As in previous years, I’m binge-reviewing the latest season of Netflix’s House of Cards, the TV show that helped popularize the idea of “binge watching” when it premiered in 2013. Don’t read farther than you’ve watched.
Episode 5 (Chapter 44)
Oh good, dream sequences. Frank’s visions of someone I believe is his great-great-great grandfather Augustus, a Confederate soldier killed in battle, suggests that the secrets and sins in his past are catching up to him. But mostly they helped break up an hour of what felt like a condensed version of all the previous House of Cards mid-season slog episodes. Raymond Tusk and Remy Danton, China and Russia, Kim Dickens and Tom Hammerschmidt, that crooked-nosed FBI agent and the tragic tale of Donald Blythe’s wife: all back to weave a web for the viewer’s mild amusement and confusion, evoking the chaos that surely would ensue following a president’s incapacitation.
The driving storyline continues to revolve around Claire’s scheming and manipulation, for as yet unclear ends. Seeing her upset the poor/evil Stamper makes me like her less, but you have to give her credit for the way she’s able to nail the appearance of being a grieving wife on national TV then turn around and tell Remy Danton to not waste condolences in private. Truly a consummate politician, she is. When Stamper murders someone for their liver (does Seth have Type-O blood?) and allows the president to wake up, perhaps Frank will realize that she’s proven her worthiness for the Oval Office. Or perhaps she’ll have taken his spot there already.