WARNING: THIS POST HAS SPOILERS OF THE FINAL SEASON OF “HOUSE OF CARDS”
Whenever you build a house of cards, you know it will inevitably fall at some point. In my opinion, that start happening to House of Cards a couple of seasons ago, when then President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) started disagreeing with one another and having their own agendas.
It was expected, then, that the show’s last season would have that feeling of everything crumbling down for the main characters. The big twist, however, came from something happening outside the show: Kevin Spacey was fired after multiple allegations of sexual assault surfaced one year ago, which put the show to a halt as the final season was already being filmed. Having decided to go on with the show anyway, the producers had to come up fast with a new storyline for the 6th season, which explains why it had less episodes than previous seasons and why it felt like a different show.
Now that Frank Underwood died, Claire, who dismissed the Underwood last name and is back to using her maiden name, Hale, has to fight to stay in power. Her new enemies are Annette (Diane Lane) and Bill Shepherd (Greg Kinnear), two siblings who own The Shepherd Freedom Foundation. The institution is sold as a charity endeavour, but it really is a pretext for the siblings to try to control the power in Washington.
Old characters also come back, such as Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), who remains loyal to Frank Underwood even after his death and finds out Frank left him everything in his will.
The main character in this season, however, continues to be Frank Underwood, despite his death. There’s not a single image of him, nor do we hear his voice when a recorded journal is found, but he is on everyone’s minds the whole time and it is people’s connection to him that are used as fuel to drive the season forward.
Sure, Claire has a more central role, now looking directly at the camera and taking charge of events that unfold (or, at least, trying to), but it is impossible to simple ignore that Frank ever existed.
The main problem, however, is the over explanation of feminism every chance Claire gets. It is so much explaining of the situation that it is almost offending viewers, since it basically assume that the audience would not get the point that is being made. She is always questioning everyone else’s behavior toward her and suggesting they would act differently if she was a man. That is very likely to be true, but I still think she doesn’t need to repeat herself in every single episode.
The most obvious way she chooses to show off how feminist she is happens when she replaces all the members of her Cabinet by women. Yet, despite all of this, she later gets pregnant with an frozen egg for the sole purpose of not allowing Doug to get everything it had been promised in Frank’s will (there was a clause saying it would go to Doug only if he and Claire had no heirs). So, getting pregnant in order to get benefits: where is the feminism in that? It’s just opportunism, pure and simple.
Also disturbing is the amount of subplots and conspiracy that just seem to never end, tangling the show even more.
The best part was the final scene, in which Claire and Doug confront each other and Claire ends the show the same way Frank started in season one: by taking a life while looking at the camera and saying “no more pain”. Fitting way to end a show that painfully lost its track a while ago.
