Running Commentary: House of Cards, season 3

Netflix released the third season of House of Cards yesterday. Just for fun, I thought I'd do a running commentary of my reactions to each episode along of the lines of what my friend Mark did for the most recent season of Orange is the New Black. It might a couple weeks to get through all 13 episodes (1-4 so far), but I'll get there. Don't read if you want to stay un-spoiled. 

I talked about the second season of the show on an episode of The M&M Report last year.

Season 3, Episode 1 ("Chapter 27")

The big surprise is obviously that Doug Stamper is still alive after Rachel hits him multiple times with a rock at the end of season 2. More surprising though is the decision to devote almost all of the first half of the premiere to his story, showing the beginning of the Underwood presidency entirely through his eyes.

I thought most of Doug’s plot depicting his recovery worked. You feel genuine sympathy for a character who is unlikeable even by the standards of this show. It reinforced the fact that his work as Frank’s fixer replaced alcohol as his dependency, and without it he lacks definition as a person. Not to mention the significant risk of relapse. Curious to see where this goes, and of course, find out where Rachel is.

Other thoughts:

• I liked depicting the turbulence of Frank’s early days as president from a distance, though in large part because the quality declines substantially when we get a closer look at the inner workings of the Administration. The more than a year between season makes it easy to forget how inartfully the show deals with actual politics. I get that the artificial nature of the America Works economic program is making a point about the superficial nature of Washington, but the scene in which Frank is berating his economic advisors is hammy and unbelievable in the extreme. Meanwhile in foreign policy, the strike to kill Abdullah is a thinly-veiled stand-in for the bin-Laden raid and is just lazy.
• I feel the same way about the notion of appointing Claire to be U.N. Ambassador, which is definitely a stretch, but I’m willing to take a wait-and-see approach. Robin Wright’s performance is one of the better things about House of Cards and is certain to produce dramatic tension between her and Frank. The question has always been when not if she will bring him down, and this could be the impetus.
• I legitimately started laughing when they revealed liberal congressman Donald Blythe to be the new president. Utterly ridiculous, though no more so than when Frank was appointed VP.

Season 3, Episode 2 (“Chapter 28”)

House of Cards seems split between embracing more realism in the difficulties of governing but including wildly implausible things like the America Works program and recess appointing Claire to be U.N. Ambassador after a failed confirmation vote.

Why would congressional Democrats, though more open to entitlement “reform” than is often assumed, agree to a program dismantling the social programs so central to liberalism? And Republicans in the majority are going to pass a massive jobs plan that the opposition party president will get credit for? Isn’t Frank deeply unpopular and lacking anything resembling political capital? Would his anti-entitlement cuts vice president ever go along with this? Senior citizens are actually a pretty powerful political constituency?

This is undoubtedly a closer examination than the show warrants, but it does make it difficult to take any of the political stuff seriously. I think we can pretty sure that Doug is right and this "not running for re-election" thing is a facade and only temporary. 

Other thoughts:

• So much opera in the score this season, including during might have been the least sexual sex scene ever between Claire and Frank.
• Hector Mendoza, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, seems like an actual character, the hearing scene with Claire was a nice illustration of how remarks, especially about the military, can be taken out of context and misconstrued.
• She has been far less central to the actual plot, but Ayla Sayyad (Mozhan Marnò) is considerably more like an actual reporter than Zoe Barnes was. Mainly because she isn’t trying to sleep with sources. One less thing on HoC for the political reporters I follow on Twitter to complain about.
• An inside baseball political note: though it’s briefly alluded to, it’s clear Democrats lost the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, meaning everyone has to go down a rung on the leadership ladder: Bob Birch went from from Speaker to Minority Leader, Terry Womack from Majority Leader to Minority Whip, and Jackie Sharp from Majority Whip to “Assistant Minority Whip.” As Jackie’s conversation with Remy makes clear, this isn’t a hugely influential position and she has been a big loser in the move the minority. The real-life Democrats had to deal with a similar scenario with Rep. Jim Clyburn when they lost the majority in 2010.

