I was surprised how good this was. I think I liked it more than the first season. Certainly as far as political machinations, there seemed to be stronger opponents, and therefore, a more interesting fight.
Yeah, that's one of the things I've liked about this season so far. The opposition is much stronger. In S1 you had Zoe, the head of the teacher's union, and Tusk at the very end. None of which, save for Tusk, could be seen as being in Frank's league. This season really does seem like "rebellion on all fronts" though. Lots of capable opponents lurking....
And e5 spoilers:
Love Franks call to fight a war of attrition with Tusk. Badass.
And that's my episode fill for the night. Trying to limit myself to 2 episodes a day going forward to make this last awhile.
Reporter dude is digging a big hole by trying to hack Franks phone, there's nothing at the bottom of it though since Frank was using a burner that night.
Liked how things turned out in episode five. Even though I'm not necessarily rooting for Frank, I just really hated...
...how fucking stupid Goodwin was. He just couldn't win, even if it would have been the "right thing." I also loved that he doesn't get that, like, what he was doing was totally fucking illegal. You got caught, man. Yes, it was a trap, but you got caught breaking the law trying to prove somebody broke a bigger law.
We'd seen Frank break a few eggs throughout the show, but honestly most of them I didn't care so much about. Most were either kinda assholes or deep in the game so they get what they get. But man...
...I'm with Claire. I want to see Tusk suffer now. Freddy was a good dude trying to do good things, he was barely on the edge of the game, and he just got wrecked.
We'd seen Frank break a few eggs throughout the show, but honestly most of them I didn't care so much about. Most were either kinda assholes or deep in the game so they get what they get. But man...
...I'm with Claire. I want to see Tusk suffer now. Freddy was a good dude trying to do good things, he was barely on the edge of the game, and he just got wrecked.
Ep 9 spoilers
Freddy was literally just a guy who made good ribs who happened to know the VP. He literally had zero ulterior motives beyond trying to make an honest living. Nothing like that can really be said about the people the Underwoods have taken down. The closest to that was Lucas but even he decided to commit his own felony along the way.
I know we aren't really meant to root for Underwood but as other major players make their moves I'm having a really hard time not rooting for his methods.
Is that the first time Frank has directly addressed the viewer as a person? That combined with the cuff links seemed way more fourth wall breaking than the first season. But it did make for a pretty amazing "fuck yeah here we go, House of Cards is back" sort of ending.
How do you mean?
Usually he just talks. Most of his speeches could be taken as an almost internal monologue, his thoughts to himself on any given situation. At the end of ep1, he says something along the lines of "Did you think I forgot about you?" specifically addressing the viewer rather than just talking at them.
Yeah, that and also the "Welcome back" at the end openly acknowledging that it's the start of a second season. Plus the "F U" cufflinks were essentially a direct message from the writers to the viewers.
It's breaking the fourth wall in a more direct and grating way. In season one it was used to ingratiate the audience to Underwood and get us in his confidence, now it's far more separate.
I have to say that while I love the show for its writing, its characters etc, there's a bunch of things I really hate about it. It's the faux Machiavellianism that only works because every other character is an incompetent idiot. It's the abstraction of policy and issues to the degree that the only things that matter are the negotiations and manipulations that deal with policy, but not the effects of that policy. Because of that, we're made to root for Underwood's policies even if the show admits that they're awful and damage the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Furthermore the reduction of political issues to merely being the products of personal issues is petty and shallow as hell.
Personally my favorite character is Blythe (and this is at e4)
I really like that in this show none of the policy stuff actually matters. Its just all wheeling and dealing all the time.
We'd seen Frank break a few eggs throughout the show, but honestly most of them I didn't care so much about. Most were either kinda assholes or deep in the game so they get what they get. But man...
...I'm with Claire. I want to see Tusk suffer now. Freddy was a good dude trying to do good things, he was barely on the edge of the game, and he just got wrecked.
