House of Cards

just marathoned through season 1 & 2 over 2 weeks, good stuff. I agree with the people who say its good but not great, way too many "wait... how the fuck did he or she get away with that" bullshit, but then again, when you think how fucked up american politics are maybe its not too much of a stretch to think there are so many goddamn idiots there.

it should have been paced a bit better though, stuff started happening way too fast at the end especially for a place like washington. could have cut out a bunch of boring shit in the middle, that whole rape storyline got strung out too long. it also sucks there weren't any good enemies for frank, while tusk, asian and black guy were sorta interesting in season 1 in s2 they just became retards who didn't really do anything. i mean, shit, why doesn't a chinaman with $40b have like a thousand ninjas at his beck and call...

oh god why is buttercup getting secret service guy drunk whats her angle
i don't get it how would getting ssguy drunk help them get into the whitehouse
oh no its frank he's gonna fuck this guy up!
oh god no no no no no no NOOOOoooooo

Hey look, more pointless Frank bangs dudes bullshit.

cabbitcabbit_sl said:

Yeah, absolutely no point to it. Same with the 20 second

Spoiler

Threesome with Feng and auto-erotic asphyxiation

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thought the same thing.why is so important to know his sexual preferences?

Finally went through the last few episodes this weekend. Some of you are spoiled. Yes, the show has issues, and Frank probably outsmarts everyone a bit too easily. But c'mon, if this show came on 20 years ago, people would be calling it the greatest show ever. It's just the fact that overall, so many well written shows are being produced, that this falls a little short. For what it is though, I find it incredibly entertaining.

I think s2 suffered a little from two things. One is that Frank is legit too clever for his own good. That's a matter of pacing, and I'm willing to forgive it more readily because I'm aware of the time constraint they were facing.

The other is there was no mistress subplot. Instead of a scrappy junior reporter using her coochie for leverage we get an old man using his money. That's a manipulation that the viewer responds to without examining the response. Sex does sell. That aspect was integrated more seamlessly in s1 than in s2 -- the complaints about the 3ways in s2 illustrate that much. No one was complaining when Frank was fucking Zoe up the ass and calling her a whore, but that was serving the exact same purpose. That complaint I find to be less influential.

S1 was better than S2, after having let it sit for a while I agree with that. But S2 was still better than the entire run of Breaking Bad. I swear there's just no accounting for bad taste.

Yeah, that's all that BB had going for it though, and it did have that in spades -- the strength of the actors. Even Tom DeLancy managed to get out from under the shadow of Q. S4 is the only one that was as tightly written as S2 was for House of Cards.

Hey man, without Skylar I think BB would have been better than HoC. We tend to forget exactly how much padding there was was in BB, and focus on the gem scenes like when Walt watches the junkie asphixiate in her own puke.

Kind of wish they showed the threeway. Oh man...Kevin Spacey...wooof.

Kuriin_sl said:

Kind of wish they showed the threeway. Oh man...Kevin Spacey...wooof.

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TOO OLD

I dunno, for a show thats supposed to be so focused on politics, just a lot of little things made me frown. I realize its not set in "our" universe, since its the same year and month but a different President, but the country and people seem more or less the same. It felt a bit silly that a few months after your parties President resigns in a "china fundraising" scandal that the voters won't throw out enough of your party to lose the majority. Or that Underwood wouldn't be equally tainted with the scandal (he was the point man on all that fund raising!!) and also go through impeachment or at least be so hamstrung by in-fighting and republican maneuvering that he would be a completely ineffective leader.

They are probably saving that bullet for season 3, but the only way i thought Underwood would get a pass from the American people is if Claire died from the female marine or a whack job at the end of season 2. The grief stricken husband and anyone he calls a friend would get all the sympathy votes, with Spacey doing a camera-monologue at the end of how the people vote with their hearts, not their brains.

On the other hand the Clintons did have a pretty big scandal with foreign money influx back in the 90s, and as far as I recall it barely even touched them so maybe people wouldn't care that much, but then again the whole Clinton sex scandal took like 2 years to slowly wind its way through and in this show it all happened in under a month.

Iannis_sl said:

S4 is the only one that was as tightly written as S2 was for House of Cards.

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Dude, you just jumped the shark on commentary. Take a step back.

Nah, BB was no where near as good as it gets credit for. Individual scenes -- some of the best you'll find. Some great actors delivering truly captivating performances, and in the small context it deserves every bit of praise that it gets.

But taken as a whole more than 50% of the entire run is shit that, not only is not interesting it is frankly not even necessary. It's belabored. I would fast forward through. How many times does Walt, Jr. need to eat cereal? How many times does Skylar need to be debbie downer? How many times does Hank need to call Gomie a messican? The only time it wasn't unforgivably intrusive was in s4. BB moved too slow, much too slow. Any scene with a female in it is the writing equivalent of musical vamping. It serves a function of pacing, I get that -- but pacing doesn't have to be tedious. HoC s2 moved too fast, I'll grant you that, but while some of the scenes may have started to border on absurdism -- none of them werean intentional waste of time.

So yeah. Only s4 was as tight. For that one glorious season, Gillian decided to stop wasting our fucking time for a while and just went balls out.

Iannis_sl said:

Nah, BB was no where near as good as it gets credit for.(...) BB moved too slow, much too slow.(...)

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this

Are we at the point where it's cool to hate Breaking Bad now? You people are crazy

The 3 some definitely came out of nowhere and was completely unnecessary. As far as Frank always outsmarting everyone and things getting crazy, well no shit. That's the whole point of the show and politicians doing normal politician shit is boring as fuck. If you want realistic politics turn on C-SPAN and go hog wild.

Ambiturner_sl said:

That's the whole point of the show and politicians doing normal politician shit is boring as fuck. If you want realistic politics turn on C-SPAN and go hog wild.

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What a silly exaggeration of the complaints. S1 was great and showed other people outsmarting Frank or putting him in danger. S2 made Frank superhuman and superlucky.

I disagree Frank was far weaker in season 2 then he was in season 1.

Edit: And I am not sure that those of you who keep calling Frank lucky understand the difference between luck and working hard to decrease the probability of failure.

cabbitcabbit_sl said:

That being said this show is great. Not amazing though. Spacey and Wright pretty much carry it on their shoulders and every other character seems like background noise.

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Any problems with this show are outweighed by Spacey and Wright's magnetic performances. For s1 and s2, these are the only shows I couldn't put down until ep 13. We just watched them non-stop here.

Am I the only person who wishes Robin Wright had been cast as Cersei? Seriously she even looks like Jaime