House of Cards Season Three
I won't be marking spoilers.
It's easily the worst season of the show. I think the problem is the fact that Frank's ascent to power is complete at the send of Season Two. He can't hold a higher office. All of his manipulations were all for the presidency so where to go from there? They could have ended the show right there and the show would feel complete even though with a title like House of Cards, people expect him to fall. Still, a house of cards is merely fragile and has a greater chance of collapsing and that has been true for those first two seasons. Frank becomes president and there's no real evidence of his misdeeds. Rachel Posner, the most likely person who could pose a problem, was unaccounted for. Roy Kapeniak is similarly unaccounted for, but Rachel was the key.
So knowing the show would continue, I figured Rachel was being kept in the writers' back pocket and that Tom Hammershmidt would eventually find her. If Frank's arc is his rise then eventually fall from power, the writers would have to address Rachel. Well, they did, and I hated it. They try to throw the audience for a loop by apparently killing her off-screen, but I didn't believe that for a second. First, they got Rachel Brosnahan to film new footage. Second, implying a character's death without a proper set up doesn't seem like the show's style. Third, she seemed too important to the plot to just shrug and say, "BTW, she iz died lol." To justify continuing the show, I expected Rachel to play a big role in setting up an end game. Instead, Rachel is "killed" half-way through Season Three then for realsies killed in the finale. It felt like a waste. I would have rather the writers skip Gavin lying about Rachel's death and the season ending the way the finale began: Rachel waking in bed up alive and well. It wouldn't matter if she ended up dying later on in a twist where the show ended with Frank getting away with everything.
Where is the show headed then? It seems that Season Four will deal with Frank fighting to stay in power despite losing so many allies, potentially including Claire. However, the way the writers addressed Season Two's cliffhangers doesn't inspire much confidence (e.g. Frank is a lame president, Doug is alive/murders Rachel etc.). I don't know. I feel like their current trajectory sets up a plot with far less tension than Frank's crimes coming back to haunt him. Who is going to find Rachel Posner? Even if someone does, there's nothing linking her murder to Doug. Speaking of, I kept wanting to root for Doug even though he had his creepy moments. I thought he was turning a corner then no, still a weirdo... and now a murderer.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the show because it didn't play out like I expected. Then again, the first two seasons didn't either. I didn't expect Frank to ascend to POTUS so soon. A lot of the show's fun to me was Frank manipulating the political process. There's less of it in Season Three, and it tends to backfire more often than not. The stakes are also much lower because he's already president. In the first two seasons, he faced losing the president's favor, losing his place in office, incarceration, potential charges of murder, conspiracy etc. In Season Three, Frank faces losing the Democratic nomination and thus the presidency which is still a big deal however he has no where to go but down and all of his truly terrible crimes have been swept under the rug. It makes for a far less interesting story.
I suppose Frank has to lose sometimes in order for his wins to feel more credible and meaningful. However, his losses are more personal as the show weirdly transitioned into a character drama. The losses don't feel substantial or believable. Unless the writers find their balls again, the results seem obvious. Did anyone believe that Doug was really going to turn on Frank ever? The writers kept hinting at it, but I didn't buy it once. So when Jackie turns on Frank, I don't think that's the end of Jackie. I expect her back in Frank's corner somehow. When Claire says she's leaving Frank, I don't believe it. She'll probably end up back together with Frank by the middle or end of Season Four. Does anyone really think Frank is going to lose the election without the show given a hard end date? And if he does, that alone would be anticlimactic. If Frank falls, he has to fall hard. Losing an election would just happen. Right now, with so many of Frank's enemies either dead, incarcerated, or rendered powerless (politically or otherwise), the only people who can realistically take him down are Doug and Claire, but that would probably require them to implicate themselves. Cut off your nose to spite your face?
And as a character drama, Season Three doesn't do an especially good job of being one. Frank's marriage disintegrating is a big part of the season, but I don't buy it because the set-up is so flimsy. Two seasons worth of Frank and Claire's marriage transcending all manner of conflict and now it suddenly doesn't. Frank used politics as a means to an end, and never really appeared to actually care about policy, but now he does? Is he just using America Works to try to stay in power? I don't know. There's also no realistic way Frank wins Iowa based on the writers' own explanation. Frank was losing in the polls and Jackie's endorsement was supposed to push him in the lead. Jackie, feeling used and betrayed by Frank, endorses Heather instead yet Frank still wins because reasons. Why?
If you read this far, I want to clarify that I didn't hate Season Three. It isn't outright terrible; it's just inexplicably weaker. The writers had all the pieces to make a better story. At the end of Season Two, I felt the show had two seasons left: Frank as President and then his eventual fall. Season Three felt like stalling. I don't know if there's enough left to say here to continue the show for much longer. That's a problem with many shows. They stay longer than they should. Only Breaking Bad strikes me as a show that told a complete story while also making the most of almost every episode. It was a five season show with five seasons worth of material. It could have gone longer, but I'm glad it didn't. Right now, House of Cards Season Three feels like extra though I suppose we'll see how it plays out. It wasn't bad enough for me to stop watching, but I feel less excited about Season Four.
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