House of Cards has a serious Claire problem. I don’t mean in the way she’s written or performed – although I do have issues with both – but in the way the show approaches her. HoC is head over heels in love with Claire; I haven’t seen a show this enamored of one of its characters since Crossbones. In trying to make Claire a bigger political presence, House of Cards has almost totally sabotaged the character. A smart woman is making dumb decisions, but the show is too close to be objective. She keeps failing up. It’s a given at this point that if Claire wants something, she’s going to get it, with minimal resistance.
And what will her legacy be? She’ll be remembered as the power-mad First Lady who undermined every decision the president made, and who couldn’t even pretend to give a shit when he went into surgery (of course, in this bizarro world, that will surely make her poll numbers rise). She’ll be remembered for completely throwing Cathy Durant under the bus, in front of the president of Russia, which will surely make Cathy’s job easier in the future. Granted, Claire shows some political savvy, but that’s because the show wants her to. Her failed bid as a UN ambassador was so much more humanizing than this route the show has taken. House of Cards isn’t making Claire smarter – it’s making everyone else dumber.
And this bugs me because I like Claire – or at least I did. But it seems as though HoC is hell-bent on torpedoing any goodwill it had acquired for its reliably great portrayal of strong women. Jackie, like everyone else in Washington, is now at Claire’s mercy since Claire has incriminating photos of her and Remy. Heather Dunbar wants to get ahead of the Lucas Goodwin scandal, and refuses Cynthia Driscoll’s advice to perjure herself. She admits, under oath and on camera, to meeting one-on-one with Lucas, which Doug sums up pretty well: “She’s done.” (Needless to say, Driscoll almost immediately jumps ship and calls Seth asking for work.) And Cathy Durant is shown to be as incapable as Donald Blythe. None of these people, you see, are competent on their own; they need Claire to throw them a bone. Claire very graciously lets Cathy take the credit for brokering the China-Russia deal.
So every woman on the show, with the exception of Claire (and arguably Leann Harvey) comes out looking meek, incompetent, weak-willed, and disloyal. Not great, given this show’s track record. Claire just looks like a smug bully; when told that Petrov will only meet with a head of state, she responds, “See if he’ll meet with the president’s wife.” Naturally Petrov says yes, because by HoC‘s moon-logic, a first lady is a far more appropriate choice for negotiation than a Secretary of State.
“Chapter 45” wasn’t a complete shit-show, so let’s talk about what worked before I inevitably get derailed. I’m glad Frank woke up; it’ll be nice to see how he deals with the fallout from all of Claire’s actions (although if the end is any indication, he and everyone else will go along with whatever she wants). His hallucinations were getting tiresome – you can really only get away with hallucinations for one, maybe two episodes – but it was nice to see the return of Zoe Barnes and Peter Russo. I always admire this show’s commitment to weirdness, and it doesn’t get much weirder than whatever that dream-threesome was. This is a show about the president, remember.
It’s nice, too, to finally hear some more chatter about Governor Conway, the Republican contender for president. I thought he was going to be a much bigger plot point than he turned out to be, but I also thought Frank was going to be much more un-shot than he turned out to be, so that’s forgivable. It’d be nice to see House of Cards turn its attention back to the election, although with Dunbar admitting to meeting Lucas, and Frank surviving an assassination attempt, is an election really necessary?
In a lot of ways “Chapter 45” was the worst episode of season four. (At least I hope it was.) This show needs to take a big fucking step back from Claire and approach her like an actual character, because right now she’s invincible and is always proven right, like Superman written by Aaron Sorkin. But beyond that, House of Cards has always been a great ensemble show. Now it’s just the Claire show.
A Few Thoughts
- That kid who killed himself was played, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, by the wildly talented Devin Druid, who stole the show in one of the best episodes of Louie
- I love Doug’s hardline approach to getting Frank bumped up on the donor list: “Change your ethics or resign.”
- I thought it was very sweet of Frank to ask about Meechum almost as soon as he woke up.
- That was a lovely rendition of the show’s theme song at the end there.
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