The first two seasons were great. Chronicling the rise of Frank Underwood from ambitious congressman to President and featuring Kevin Spacey's compelling acting, this was great television drama. Every time he broke the fourth wall he commanded you to pay attention.
But things changed in the third season. The first season had chronicled Underwood's rise to the Vice Presidency. In the second season he rose to the Presidency. But starting with the third season, there was nowhere nowhere else to go. So the writers -- or whoever makes these decisions -- had to come up with new story lines. The next three seasons were often aimless. Underwood faced a variety of crises -- international, domestic and personal. And these were often meandering and silly. The worst for me was his battle to get elected to the Presidency, as he got to that position through succession. And they made all sorts of mistakes about our electoral system*, which annoyed me more than they should have.
But I kept watching because of Kevin Spacey.
And, as much as I bitched about how the show wasn't as good, I enjoyed it.
But the sixth season? Well, that just sucked. After the allegations of sexual misconduct, Spacey was kicked off the show. Robin Wright, as the lead, just wasn't interesting. Whereas Kevin Spacey, in his monologues, was captivating, Robin Wright was just eye-rollingly dull. I don't know if it's that she's not as good as Spacey, or if the writing and direction just weren't as good. But the bottom line is that I just didn't find it as interesting to watch her. And, instead of just tying things up, the producers deided to introduce a whole bunch of new characters to complicate things.
In all fairness to the whole House of Cards team, Spacey's last-minute departure left them in the lurch. The sixth season had largely been written, and was going to center on the final climactic battle between Frank and Claire. And I probably would have loved watching it. And maybe if gthey had had more time they could have made the season work without Spacey. But the writers had to scramble to rewrite the season without Frank, and that included having to develop new plotlines and a new final dispute to settle -- this one pitting Doug Stamper against Claire. And Doug Stamper against Nathan. And Nathan against Claire. And Claire against Jane. And Jane against Doug Stamper. And...
As a result of the last-minute scramble, there were all sorts of half-baked plot points that didn't make sense -- For example, Claire's weeks-long faked depression for the purposes of -- what? forcing the cabinet to try to remove her via 25A so she can fire them and hire a new cabinet in secret? Fuck that nonsensical shit.
What should they have done? End it.
By the end of season 5, Frank had resigned, thereby making Claire President. The deal was that she would pardon him. As the last episode closes, she refuses to take his phone call. Then she looks at the camera ans says "My turn." I know that they didn;t intend to end the series there, but it would have worked. Much better, certainly, than the drawn out battle that we get for season six.
*To win the Presidency, a candidate needs to get a majority of the electoral votes cast. The 270 that we all think of as the number of votes needed to win is based on the assumption that all states (and DC) cast their votes, which then total to 538. If a state doesn't cast electoral votes, than those don't count in the total, and a candidate needs fewer than 270 to win. The candidates and parties can't simply agree to a do-over. And no candidate would pick his or her spouse as a running mate because the electors from the candidate's home state are not allowed to vote for both POTUS and VPOTUS from their own states. These are just a few of the issues.
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