Ep 9 spoilers
Freddy was literally just a guy who made good ribs who happened to know the VP. He literally had zero ulterior motives beyond trying to make an honest living. Nothing like that can really be said about the people the Underwoods have taken down. The closest to that was Lucas but even he decided to commit his own felony along the way.
I know we aren't really meant to root for Underwood but as other major players make their moves I'm having a really hard time not rooting for his methods.
Yeah exactly, I wasn't so much rooting for the Underwoods as I was for Tusk to be utterly demolished after he ruined Freddy. Like the Underwoods are still not good people but Tusk? Sometimes Koch brothers stand-ins gotta get got
The Doug/Rachel thing is just.....anyway, episode 12:
...I don't know what to think of their relationship. Doug is creepy as fuck, we'll get that out of the way. But I think he legitimately cares about her, too. I think all his attempts to isolate her are also to insulate her, because he knows exactly what dots she connects and he knows what can easily happen if the wrong person shows up. She'll wind up dead in a running car, or thrown in front of a train. She's a potential link in a murder investigation of the Vice President, and while a shitty call center job and lonely apartment suck as far as a life goes, they may or may not beat dying.
I think his jealousy played a role in making her kick her girlfriend out, but honestly I think the ongoing investigation was a bigger part. The ironic bit, of course, being that it's Super Hacker tracing him repeatedly to her apartment that will likely lead to her being placed in more danger. He wound up exposing her more than her girlfriend ever would have.
Any more than you're meant to root for Richard III or Macbeth.
I think that the show wants to be an indictment on Frank but it's too enamored of his competence. And if the show really wanted to show Frank as an anti-hero it wouldn't work by his logic, which is that any character with a set of beliefs is at the deepest core just a naive version of someone with an almost sociopathic drive for power.
Weirdly I thought season one ended showing him to be not as competent as he thought, he basically got real lucky and was able to take the advantage after getting out maneuvered by Tusk.
He's back on form now though and it'll be interesting seeing where that battle goes.
Once Frank knew who Raymond was, he managed to get what he wanted pretty easily. His gambit with Sancorp didn't work, but he knew he wasn't able to destroy him with the climate being what it was, so he did the next best thing
The Doug/Rachel thing is just.....anyway, episode 12:
...I don't know what to think of their relationship. Doug is creepy as fuck, we'll get that out of the way. But I think he legitimately cares about her, too. I think all his attempts to isolate her are also to insulate her, because he knows exactly what dots she connects and he knows what can easily happen if the wrong person shows up. She'll wind up dead in a running car, or thrown in front of a train. She's a potential link in a murder investigation of the Vice President, and while a shitty call center job and lonely apartment suck as far as a life goes, they may or may not beat dying.
I think his jealousy played a role in making her kick her girlfriend out, but honestly I think the ongoing investigation was a bigger part. The ironic bit, of course, being that it's Super Hacker tracing him repeatedly to her apartment that will likely lead to her being placed in more danger. He wound up exposing her more than her girlfriend ever would have.
I think he genuinely cares for her but is going about it in an explicitly abusive way. And quite simply the guy's been letting it interfere with what he's supposed to be doing way too much. I really liked him at first too.
I have to say I'm also pleasantly surprised by the hacker side story.
Yeah, Quid, that side plot is going better than I expected.
I don't recall if we ever got much of Doug's backstory, but I suspect he's pretty deeply damaged, which could help explain why that's the form his concern takes.
Yeah that was a hell of a season. spoilers through ep 13:
Freddy noooo I hope he lands on his feet
Doug noooo (asshole but deserved better than that)
the list of people fucked over the maneuvering between Frank and Tusk (and other players) is an astonishingly long one when you sit down to think about it
Yeah that was a hell of a season. spoilers through ep 13:
Freddy noooo I hope he lands on his feet
Doug noooo (asshole but deserved better than that)
the list of people fucked over the maneuvering between Frank and Tusk (and other players) is an astonishingly long one when you sit down to think about it
In fairness Doug brought that shit on himself. I think he was being way over concerned with her than he needed to be. Rachel's one of the few characters I feel genuinely bad for.
