It’s hard to imagine the happiness at Netflix when they realized that House of Cards — the company’s much-heralded premiere of self-produced original programming – would debut its complete 13-episode run on the same week that the U.S. Senate held hearing to confirm John Kerry as Secretary of State. After all, the updated American version of the 1990s BBC political drama launches with Kevin Spacey’s character, Congressman Frank Underwood, learning he won’t be nominated for that very position, a devastating insult that inspires his secret campaign to undermine the newly elected administration he pretends to serve. The show, it seemed, couldn’t be any more topical.
The problem for this new House of Cards is that despite this timely coincidence, the content of the show often feels curiously old-fashioned despite its innovative format. That’s squarely the fault of the writing; for every smart move that writer Beau Willimon (The Ides of March) makes in updating the basic setup and plot of the BBC original for a modern American audience, he undermines his good work with clumsy dialogue and scenes that are too on-the-nose and out-of-step with the kind of sophisticated, layered writing we’ve come to expect from shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad or even Game of Thrones.
How does the show demonstrate that Underwood is ruthless and a man to be reckoned with? In the very first scene, he personally kills a mangled dog that’s been hit by a car, while literally reporting to the viewer that he is the kind of guy who can do what needs to be done. When Underwood’s all-too-willing partner-in-crime, reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), initially tries to get his attention with a cleavage-revealing top, Underwood sneers, “It’s a cheap ploy.” “It’s cheap,” Barnes agrees, “but effective” — the kind of exchange that would feel more at home in 1940s film noir.
Similarly retro, and seemingly unintentionally so, is Barnes’ position at the paper she works for, the fictional Washington Herald. When we first meet her, she’s arguing for her own blog, a place where she can speak truth to power and make a mark as a serious journalist. Her dismissal at the hands of her editor and her peers feels like the sort of “oh, bloggers, they’re not even real journalists” scene that we’ve seen countless times before.
Considering how prevalent the web has become in our culture, and how internet-conscious newspapers are today, it doesn’t just feel redundant; it feels anachronistic. And when Barnes finally gets her big break — thanks to an underhanded scoop from Underwood — it’s hard not to be agog at how eager her editors and bosses are to let her without asking where she’s getting the information or how real it is. In a post-Judith Miller and Jayson Blair world, it feels particularly out of place.
The actors do the best they can with the material, which turns out to be quite a lot. Although Spacey’s smarmy, know-it-all politician initially feels unconvincing, he grows on you as you keep watching. His character has a habit of breaking the fourth wall — a quirk carried over from the BBC original — and every aside to the camera makes the viewer feel complicit in his dealings. There’s a point in the second episode where Spacey doesn’t even need to speak; in the middle of a conversation, he simply raises his eyebrow to the audience as if to say, “Can you believe this?” and you realize that you’ve been won over by his insincere charm despite yourself.
As impressive as Spacey’s somewhat-campy performance is, though, Robin Wright blows him out the water as Underwood’s wife, Claire. Clearly positioned as the Lady MacBeth of this scenario, she is utterly compelling in her brittle coldness and inability to accept any potential failure of the world to bend to her will. “My husband doesn’t apologize,” she tells him after he offers her a mea culpa for his bad behavior. “Even to me.”
What shines most, though, is the direction. David Fincher (The Social Network), who helms the first two episodes of the season, brings a lot of weight to this material, mitigating the script’s melodrama with lovely cinematography and building an appropriate sense of distance and scale into proceedings. This is a surprisingly beautiful series to look at; there’s a stillness and grace to the direction that manages to ground the story in something that isn’t “realism,” but feels naturalistic nonetheless. Despite the heavy-handed script, I found myself drawn into the show, eager to find out and especially to watch what happens next.
That’s one of the wins for the format that Netflix offers. If this were a traditional television series, I would have had to wait a week between the first and second episodes, and that would’ve colored my feelings about it rather differently. Being able to watch the next installment immediately after the first made me retroactively like the premiere more; I got to the pay-off more quickly, and to a second episode with more momentum and less awkward exposition.
Also a plus for Netflix: The episodes of the show can be whatever length they need to be, and not edited down (or filled out) to fit a time slot predetermined by broadcast schedules or commercial breaks. It’s not something that is immediately perceptible, but as time goes on you start to notice it; nothing feels rushed, or stretched out of natural shape, and the story flows more naturally.
In the end, House of Cards is a victory for Netflix. It may not be the greatest show on television — how likely was that to be the case with the company’s first try? – but it is a good show, and one that benefits significantly by being freed of the time and scheduling restrictions that television typically imposes. Think of it as the continuing evolution of the television series: As the cable channel model freed dramas from the mandatory demands of 20-odd episodes a season, the Netflix model frees them from mandatory running times or artificial cliffhangers preceding commercials. Whether or not something that doesn’t actually air on television could be described as “the future of television” is perhaps debatable, but if this is the beginning of that future, it’s off to a pretty good start.
All 13 episodes of House of Cards are currently available to watch on Netflix.
