House Of Cards TV Series

^^^as you are working in PR you may find that a useful sentence from time to time. Your coworkers will stop wanting to kill you the first time you use it on a hostile journalist.

I love this series - self and boyfriend at the time watched it when it first aired, riveted to the sofa.

apparently he modelled francis on richard III

I think I read that Richardson wouldn't come back for the third series unless something unseemly befell FU since he felt he'd made him entirely too seductive a vilain.

"Daddy!"

"Daddy!"

yeah this was definitely an EEP moment

have you seen tinker, tailor, soldier, spy?

nope but i want to

Love the way this ended, by the way (Part I that is)

My memories were that I liked it at the beginning but I got more resistant to his Shakesperian mask...the catchphrase wore itself out amidst those ever so ridiculous plots.

I thought the 3rd one was a bit disappointing, except his wife really came into her own in it.

Yeah I liked her more actually.

The third is the weakest, but it's still good. Geoffrey Boozer-Pitt is an excellent character.

man i've GOT to see this show, i must have missed it when it was on the bbc first time round. i recall the hype dimly. god knows what i was doing instead at the time.
was it 3 self contained series? is he the same 'rank'/ title in all 3?

I saw the first series and liked it a lot - it was on at exactly the same time as Thatcher's downfall, wasn't it? I've never seen the second or third ones.

was it 3 self contained series? is he the same 'rank'/ title in all 3?

They're all pretty much self-contained, but there are threads running through all three. Each series is four hour-long episodes. He's Chief Whip in the first, and PM in the second two.

watchin this again! :-)

Hey, they're on netflix! This looks good!

If he's Richard III then his wife is Lady Macbeth

totes

god the irish bloke in this...prob the worst paddy stereotype i've ever seen in a drama, not least cos it appears to be a genuine attempt at crafting a character. also...tories in the 80s, would they REALLY have an Irish press officer? like how many years after hunger strikes and shit? can't believe they'd want an Irish guy or an Irish person would want to work for them.

his name is Roger O'Neill and they mention him playing rugby a lot so is he meant to be protestant or something? V confused as a character, or second gen Irish?

this show is good but it's imperfect imo, some of the "sardonic asides" are a bit too comfortable/cosy.

so apparently kevin spacey and david fincher are remaking this... for netflix?

i actually think spacey could do pretty well, hes got that kind of menacing camp thing going on

for ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS

this is interesting news

could be awesome

'apparently aaron sorkin is scripting an ed gein biopic' - an entertainment news blog

No, terrible idea.

how so?

the original is good -- ian richardson kills it obvi -- but it's not like it couldn't be done again well. plus that was a four-parter, this is already 26 episodes, so it's not going to be the same.

aw this is gonna be 26 episodes? was hoping for a 12-episode hbo-style series

they've ordered 2x series of 13 eps, which is bold

2 arcs over 13 episodes each better than 1 over 16, i think

26, rather. esp with a show like this.

yeah. the really long 23-ep thing... <3 'the west wing' but in general 23 eps is too much for full-length shows. though im loving the hell out of the_killing.

It doesn't matter if it's not as good as UK series, cuz only US politics/BBC nerds hv seen Richardson version.

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2011/03/18/its-not-tv-its-netflix-fincherspacey-house-of-cards-set-for-late-2012/

will be interested in this version if villain is a Democrat btw

Just started watching this last night, great stuff. Richardson breaking the 4th wall every so often is ultra-effective. Also notable how different London looked just 20yrs ago.

so apparently kevin spacey and david fincher are remaking this... for netflix?

― max, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:27 AM (1 year ago)

this is filming right now... in baltimore

The new Netflix political drama "House of Cards" is now in production in the Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. areas. The casting directors are auditioning actors in New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore/D.C. for guest starring, recurring, and day player roles. In addition to the acting roles, many extras are being hired throughout the season. "House of Cards" will be based on the BBC miniseries of the same name. That original BBC version was based on a novel from British author Michael Dobbs. Netflix has ordered two seasons of episodes.

Starring in "House of Cards" is two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey as Rep. Frank Underwood, a House of Representatives Majority Whip who, after not being appointed Secretary of State, derives a plan to bring down the new president and take over the Oval Office. Golden Globe Award nominee Robin Wright plays Frank's wife Claire Underwood; Kate Mara is playing Zoe Barnes, a reporter for a Washington paper who conspires with Underwood to land a killer scoop; Michael Gill plays U.S. President Garrett Walker; two-time Tony nominee Jayne Atkinson is Sen. Catherine Durant; Corey Stoll landed the role of womanizing Rep. Patrick Russo, and Kristen Connolly plays Russo's Executive Assistant Christina Malone with whom he has a torrid affair.

i tried to watch this recently, i found it oddly unamenable. does it become less arch after the first ten minutes?

Kate Mara = Rooney's older sister.

does it become less arch after the first ten minutes?

― human centipede hz (thomp)

Oh it's incredibly arch. I still love it.

The archness is great! He's like Richard III talking to the audience about his vile plans.