Season 3, Episode 3 (“Chapter Twenty-Nine”)

America Works takes a back seat to foreign policy this week as the Russian president, Victor Petrov, is in town for an official visit. Most of the episode takes place during a state dinner with the top officials of both governments.

Just as with last season’s conflict with China, the substance of the global issues at hand are difficult to parse. From what I can gather, the U.S. is trying to get Russia to go along with sending United Nations peacekeeping forces to the Middle East with an eye towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal (remind anyone of Season 6 of The West Wing?). The absence of particulars leads me to believe the writers don’t regard them as especially important.

That Viktor Petrov is virtually identical to Vladimir Putin is certainly uncreative. His aggressive behavior in trying to outdrink the Americans and unabashedly hitting on Claire feels predictable. Still, he potentially presents a compelling adversary for Frank. His press conference at the end suggests further conflict between the two is inevitable.

Other thoughts:

• The recess appointment of Claire to be U.N. Ambassador after the failed confirmation vote is surprisingly barely mentioned. It probably goes without saying that Republicans in real life would be furious if such a thing were ever to happen in real life. Worth mentioning that in actuality, the president’s power to make recess appointments was drastically curtailed by the Supreme Court last June.
• Secretary of State Catherine Durant (Jayne Atkinson) looks strikingly like Hillary Clinton in her most prominent episode of the season. I liked that the inevitable awkwardness of the relationship between her and Claire is acknowledged but proven to be surmountable. The beer pong scene was a little much though.
• Why is Frank trying so hard to get Birch to buy into America Works? Shouldn’t he be more worried about getting the support of the (so far unseen) Republican Speaker of the House?
• When is Frank going to be like “Actually I was just kidding about not running.”

Season 3, Episode 4 (“Chapter Thirty″)

It wasn’t perfect by any means, but this was a solid episode. The trend this season of showing the institutional constraints of the presidency continued and is welcome. Given how House of Cards has concluded its previous two seasons, however, I worry it will not last.

Frank finally learns of the congressional leadership’s top choice to run for president: Heather Dunbar (Elizabeth Marvel), the solicitor general who as special prosecutor led the investigation into President Walker (who, just to recap, was shockingly dumb) last season. Solicitor general isn’t typically an office that produces many presidents, but her family apparently has money. And she’s got the anti-corruption thing going for her (think Patrick Fitzgerald).

In an effort to eliminate her as a rival, he offers her a seat on the Supreme Court that he assumes will open up once Alzheimer’s-afflicted Justice Jacobs, who he persuaded to stay on, leaves. It completely backfires. Jacobs and Dunbar are friendly and figure out his plan. She announces her campaign for president that afternoon.

Dunbar is a worthy adversary and Marvel’s restrained performance works. I’m excited to see what happens on the campaign trail. As for Frank, he should know that when presidents try to mess with the Supreme Court, it doesn’t usually go well.

Other thoughts:

• “Is this how you live with yourself? By rationalizing the obscene into the palatable?” *mic drop*
• The cathedral scene was heavy on the symbolism. A falling crucifix was a bit much. And even by this show’s standards, very darkly lit.
• Struggling to care about the saber-rattling with Russia. The Russian ambassador to the U.N. was not nearly as compelling as Petrov.
• Frank has an unclear position on position on gay rights? That’s not a winning strategy in a 2016 Democratic primary.
• Seth screws Ayla over big time by taking her credential after she asks the president one too many tough questions. I think the press corps would show a little more solidarity if some overzealous press secretary tried to pull this in real life, but if we’ve learned one thing from House of Cards, it’s that it takes a dim view of people with principles.

Season 3, Episode 5 ("Chapter 31")

“I think we replaced a dud with an atom bomb.” — Kate

How do we define emergencies in this country? What lengths will we go to in order to address them?

“Chapter 31” raises this question in a less moral way than that. Frank unilaterally re-appropriates FEMA disaster relief funds for a jobs program in the District of Columbia to boost his own political standing. And he does it based on a legally unsound (to say the least) interpretation of the Stafford Act. But the issue of what problems our government deems to be emergencies immediately worth responding to was running through my mind throughout the hour.

