jdoe
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 5:20 pm |
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| evnvnv wrote: |
| Just realized House of Cards is a remake of a British series and was written largely by the guy who did Ides of March. I guess it makes a little more sense now but it's still such a weird thing. No one else is watching this? |
I burned through House of Cards over the past few days for whatever reason. This is solidly a lower-middle tier TV drama. It reminds me a lot of Dexter: The leading character is the most compelling thing about it, mainly because the actor is having all of the fun and chewing scenery left and right. Everyone else orbits around the lead and never really amounts to anything particularly interesting.
What's most disappointing is the show never commits to what it wants to be. It's deadly serious and "realistic", but has absolutely nothing to say about politics or how Washington DC runs. While the show makes a point of taking place in our reality, there is little to nothing about topical party politics (you'd think the main character, a democratic US congressman, would face the issues of republican obstructionism). Things happen purely by force of will by Kevin Spacey - his obstacles are simply individual people being too cowardly or prideful. The education and environmental bills that serve as multi-episode plot arcs aren't actually about the politics - the reform they propose is irrelevant and never delved into. They only exist as a battleground for characters to yell and scream about. The entire political aspect of the show is lazy. The creators don't seem to care about the bills and electoral races that all of the intrigue circles around. The Wire ended 5 or 6 years ago, you'd think other televsion series (especially the new flagship Netflix series, which must have had carte blanche to do whatever it wanted) would try to emulate the depth of that show a little more.
So what's left, if the politics are just dressing? I suppose the show cares more about the intrigue and the larger than life characters. But even that falls short. Spacey is fun and the setup ("I'm going to do everything I can to manipulate and crush the people who betrayed me") is enjoyable in a Breaking Bad sort of way, but they never follow through on it. You get halfway through the season and realize he hasn't actually done much to crush his enemies. And when you finally find out the culmination of his plan, it doesn't have much to do with the big "revenge" setup of the first episode. But still, the character is fun to watch. I like the mugging to the camera and the schlocky asides to the audience.
Everyone besides Spacey, though, is terribly written and poorly plotted. They all go down these cliche subplots (high powered wife has a brief affair with a bohemian, young politician is a hopeless addict, don't get me even started on the newspaper storyline). There are several secondary characters that I still can't figure out why they exist (a young pregnant woman who works at the wife's charity is given pretty significant screentime for very little purpose). They backpedal a lot on the wife, who initially appears to be playing Lady Macbeth but turns out to just be his somewhat naive cheerleader. Maybe they'll do something more interesting next season, dunno if I'll keep watching. |
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