Doug treated Rachel like a new addiction. He was an alcoholic and instead of going back to the bottle, Rachel became his new fucked up addiction. He had this narrative in his head he wanted to have. He wanted to just have her as his little secret stash that he could go back to when things were hard to make himself feel good. He treated her like a drug instead of like a person, and every time she tried to be a person he sabotaged it. He had moments where he tried to let her go, tried to see her as a human being with needs, but the addiction kept crawling back and then he'd fuck things up for her again.
It doesn't mean he deserved to die but ultimately like many addicts it is his addiction that destroyed him.
And in the end, like many addicts what Doug did is going to have repercussions for the people closest to him. Rachel murdered him, and stole his car to get away. Eventually, she's going to get caught and when she gets caught she's going to tell everything to try to save herself.
Moreover, Doug was the hacker's insurance policy. Doug just got done having a conversation with that guy, and with Doug no longer in the picture the hacker isn't going to feel secure that his deal with the FBI is going to be honored and he's going to end up doing things in response. Things that could have serious repercussions for Frank. This isn't the last we've seen of that guy, I don't think.
Man, Walker is like the dumbest politician ever. Obviously Frank is brilliant evil incarnate...he can turn even colossal fuckups around into gains to amazing it makes it look like that was his intent all along...but watching how easily he balled up Walker and threw him away was just sad. And honestly, I'm not sure Walker even knows what happened. He doesn't seem to.
So we're all in agreement that Doug was gonna kill Rachel, right? That whole clusterfuck is gonna get ugly next season. It's funny that Doug apparently had no idea who he was talking to with hacker duder (whose name escapes me), because if he did he'd realize that Rachel didn't say shit.
And if it wasn't vaguely spoilerific, "Handcuffs were another thing to check off my bucket list" should be the thread title.
I am enjoying Tusk and Frank. Tusk is not the push over he seemed to be. He is a proper adversary for Frank at the moment. I am enjoying watching him fight for the presidents ear.
The back channels with Pheng was good. I think it was a reference to Nixon or it was to me. I know the first visit to China pretty well and some similar things occurred but Zhou Enlai was able to fix it through back channels where Frank sabotaged it. But that is probably my IR nerd coming through.
The Civil War description was nice. I like how Frank refuses to be bullied though he is a prick.
Also thank god Goodwin so far is right proper fucked. The man was an idiot and deserves what he gets.
Chunked through this in 2 days (Would've marathoned it over Valentine's, but I had games and SOs to tend to)
Holy shit.
I didn't think he would do it. Then he did it. He took down the president.
I will fully admit watching him touch the desk in the Oval Office gave me a shiver (In the good way)
I don't how they can top that without him tearing down other world leaders
I think the third season will be
The Fall of Frank Underwood.
Watch him take as many people as he can with him.
+4
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carcinogenicLord of NothingOn the other side of the mirror. Help?Registered Userregular
Finished it today.
Holy shit. I don't think I've ever been more blown away by a season of a show ever. I'm not even going to try to throw in a spoiler tag and talk about cool shit. It'd take like 2,000 words. Per episode.
Goddamn. That was some good watching.
Now what the fuck else am I supposed to do with my life?
My biggest problem with this show is that Walker is simply too stupid and too naive and too weak to have realistically been elected President. The man seemed utterly at a loss at all times.
This wasn't a huge deal in season one, because Walker was mostly in the background, but this season, where he's center-stage, it's just completely unbelievable and kind of kills the show for me. I love watching Frank's machinations, but I'd really like him to have a worthy opponent, and neither Tusk nor Walker were truly serious opposition.
Walker was...yeah, I agree. Like I don't expect everybody to be up to the Frank level of political machinations, but this guy was complete bush league.
My biggest problem with this show is that Walker is simply too stupid and too naive and too weak to have realistically been elected President. The man seemed utterly at a loss at all times.
This wasn't a huge deal in season one, because Walker was mostly in the background, but this season, where he's center-stage, it's just completely unbelievable and kind of kills the show for me. I love watching Frank's machinations, but I'd really like him to have a worthy opponent, and neither Tusk nor Walker were truly serious opposition.
