House of Cards is crazy, slick, and in your face. And by the latter, I mean the protagonist Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) breaking the fourth wall and directly talking to you from the screen with his cold, deceiving eyes.
We fans have waited long for the show’s return and it’s back -- today! -- for round three. The Underwoods are in the White House, baby!
The whole show is a dramatized political opera that, unfortunately, got a little carried away last season with all the disjointed, sensational treachery within the capital. But this season, here is hoping President Underwood deals with a more complex Washington and America.
We’ve seen Underwood handle the teacher’s union in one episode, but they were hardly portrayed as a worthy adversary. Thus far, he has been up against a sophomoric journalist, several groveling politicians, a rich but out-of-touch political operative—and you never doubt that Underwood will crush them all.
Underwood is corrupt and power-hungry, he is doomed to fall from grace—but if House of Cards is going to be more intelligent satire than soap opera, we need to see some formidable opposition.
In U.S. politics today, the real world that television tries to reference even if on a superficial scale, the power of the elite—the group that Underwood is deeply entangled with—is breeding angry groups of Americans banning together to fight the way Washington works exclusively for the 1%.
When Underwood campaigns for public approval to legitimize his new power, he must face the will of the people and how he embodies everything that is shaking America’s durability as a peaceful republic. I want to feel the political unrest in
House of Cards that we see in the United States today and how grassroots movements like
Occupy Wall Street and
Stamp Stampede are pushing frustrated people into organized action.
Smiles and political rhetoric, the kind that Underwood displays as simple ways to placate the public, is actually passé. The public wants to see his brand of corruption rooted out. America is now several years into the emergence of the Occupy movement and now groups with similar anti-corruption goals are evolving, wising up, and strategically directing the empowered 99% to disrupt and change our ostracizing government.
Quick! Someone hand Underwood a dollar rubber-stamped with the message “Not to be used for bribing politicians” from the
Stamp Stampede campaign where silenced Americans have been forced to turn their money into media because, outside of being a millionaire, our politicians have gotten that unreachable.
This is what I want to see. I want to see non-profits organizing their members to bird-dog him, and then for Underwood to take these unruly acts seriously when he sees his approval polls dropping. As Underwood fights to keep his executive seat, I want to see this career puppet master deal with the enormous pressure and backlash that organized groups can bring.
We need our favorite Netflix anti-hero to deal with more than his kin of conniving individuals but the forceful tide of political and cultural change that these times are bringing. Alienated voters, “we the people,” regular Americans are agitated and joining movements to fight Underwood-esque corruption. The show should no longer be about his will to power versus the insiders in his way. It’s time Underwood starts to deal with the public now that he’s finally in the big man’s seat. Otherwise, the show and Frank Underwood will surely feel irrelevant.