Boo hiss arch! This is one of the best tv shows of all time and an excellent primer for anyone interested in the way power, corruption and influence works in society. They should show it in schools instead of pse or civics lessons.

That scene chap posted upthread is pure choreography.

who's psyched

i'm curious

I’ve just finished enjoying watching the first episode for free and my head is spinning that I can watch the rest of the series in one go right away if I subscribe, mixed feelings about the idea, but very tempted to keep going tonight.

this is pretty good so far. spacey was a good choice

So far so good, one episode in. Makes sense that the show's creator also wrote The Ides of March. This won't give you new insight into politics, but everybody does great work all around.

Fincher sure loves diagonals.

Love how he shoots the first newsroom scene, since we all know we're looking at THE WASHINGTON POST.

Also nice seeing Constance Zimmer do something very different from Dana Gordon on Entourage.

I also love that Netflix basically released a 13-hour, $100 million movie today, seemingly without offering it early to critics. Now they're catching up in a way that reminds me of...was it Mason & Dixon or some other doorstop that wasn't released in advance?

I'm on episode two, enjoying it. Spacey outclasses his castmates and fakey-WashPost and not-the-Kennedy-Center made me giggle but for the most part it's totally diggable. And unlike the premiere of The Americans, there's no rape scene in the first 20 minutes!

Is the narration to the camera an import from the UK series?

the exterior of fakey-washpost is the baltimore sun bldg

Is the narration to the camera an import from the UK series?

yes

my other initial impression here is that Netflix made its big play and "hit it out of the park" or some sports metaphor

and yes Morbius, the villain is a dem

The toxicity of Spacey has earmarked this for the dustbin of history, where it was probably headed anyway after the indifferent reaction to Season 5. There’s a trailer out there for Season 6--they’re finishing up without Spacey.

Just finished rewatching the whole thing, something I started before knowing there’d be a Season 6. Liked it a lot the second time through--even most of Season 5.

What I still didn’t like about Season 5. 1) The arc, or whatever you want to call it, is just weird. It starts on Election Day, I think, so you assume the election will happen and then they’ll move on. They stretch that out, though--not for as long as it felt like the first time, but it’s still not resolved midway through. And then, instead of complicating the narrative further and riding that out till the end, the election is resolved with three or four episodes still to go. 2) I don’t like the way they take Conway, initially a sharp contrast to Underwood, and turn him into this sad ghost of a character. I think they could have handled that some other way. 3) Frank’s big soliloquy in the Senate before resigning is one platitude after another about how corrupt the system is. 4) Frank’s “this was all planned” in the final episode. Maybe true, maybe not--he sounds really phony trying to sell the idea to Claire. But either way, there’s just too much to process if you want to test the validity of what he says.

Having said all that, I still found most of it absorbing, and three of the new characters are great: Usher, Jane Davis, and Macallan, the NSA hacker. (Macallan might have first appeared the previous season.) Davis and Macallan are bizarre--I don’t know that I ever understood either one of them. I loved how Davis was constantly appearing out of nowhere and whispering in somebody’s ear: she was a more lethal sidler than the sidler character on Seinfeld. And Macallan was shadowy, a little mad (that scene of him dancing with his headphones on), and tragic, doomed to disappear. I hope Usher and Davis are back for the final season.

It's amazing, not knowing what what was in store for Spacey, how perfectly Season 5 ends if you ever did need to carry on without him. But they'll still need to work in some kind of an explanation for his absence. Which is kind of weird: they'll need to explain something nobody actually needs explained. (If they simply never mentioned Frank Underwood again, it's not like anybody watching would be confused.)

four days before the midterms . . . sneaky sneaky

I think it's going to be you, me, and Robin Wright's immediate family watching.

I'm still going to watch. A glutton for punishment.

That ending was shite.

the "surprises" throughout shouldn't have been so predictable. still i dig robin wright's mika brzezinski impression

Was the whole season released? I can get it from my brother-in-law if they did it that way; if it's week-by-week, I'll have to wait.

whole thing -- eight episodes -- is out

Thanks. Will get hold of this pronto.

First episode had a few effective moments. I wish someone had had enough of a sense of humour to add Kevin Spacey's name to the "In Loving Memory" end-credit, though.

Man this season blew.

Tried the first episode and it was dire. Could be a while before I'm bored enough to get through the whole season.

I loved Tom Hammerschmidt flipping out in the second episode: "Analytics?! What the fuck does that even mean!" He was talking about the newspaper industry, not baseball, but I'd love to have a video clip of that on standby.

I'm not hating it so far. Kinnear-Lane aren't especially compelling as villains, but I did like Wright's "Your brother?" riposte. I don't know...they've been scrambling since at least the third or fourth season, and this just seems like more of the same minus Spacey. It still looks good.

kinnear is good i think. surprised by how poor an actress lane comes off as, at least through the first five episodes (got the last three still to go)

I'm a little confused after three episodes, but I think I've been confused since season 4. (The focus seems to be Claire covering up her tracks...I thought they were past that by now.) I continue to love Patricia Clarkson's character, even though--or because--I've never had a clue what she actually does, or why she has the president's ear. She just pops up here and there, acts distracted and conspiratorial and evil at the same time (great shot of her sitting in the restaurant waiting for Durant), then goes away.