Yeah, I think it's a combination of the script making him look like an idiot in many cases and the fact that the role seems to have been miscast (a rare miss for a series that has had otherwise perfect casting.) He plays like some dude who would've gotten destroyed early in the primaries. As for his naivete, I keep reminding myself that this is a country that elected GWB. So, yeah. I just picture Walker as a democrat version of W and it becomes easier to believe he'd be easily manipulated. So, his being sort of an idiot I can buy, but the fact that a dude who apparently has zero charisma got elected to the highest office in the land.......not so much.
yeah I kept thinking Walker was just playing naive and had a lot more cards than people gave him credit for (which is the kind of person who can make it to the presidency), but he's really kind of a fool and doesn't have the charisma to win without the kind of cunning frank has
We'd seen Frank break a few eggs throughout the show, but honestly most of them I didn't care so much about. Most were either kinda assholes or deep in the game so they get what they get. But man...
...I'm with Claire. I want to see Tusk suffer now. Freddy was a good dude trying to do good things, he was barely on the edge of the game, and he just got wrecked.
Ep 9 spoilers
Freddy was literally just a guy who made good ribs who happened to know the VP. He literally had zero ulterior motives beyond trying to make an honest living. Nothing like that can really be said about the people the Underwoods have taken down. The closest to that was Lucas but even he decided to commit his own felony along the way.
I know we aren't really meant to root for Underwood but as other major players make their moves I'm having a really hard time not rooting for his methods.
It also ticked me off as someone from the DC area, like Northeast DC (which is where Freddy's looks like it is judging from the architecture and the fact that it's still majority black) is still a rough neighborhood, and the suburbs can get really rough. I've worked in low wage industries through my whole time as a grad student and I've worked with a ton of ex cons, so the idea of an ex con running a restaurant doesn't surprise me at all. Now all this went away when his son pulled a gun on someone but it was really aggravating because not only has Freddy done nothing wrong, he's a good guy and I know a hell of a lot more guys like Freddy and his son than any other characters in the show
And yeah outside of the spoilers, Walker is the biggest example of nearly every major politician in the show needing to be an idiot for the premise (super intelligent manipulator guy lies his way to the presidency) to work. Like if Blythe can see through Frank's shit, how the hell can someone not see through Frank's shit and still get the highest office in the land.
I chalk it up to the fact that Tusk had been stacking the Democrats for years. Walker was a protege of his and I wager was almost definitely unwittingly funded through Tusk so that he'd have major influence in the white house.
Posts
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
No one can take a McPoyle seriously.
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Gave me goosebumps.
Naw, I think weird piss sex stuff is the natural progression for a McPoyle.
Yeah, that's one of the things I've liked about this season so far. The opposition is much stronger. In S1 you had Zoe, the head of the teacher's union, and Tusk at the very end. None of which, save for Tusk, could be seen as being in Frank's league. This season really does seem like "rebellion on all fronts" though. Lots of capable opponents lurking....
And e5 spoilers:
And that's my episode fill for the night. Trying to limit myself to 2 episodes a day going forward to make this last awhile.
Fucking McPoyles.
Liked how things turned out in episode five. Even though I'm not necessarily rooting for Frank, I just really hated...
We'd seen Frank break a few eggs throughout the show, but honestly most of them I didn't care so much about. Most were either kinda assholes or deep in the game so they get what they get. But man...
Also apparently is now chief White House correspondent for CBS? What?
Ep 9 spoilers
I know we aren't really meant to root for Underwood but as other major players make their moves I'm having a really hard time not rooting for his methods.
I really like that in this show none of the policy stuff actually matters. Its just all wheeling and dealing all the time.
so fucking good
this show is amazing
Yeah saw that coming.
Homeboy has no idea what he's getting into. Swimming with some damn sharks.
I think his jealousy played a role in making her kick her girlfriend out, but honestly I think the ongoing investigation was a bigger part. The ironic bit, of course, being that it's Super Hacker tracing him repeatedly to her apartment that will likely lead to her being placed in more danger. He wound up exposing her more than her girlfriend ever would have.
