Gotta know when to fold'em

This posting is not about one of my usual topics. It's about the Netflix show "House of Cards", specifically the final series. If you haven't seen that, what follows may include a few things that could  spoil your enjoyment of it -- although, if you do read on, you will see that I hardly think that would be possible. 


For better or worse I have watched every episode of House of Cards.  I started with the original UK series, which was dark and violent but spiced with a little dark humour.  It gave us the briefly popular expression, "You might think that; I couldn't possibly comment".

The first series of the US remake followed the original very closely -- sometimes, scene for scene. It was Netflix's first attempt at a prestige drama series, and once they realized they had a hit on their hands, they commissioned a whole lot more of it.  By the end of the recent (and final) series, there were more than 70 episodes. The plots became harder and harder to follow, but it always seemed reasonably plausible -- a Bizarro West Wing, if you like.

Then Kevin Spacey, who had played Senator-then-President Francis Underwood,  had his little fall from grace.  Filming for the final series was already under way.  Netflix and its producers could have just walked away right then, but they took the fateful decision to kill off Spacey's character and rewrite the remaining episodes around his widow and successor Claire Underwood, played by Robin Wright.

Bad mistake!  There have been long-running dramas before where the producers didn't quite know when enough was enough; the final series of The Wire is an obvious example.  However, that was a masterpiece compared to the last run-out of House of Cards, which is truly abysmal.  What went so badly wrong?  I think there were several factors at play.

The Spacey factor.  Kevin Spacey is a great actor.  In his best roles he combines a suave exterior with an unmistakable inner menace.  This made him perfect for the Underwood role.  The recurring motif of "breaking the fourth wall", lifted from the British original, allowed him to communicate his nefarious intentions to the audience with a quizzical grin, allowing viewers along for the ride as his schemes played out.

Robin Wright is a good actor, but not one with much facility at humour.  Her Claire Underwood is the ultimate ice maiden in every respect -- severe hairstyle, drab clothing, all-business dialogue. Her too-frequent breaches of the fourth wall are just menacing, rather than conspiratorial as Spacey's were.

The plot factor.  The usual approach for a final series is to tie up the loose ends in some surprising ways, allowing the audience a last chance to hang with some well-loved or cordially-hated characters. A number of characters from the earlier series of House of Cards play important roles in the final episodes, but the main players (apart from Claire Underwood) are two people we've never met before.  These are the Shepherd siblings, rich, rabidly right-wing, and evidently modelled on the Koch brothers.  Introducing these newbies inevitably required the kind of scene-setting that's normally taken care of in a first series.

The result of bringing in the Shepherds is that the plot very quickly becomes difficult to follow.  This isn't helped by the fact that the writing seems to be of a much lower calibre than before, possibly because of the rewriting needed to dispose of Kevin Spacey's role.  Even the directing seems to suffer.  If you want to sample the final series to see if I'm right about all this, just watch the fourth episode, a jumpy and incoherent mess.

The reality factor.  Even while Spacey was still on board, the show's producers were fretting that the real world (i.e. Trumpistan) had turned so crazy that they might never be able to top it in a fictional universe.  This seems to have seriously daunted them, and in response they didn't so much jump the shark as cartwheel over it and leave it floundering in their wake.  The final series has a higher body count than a two-hour session of Call of Duty, there are threats of nuclear Armageddon .. and by the time the credits roll for the final time, there are more loose ends than a dollar-store rug.

I once wrote here that the modern  tendency for series to bloat made one long for the return of a writer like Rod Serling, who could tell a complete story in less than thirty minutes.  House of Cards stands out as a sad example of what happens when financial considerations are allowed to trump all else.