I also thought the way the episode ended, with the camera panning to show people in line at the D.C. unemployment tent and ending with Freddy, (Reg. E. Cathay) was well done. We last saw him last season being forced to close his restaurant as an indirect result of increased attention due to then-Vice President Underwood’s patronage of the establishment. It was a subtle nod to the numerous lives Frank has ruined (or just ended) on his path to power, which complicates his attempt to position himself as a champion of the unemployed.

Where this goes from here is another question. Frank still needs to expand America Works beyond D.C. for it to have real political impact. Being at war with both parties in Congress won’t make that easy, and neither will an ongoing conflict with the press. Doug’s seeming defection (more on that below) to the Dunbar campaign doesn’t help either.

Everybody needs allies. Even Frank Underwood.

Other thoughts:

• The material with Claire, the U.N., and Russia is so abstract and superficial as to not even be worth discussing. I’ll just leave the Washington Post deconstruction here.
• I’m 50/50 on whether Doug’s work for the Dunbar campaign will eventually turn out to be as a mole for Frank. Perhaps he is bitter at being repeatedly rebuffed by the White House in his attempts to get back in. Leaking the truth about Claire’s abortion looks like an all-in move.
• Using the D.C. mayor’s anger at Congressional suppression of District autonomy as a reason to work with Frank on the FEMA move was a nice touch. It’s a real, ongoing issue.
• Kim Dickens is great, and her arrival as Kate Baldwin, the Wall Street Telegraph heavy hitter assigned to replace Ayla is welcome for the audience if not the Underwood administration.

Season 3, Episode 6 ("Chapter 32")

One of the core themes of House of Cards is the inconvenience of having a conscience, of having actual principles. It gets in the way of accomplishing what is necessary. The Underwoods have always embodied this amoral ideal.

But Claire trails Frank in this regard, demonstrating vulnerability and humanity before. This impulse rears its head at a supremely inconvenient time politically.

The final scene on Air Force One was electric, fantastically ugly (reminiscent of a fight Alicia and Peter had on The Good Wife at the end of season 2). I think they're both right: Frank shouldn't have made Claire ambassador, and Claire shouldn't have helped Frank become president. Though from what I recall only one of them is a murderer.

That felt like passing a point of no return for our favorite couple, and yet we're also not even halfway through the season. Regardless, the personal and political fallout of Claire's unplanned press conference remarks figures to be considerable.

Other thoughts:

• As compelling as the scenes in the prison cell between Claire and Michael Corrigan are, it doesn't make any sense for the Ambassador to the U.N. to be in that position. Secretary of State Durant or more likely someone from the U.S. embassy would be talking to Corrigan. Sorry, plausibility scolding over.
• After all the NSA revelations, making a big issue out of Soviet-esque omnipresent surveillance felt a bit off.

Season 3, Episodes 7 and 8 ("Chapter 33" and "Chapter 34")

• I'm cheating slightly by doing two at a time in order to finish these more quickly.
• The vow renewal plot was mostly well executed. Moving quickly back and forward in time is an overused trope in television, but it works well here to depict Claire and Frank's reconciliation. The change in Claire's hair color initially made me think the opening scene took place years prior to the present. I think both of these things might be temporary however, a band-aid over which underlying problems between the two fester.
• It's only a matter of when, not if, Doug's obsession with Rachel blows up. She's not a threat to him or Underwood anymore, not really. His (somewhat implausible) increasing influence with Heather Dunbar and liaison with his physical therapist makes clear he could forget about her and move on with a life as operator whose allegiances are unclear if he really wanted to.
• Aside from the whole "defending drone strikes in front of the Supreme Court" thing, Dunbar's 2016 platform is pretty good: anti-corruption, attacking Wall Street and Walmart. I think Hillary Clinton should be nervous (sorry, I know that was bad).
• The symbolism of the storm was a touch too heavy-handed. If a touch meant being hit over the head repeatedly. It did move the plot along. Frank is finally going public with his 2016 ambitions (shocker) with America Works stuck in Congress. His path to the nomination seems...difficult considering everybody in the party, including members of his own staff seems to hate him, but it would hardly be the most unbelievable thing the show has down.