Netflix’s somewhat-overpraised sensation House of Cards is back and the internet giant sure has gotten cocky in the space between. Before House of Cards first season, Netflix had Lilyhammer…Now, they’ve been nominated for Emmys, had two shows that were on every critics Best of the Year list (the other being “Orange is the New Black”), had a flop that nobody talks about (“Hemlock Grove” or whatever the hell that thing was called), and repeatedly compared themselves to HBO. Talk about how quickly things can change in a year! I don’t know…maybe it’s me, but I feel like all the attention may have gone to their head a little.
And that’s somewhat apparent in House of Cards’ second season. The show has an arrogance in its step that maybe I just didn’t notice during season 1. “How so?” you might ask. Well, for starters, not a lot really happens after the first episode and before the season finale. Sure, there are subplots galore and a lot of maneuvering but really you could probably watch the first episode of the season and the last episode of the season and not miss that much. [The inherent flaw in a show that is cocky about the benefits of binge watching is that each episode doesn’t truly need to be all that special or really grab you.] Just take Doug Stamper’s obsession with vulnerable prostitute Rachel (a space filler if there ever was one), a plot line that is given plenty of time each episode but only really sees forward movement at the beginning and end.
The second bigger problem, to me, is that it no longer seems to matter if anything we’re watching is believable or not. Season 1 was only slightly far-fetched but grounded in such believably messy humans (like departed Peter Russo) we could suspend our disbelief just enough. That’s not the case in a season that asks us to believe that scheming congressman-turned-VP Francis Underwood (a delightfully evil Kevin Spacey, who could do more with a sideways sneer than most actors can with a monologue) can somehow outmaneuver the Chinese government, a hugely powerful billionaire industrialist, every congressional member on both sides of the aisle, a lobbyist that knows him very well, and the sitting president of the United States of America.
Francis barely breaks a sweat while manipulating everyone around him, but I couldn’t really buy that every character he’s interacting with (for God’s sakes, they’re all politicians and their people) wouldn’t see how manipulative he’s being. These people are no innocent dupes, but billionaire Raymond Tusk (a wonderfully menacing Gerald McRaney) seems to be the only one who sees Francis for what he is…yet somehow remains a step behind him in their power play instead of just telling the president what Francis is really up to. [The president is barely more than a deer in the headlights, making it so easy for Francis to con him we have to wonder if he wants it to happen.] It reminded me of “Dexter”‘s fundamental flaw which was that no antagonist that ever knew his dark secret decided to out him to the police, and almost every character on the show seemed to conspire to stay deaf, blind, and dumb…despite all of them being trained detectives or fellow killers.
This show is, of course, based on a BBC series that benefited from much shorter season lengths (each season was four episodes instead of 13) but also the way the British government works. It probably is possible for Francis to do most of this stuff in a parliamentary system (where the leadership of a party really can be overthrown from within), but to switch it to America without really changing much defies belief. Not saying the second season is bad, just not as good as the first, but even that was not quite as good as it thought it was. Grade for entire second season: C+