Once Frank knew who Raymond was, he managed to get what he wanted pretty easily. His gambit with Sancorp didn't work, but he knew he wasn't able to destroy him with the climate being what it was, so he did the next best thing
I have to say I'm also pleasantly surprised by the hacker side story.
I don't recall if we ever got much of Doug's backstory, but I suspect he's pretty deeply damaged, which could help explain why that's the form his concern takes.
nononononononono
Can't predict shit.
Doug noooo (asshole but deserved better than that)
the list of people fucked over the maneuvering between Frank and Tusk (and other players) is an astonishingly long one when you sit down to think about it
It doesn't mean he deserved to die but ultimately like many addicts it is his addiction that destroyed him.
And in the end, like many addicts what Doug did is going to have repercussions for the people closest to him. Rachel murdered him, and stole his car to get away. Eventually, she's going to get caught and when she gets caught she's going to tell everything to try to save herself.
Moreover, Doug was the hacker's insurance policy. Doug just got done having a conversation with that guy, and with Doug no longer in the picture the hacker isn't going to feel secure that his deal with the FBI is going to be honored and he's going to end up doing things in response. Things that could have serious repercussions for Frank. This isn't the last we've seen of that guy, I don't think.
So we're all in agreement that Doug was gonna kill Rachel, right? That whole clusterfuck is gonna get ugly next season. It's funny that Doug apparently had no idea who he was talking to with hacker duder (whose name escapes me), because if he did he'd realize that Rachel didn't say shit.
And if it wasn't vaguely spoilerific, "Handcuffs were another thing to check off my bucket list" should be the thread title.
I didn't think he would do it. Then he did it. He took down the president.
I will fully admit watching him touch the desk in the Oval Office gave me a shiver (In the good way)
I don't how they can top that without him tearing down other world leaders
Season 2 episode 5 and 6 spoilers.
The back channels with Pheng was good. I think it was a reference to Nixon or it was to me. I know the first visit to China pretty well and some similar things occurred but Zhou Enlai was able to fix it through back channels where Frank sabotaged it. But that is probably my IR nerd coming through.
The Civil War description was nice. I like how Frank refuses to be bullied though he is a prick.
Also thank god Goodwin so far is right proper fucked. The man was an idiot and deserves what he gets.
I think the third season will be
Watch him take as many people as he can with him.
Holy shit. I don't think I've ever been more blown away by a season of a show ever. I'm not even going to try to throw in a spoiler tag and talk about cool shit. It'd take like 2,000 words. Per episode.
Goddamn. That was some good watching.
Now what the fuck else am I supposed to do with my life?
This wasn't a huge deal in season one, because Walker was mostly in the background, but this season, where he's center-stage, it's just completely unbelievable and kind of kills the show for me. I love watching Frank's machinations, but I'd really like him to have a worthy opponent, and neither Tusk nor Walker were truly serious opposition.
Walker was...yeah, I agree. Like I don't expect everybody to be up to the Frank level of political machinations, but this guy was complete bush league.
Yeah, I think it's a combination of the script making him look like an idiot in many cases and the fact that the role seems to have been miscast (a rare miss for a series that has had otherwise perfect casting.) He plays like some dude who would've gotten destroyed early in the primaries. As for his naivete, I keep reminding myself that this is a country that elected GWB. So, yeah. I just picture Walker as a democrat version of W and it becomes easier to believe he'd be easily manipulated. So, his being sort of an idiot I can buy, but the fact that a dude who apparently has zero charisma got elected to the highest office in the land.......not so much.
I'd say Tusk is a worthy opponent though.
And yeah outside of the spoilers, Walker is the biggest example of nearly every major politician in the show needing to be an idiot for the premise (super intelligent manipulator guy lies his way to the presidency) to work. Like if Blythe can see through Frank's shit, how the hell can someone not see through Frank's shit and still get the highest office in the land.
Great catch, Raiden's friend!