TV Review: House of Cards, Season 1

House of Cards, Season 1

I thought about making this an episodic thing, but I can only sustain one old TV series at a time, and I'm already halfway through with Walking Dead, might as well as see it to its bitter, shambling end. I'm far more at home reviewing fantasy/sci-fi material than politics, anyway. But I recently watched the entire first season of House of Cards, and it's... an experience. It's around 4 years old now, and one of the pioneers of Netflix's "here, have an entire season online in a single day" model.

And it's... well, the experimental portions of the show are definitely evident here. That's not to say that it's bad, of course. It felt like reading a novel translated onto live-action, only without the constraints of having to end every episode with a conclusion. Obviously each episode kind of comes into its own, but the whole thing blurs together because that, I think, is the intention of releasing 13 episodes at once.

One of the biggest weakness of House of Cards is its... dryness. Kevin Spacey, as this master manipulator Frank Underwood, is absolutely entertaining, of course, and the main plot of politics and Frank's big plan to get back at the administration and elevate himself to a position of higher power is... well, I'm hardly an expert in American politics (read: I don't know jack shit about it) but I managed to follow the series relatively well without it resorting to huge introdumps. It's well-acted, all the actors involved are definitely talented, but there's this mechanical efficiency with the method of storytelling that honestly robs the cast of any personality. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's not... that great, if you get what I mean? The show doesn't feel like it's about actual characters, but pieces on the board moving and following a script. The actors do their best, but a lot of the more emotionally-charged decisions fell flat and felt like it happened just because it's needed for the story.

Which seems like harsh criticism, but thankfully, once more, the actors do their best to make the weak scripting work. Way too much time is spent on the setup and the education bill and the watershed act, and while Frank is absolutely entertaining as all hell to watch, there's a sense that if the series continues with just 'oh look at how devious Frank is' it's going to be an interesting procedural but not a particularly engaging larger story. Frank did get a couple of humbling moments, most interestingly the eight episode which had him romp around his old campus and display that he's more than a vengeful political machine, and the moments where he shows that he actually does miss his wife, but other than that he's honestly a bit one-note and only Kevin Spacey's amazing performance saves the character. The other big star in the show is Peter Russo (Corey Stoll), who, in my opinion, displayed way more humanity and character than the rest of the cast did, between his struggles to balance his moral ethics with his part in Frank's machinations, his struggles to be a good boyfriend and father and leader of the small people, and all that stuff.

His journey through trying to get through a sea full of drug abuse, free sex and alcoholism, being played on a string by Frank as he forces Russo to basically fuck over a lot of the people he cared for in order for one of Frank's chessboard moves to work, and then groomed up into the next governor only for Frank to reveal in the third-to-last episode that Russo's actually a fall man and ends up getting killed off after hitting rock bottom... Russo's easily the most entertaining character in the show, and the revelation that Frank built him up to literally discard him is a well executed twist.

There were some points in the show, looking back, where things felt a little off (if Frank wanted Russo as a fall guy, why freak out so badly about the watershed act?) but overall the plot kinda made sense. The introduction of Raymond Tusk as the bigger chessmaster that has been manipulating events to get Frank to strike a deal with him in the last two episodes is a twist I don't mind at all -- though the last two episodes felt more like setup for the next season more than a conclusion to season one's story.

The other big players here are Frank's wife Claire (Robin Wright) and plucky reporter Zoe (Kate Mara), and whether you like them or not is really subjective on whether you buy their act. Both Wright and Mara are amazing actresses that played with their material really well, but Zoe's role from a younger version of Frank's "I'll do anything to advance" mindset to rather abruptly going from being happy to trade sex for services to suddenly refusing to do so despite insisting multiple times earlier in the season that the age gap doesn't bother her felt like it wasn't a well-developed change of dynamics, and, again, seemed to exist solely to give Zoe a reason to be an antagonist in the next season because at the end of this she's gone from Frank's lover into someone actively trying to unravel the conspiracy. It's not the worst writing I've ever seen, of course, but the reporter stuff that she did earlier in the season is absolutely boring, and the Frank/Zoe scenes don't really work that well despite both the actors' efforts and looking back at it as a whole, the Zoe plotline really borderlines on ridiculousness if not for Kate Mara's amazing efforts at making the character slightly sensible.

Claire is a little bit better, because her role as Frank's partner and emotional confidant in a bond different from the traditional romantic husband/wife bond is well-displayed, as is her growing annoyance at Frank passing over her work for his own agendas and sleeping with Zoe (something she's okay with initially, but come on). But any time we go back to the sub-plot with the drilling platform and the pregnant idealist partner and it's just so freaking boring.

There are other sub-plots and characters, of course. Frank's right-hand man Doug Stamper is a personal favourite minor character, having great scenes with Frank, Russo and plot device prostitute Rachel. Also, the... chief of something-or-other Linda Vasquez is also a character I'm very fond of. Raymond Tusk, the 'final' antagonist that's built up for the next season is delightfully hammy. But by and by the rest of the supporting cast are either strawmen that only exists to be antagonistic for the duration of the arc, or are unmemorable.

It's clear from the get-go that this season is simply a set-up for what's to come next, and it suffers somewhat from that. Perhaps a more trimmed-down season, with maybe 9 or 10 episodes instead of 14, would have worked and be paced a lot better. Despite my complaints it's still a show that I like a fair bit, proving that a standout cast can really save a half-baked script. I'm sure that if I watched the latter seasons this one would probably be a bit better looking back, but at the same time there are a fair bit of things that go against it that annoyed me while watching it.