Some of y’all brought up this topic on a previous thread, so I thought I’d start a separate one.
Like many of you, I’ve at least gotten started on the new season of “House of Cards.” I’ve watched four episodes so far. Don’t know whether I’ll continue.
I managed to slog through last season, and was actually missing it a little when someone suggested I try watching “The West Wing,” which I had never seen. As you know, I really, really loved that show, and went on and on about it here. And now that I’ve watched a show about Washington that is that enjoyable, it’s hard to sit still for something that doesn’t have a single likable character.
Perhaps I will go back and finish watching the original, British version — even though M. just gave away the ending (I won’t link to that spoiler, on the previous thread). I did like it a little better — although I only saw the first series, or season…
In these few episodes so far of the new season, I feel like the writers have run out of ideas, and are getting frustrated trying to think of new, more shocking ways for Frank Underwood to show how thoroughly rotten he is.
Slight spoiler: Take the opening scene of the first episode. You sort of knew what he was about to do standing at his father’s grave. And one’s credulity is strained. Frank is supposed to be smart. What if the request of one of the journos to get closer and observe Frank at the grave had been granted? It could have happened. And that would have been it for F.U.
Slightly worse spoiler: And what about the end of the fourth episode, which I saw last night? You can almost hear the writer thinking, What could Frank do, face-to-face with a nearly lifesize crucifix, that would still be shocking? And yes, it manages to shock (or at least offend), even though something very like it is anticipated. What’s not credible about the scene is how Frank got there. We are led to believe that Frank has a conscience and that it’s nagging at him, so he goes to the church sincerely seeking moral guidance (and if he’s not sincere, what is he doing there, since there’s no audience to perform for) — but then recoils at the central Christian message. Love is what causes him to back away and revert to type. Which is true to his character. It’s just not credible that he would have been there in the first place.
Anyway, what do y’all think so far?
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We’ve only gotten through four eps so far, due to the professor’s mid-term grading schedule. I love the theme music. Claire’s wardrobe is less appealing than in previous seasons, but the silver satin dress she wears to the state dinner with the Russian president is awesome. Her haircut is annoying–I want to brush her hair off her forehead–it looks like a comb-over.
Credulity: why would he meet with the bishop in the actual cathedral? Does the bishop not have a more secure office/vestry/sacristy/rectory/whatever Catholics call it? I assume he’s the Catholic bishop–I don’t know what the National Cathedral actually looks like, but I know it’s Epsicopalian.
I feel like this is “required watching”–I’d rather watch something else, but the reviewers say it gets better….
I also made myself watch all of Downton Abbey. Badly written, but beautifully produced. If the Anna/Bates murder plots don’t abate next season, it’s curtains for DA!
I gave up on “Downton” after the second season. Its handling of the Great War period was just atrocious. “Upstairs, Downstairs” was so much better, richer – and in more than just how it handled those years. That’s not surprising, though. After all, back in the 1970s, there were still plenty of people around with living memories of the early 20th century. In contrast to Up/Down, “Downton,” offers scarcely more than a gloss on the era and is essentially a costumed soap-opera for wanna-be high-brows.
Up/Down was vastly better on all counts, except the production values. The acting was stagier, too.
Up/Down spent a lot of time doing the war, while DA just glossed through it. Then Matthew’s preposterous miracle recovery….
We just started watching it, we are still in season one so I only just scanned this in the must cursory way to avoid spoilers. But as far as Washington shows go, I think Madame Secretary is not bad.
“House of Cards” is essentially a re-working of “Richard III,” a tale of how the lust for position and power can lead people to do all sorts of ever nastier things – especially if those people are already supplied with some considerable measure of power to begin with. The arc of the stories, on either side of the Atlantic, runs parallel in that sense. So the measures that Francis Urquhart, like Frank Underwood, undertakes to expand and then maintain his grip on power reach ever more outrageous (and more far-fetched) depths of depravity as the story rolls along. Plus, like our bad boys as we may, we generally feel cheated when they don’t get their well-deserved comeuppance in the end, so it’s only to be expected that Francis will, as I said previously, meet with a bad end. I didn’t, however, reveal precisely what that bad end involves. So to paraphrase Mr. Urquhart: You may imagine whatever you like, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
I prefer the British one–perhaps because it is not so hard to suspend disbelief when dealing with another country?
I heard they go on a bird shoot in the last episode, so I watched that part.
That would be Downton Abbey, not House of Cards. 🙂
Aw, c’mon. House of Cards had a Putin character–why not a Cheney character–or is that Frank Underwood?
We binge watched the whole season of “Carda” Sunday, and it does get better as it goes along. Mainly thanks to Stampers weirdness.
The same night was “Downton’s” season finale, and it was especially plummy.
Indeed, quite. Ever so plummy.