I thought Kinnear and Lane were good, but I had a hard time buying these two people who were never mentioned once in previous seasons were supposed to have been so powerful all along. It's one of several things that felt like a huge disconnect to previous years that showed the rushed nature of the writing.

The point where I suddenly felt like the show had gone too far was when they were all sitting around very openly discussing assassination with what seemed to be mid-level staffers. I realize this show has been preposterous since Spacey threw the woman in front of a train but this seemed like a step too far.

Obviously the show isn't going forward after this, but what the fuck happens to Janice?

Patricia Clarkson is so amazing and beautiful and badass she should have been in it more.

maybe the best parts of the series were when they were talking about erasing francis underwood and it worked as a completely non subtle commentary on Spacey.

also it's not clear at all how much time had passed from the last season to this one but why was Tom's body completely fresh when it showed up? Did the VP have it in his private cryogenic freezer?

All good questions, especially the heretofore invisibility of Kinnear and Lane. Plausibility has never been a big concern on this show.

Forgot to mention the subtle incorporation of Rosemary's Baby into Claire's movie night (I thought it was going to be Double Indemnity again). Just the theme song, no visuals. Not sure if there's any symbolic connection there.

Handling Spacey's disappearance as basically an "I have to go now, my planet needs me" kludge was really hamfisted. "oh yeah he died btw".

What the world needs now is robin Wright looking dramatic like I need a hole in my head

The big disconnect for me after five episodes is the sudden reemergence of Rachel Posner. Wasn't that all settled two or three seasons ago? Or is Doug Stamper still on the hook for her? I liked Claire throwing the door open to her new cabinet. They really got fouled up by Trump winning--the show was so clearly aiming towards running concurrently with a Clinton presidency. (When they do try to shoehorn Trump in--the 25th amendment, secret meetings with Russians--it's awkwardly transparent.)

W G A S
G
A
F

You're giving me clues about Rachel's centrality to everything...No you're not--you're asking me why I care. I don't really; I'm watching, trying to figure everything out, posting. That's what we do here.

"Barzini's dead. So is Phillip Tattaglia...Moe Greene...Strachi...Cuneo...Today I settled all family business"--when all else fails, turn to The Godfather.

Loved the end of episode 7. They've gone totally Grand Guignol at this point--along with that previous Godfather flourish, they've now made the Rosemary's Baby connection explicit, and they've even thrown some Night of the Hunter in there too. I think that's all they could have done; I'm glad they didn't get earnest and explanatory (we'll see what the final episode brings).

As much as I liked all the things I singled out above, the finale was quite silly. There's a lot of funny lines in this:

http://www.vulture.com/2018/11/house-of-cards-recap-season-6-episode-8-finale.html

I liked the reappearance of Walter Doyle. Even he couldn't get a handle on what the hell going on.

One thing that was ultimately pointless, I thought, were all those flashbacks to Claire's youth. I expected them to lead up to some crucial revelation--circumstantial, or about her personality--but I'm not sure they added much of anything.

foregrounding rosemary's baby with lysistrata to frame flashback claire and president claire's lone convo was a nice final note on that arc in ways i can't get into without being spoilery and same deal with her final convo with 'douglas'. spotty final season though for sure! spacey may be a creep (and the game they play in the last episode with his voice maybe tasteless?) but it's hard not to hear that southern H sometimes ~ "wHy claire" ~ in the silence where it seems his part's been written out

avocado abortion lmao

Didn't attach any significance to it last time I watched a couple of years ago--other than it typified how progressively crazy the show got the last two or three seasons--but it's very tempting right now to see the Underwoods' attempts to overturn/meddle with the 2016 election through the prism of Trump the last couple of months. Not similar in specifics, but in broad strokes--create as much chaos as you can if you're sure to lose, and hold fast to the premise that the office belongs to you--not all that different. James Poniewozik's Audience of One argues that everything Trump does can somehow be traced to all the TV he has absorbed through his life, going all the way back to childhood. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he's familiar with House of Cards, and that S4 is buried somewhere in his feverish insanity as of late.

(Season 5, I should say.)

I alluded to this exchange a couple of years ago, but I've got quote the whole thing--really enjoying the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? aspects of the Claire-Annette dynamic this time around.

Claire: "I don't think your brother is gonna let up, Annette. Until he gets his ring kissed directly, I think."

Annette: "Reminds me of someone you were married to."

Claire: "Oh, no. Bill and Francis are very different people."

Anette: "Agreed. You know I slept with him once."

Claire: "Your brother?"

Almost three years--I've got to revisit this every so often.

I bet I asked this above somewhere, but: in S1, Peter Russo's self-implosion sets in motion the events that lead to Frank becoming VP, everything orchestrated by Frank himself. But that all starts with the watershed bill being defeated, and Frank seems genuinely enraged about that (and about Claire's betrayal on the bill). If the bill had passed, though, how does he then become VP? The plan that seems so carefully worked out after the bill goes down, did Frank just improvise everything on the spot?