House Of Cards TV Series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIlSgsXYqdw

it made perfect sense to me to be subtle and crafty on the hill, but make big huge crass gestures to manipulate the general public.

didn't say ridiculous. def crass though -- total opportunist political theatre.

but, by that same token, smart and effective.

Episode 10 - in which shit gets really real

I wondered about the dead kid thing, in the UK being that brazen would backfire so badly. Suspect it doesn't work too well in the States either.

Utterly confused by ep13.

a few eps/plot points bugged me but overall i really liked this & i dont usually go in for political dramas @ all. i think a big part of it was that it was so un-sorkin-y

For a political drama with a lot of talking (like, it's 95% talking quickly) it was mercifully absent of zingers. For all that, I thought that the political plot line wasn't as convincing or interesting as I would hope? I don't know what I expected, but I was wanted a bit more stone-hearted evil from Frank. Thought the soap opera bit of it was a lot more convincing. Don't understand the criticisms about it being to allegorical or whatever - it's a political drama, what do you expect?

The Claire Underwood character is pretty much the star of this imo. It kept looking like she was about to crack (like when he lobbyist dude comes onto her at a dinner or something), but only for a millisecond, then she composes herself and gets back on track. Such a good performance - it's easy to do ice queen, but hard to make that ice queen a human rather than a cipher.

Paper swans = I HAZ FREE SPIRIT!!!11! is a meme in waiting, clunky 6th form symbolism needs to GTF.

so has this been out long enough to talk spoilers? so wtf was the point of the watershed bill part? his wife kills the bill and ruins their plan but then wait, their plan was always to ruin the guy anyway, so... huh?

his wife wasn't supposed to kill the bill! the bill passing was supposed to have the added bonus of making Frank look good.

but why did it all matter if the plan all along was to destroy russo?

because the plan was also to boost his own credentials.

I don't know, it just seemed so important for about one episode and then didn't seem to matter at all just a couple of eps later. and in between it didn't feel like there was some epic dramatic struggle to salvage his plans and get everything back on track.

i was also confused-- the failure of the bill barely harmed his overall plan, so I couldn't figure out why it was so important. The fallout of the failure should have been bigger, I guess.

also, how did the watershed bill reflect on underwood? I can't remember. it seems like getting russo elected is what was supposed to boost underwood's credentials, but if he was always going to ruin the guy, then the scandal would have hurt underwood's credibility either way because it would have looked like he backed russo without vetting him properly, right?

btw, the cheney connection I mentioned upthread is that cheney also headed up the vp selection process and then ultimately selected himself, didn't he?

yup! cheney was the first thing I thought of when they used that plot idea

My take is that while the watershed bill was conceived mostly as just a pawn on Frank's chessboard, as he tells us, he hates being wrong. He's the Whip, and his ability to get the whip count right is why he's the whip. Regardless of its importance to his plan, he is capable of being distracted by a little thing like losing a vote.

It's either a supermassive plot hole, or it'll come out in S2 that Frank dbl-xd his wife and meant for the bill to crash and burn.

silby otm, I think

why did it end like that, seems like they left some stuff hanging

what was weird is that they didn't necessarily leave it in a bad place plot wise, but it was soooo poorly executed that it felt like they did.

yeah like maybe if the final scene had been the vp announcement and you know the slugline investigation is hanging over his head

also how they refer to it as slugline dot com is so unrealistic no one has had dot com in their name since like 2002

It was a strangely underplayed cliffhanger.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/house_of_cards_is_bogus/

bill-ted.jpg

I heard real community colleges aren't like what you see on Community

scales-eyes.gif

it seemed so realistic!

I think you have to suspend a lot more disbelief to watch and enjoy HoC (which I still enjoyed btw, but I can see why Kornacki who is pretty immersed in national political scene wouldn't) than you do to watch and enjoy Community.

Most (all?) Political dramas from RIII onwards have been allegorical morality plays, HoC is no different.

HoC trying to have it both ways though: allegorical morality play AND real behind the scenes DC power-brokering.

i really dont think its trying to be realistic, i hope not

lol Veep is prob more realistic tbh

I don't think HoC was trying to be realistic in the documentary sense - the first scene is Kevin Spacey strangling an injured dog! The whole thing is pretty theatrical down to Spacey's stage-whisper asides.

It wanted to be 'realistic' as a dramatic version of everyone's darkest DC fantasies.

the o.g. HoC was clearly going for a pulp-shakespeare kind of a thing.

check it:

This is an act of mercy. Truly. You know the man now. You can see he has nowhere to go. He's begging to be set free. He's had enough. And when he's finally at rest, then we'll be free to remember the real Roger. The burning boy in the green jersey. With that legendary, fabulous sidestep and brave, terrified smile.

lol Veep is prob more realistic tbh

― Roz, Friday, March 22, 2013 10:36 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

veep seems ridiculously unrealistic and kinda a big disappointment, esp coming from ianucci. haven't watched house of cards yet, probably will eventually when i'm bored enough, but i'm guessing for cynicism and entertainment it doesn't approach scandal - am i wrong?

'it is realistic', 'it is allegorical' - how are those the only options???

sry those are the only options.

c) it is a cartoon with anthromorphic animals.

d) its all in yr head

e) it is an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Realistic and allegorical are not the only two options, but they're maybe on either end of a scale. In which case, HoC sits a looooong way from verisimilitude.

yeah welp i got to 'that scene'

idk this is ok. i'm into it but never really sold.

Original or new? New one gets better as it goes on, by halfway I was hooked.

i dunno what 'that scene' is (the pussy eating scene?) but i like this show. haven't seen too much yet tho.