6 MONTHS AGO). I appreciate the larger scope of the season, given the Presidency of Frank Underwood, but there's no denying the diminishing returns the series finds itself in. Maybe next term should be Frank Underwood's last.
Thanks for reading!
(1) Season 4 is a HUGE step up in quality and I'll be discussing it in the not far future
(2) Kim Dickens and Paul Sparks should be in an indie romantic comedy. The two have chemistry, but why the delegated Dickens to being Sparks' bed buddy, I'll never understand.
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