‘House of Cards’ speaks to Trump’s America for better
Donald Trump might just be the end of Frank Underwood.
That’s the thought I kept having as I watched the 13 episodes of Season 5 of “House of Cards.”
There is no way the new season that arrives Tuesday on Netflix can be discussed without reference to Trump, who was elected in November while Season 5 was still in production in Baltimore. That inescapable connection to the man in the real White House is both a good and potentially bad thing for the series.
On the plus side, there is genuine pleasure in watching the series dramatically explore bits and pieces of the nation’s new Trumpian reality. It’s wicked but ultimately safe fun to see Underwood (Kevin Spacey) embracing his inner autocrat at the very time the real president is doing the same with travel bans, threats against the press and an avalanche of executive orders.
But the greater pleasure for me during the first four seasons was in witnessing Underwood’s shocking acts of transgression. And after Trump, they just don’t seem so shocking anymore. That’s the downside for “House of Cards.”
Underwood spitting in the face of a near-life-size Christ on a crucifix in Season 3 was appalling. But what Trump said on the “Access Hollywood” tape about grabbing women is pretty appalling, too. My biggest disappointment in Season 5: Nothing Underwood did made me gasp — or even sit up straight in my chair and wonder if I had really seen what I thought I did. There is nothing in this season that rivals Underwood opening Season 3 by urinating on his father’s grave.
That’s not necessarily the fault of the series or the result of showrunner Beau Willimon’s departure at the end of Season 4. I am more inclined to believe the change is in me — maybe in us as a culture — in the wake of Trump. Or maybe the shock factor for the series has simply maxed out.
There is still a lot to like about this series. The new showrunners, Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese, get all the forces of danger, darkness, treachery and chaos swirling in and around the White House of Frank and Claire Underwood, and “House of Cards” is still an outstanding political thriller.
Episode 1 mines the Trump vibe heavily. Underwood wants to formally declare war on the terrorist organization ICO (Islamic Caliphate Organization), protocol and Constitutional separation of powers be damned. A young American who was radicalized in Pakistan beheaded a man on U.S. soil, and the Underwoods are trying to exploit it in their 2016 presidential campaign against New York’s Republican governor, Will Conway (Joel Kinnaman).
As president and candidate for reelection, Underwood is full of talk about closing borders and ending visas from certain countries. As he heightens the fear quotient, he simultaneously projects himself in the media as the strong father who can protect the nation — the only political leader who can do so.
The echoes of Trump’s dystopian speech at the GOP Convention last summer are unmistakable.
“I am your voice ... I alone can fix it ... I will restore law and order,” Trump told cheering delegates in one of his most baldly autocratic moments in the campaign. That’s the wave Underwood is trying to surf in the first hour of Season 5.
And just in case anyone is not making the connection to Trump’s America, by the fifth episode, crowds are standing outside the White House gates with signs saying, “Not My President.” In the 12th episode, Chief of Staff Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) says, “If it sounds like a fact, then it is fact.” Not exactly presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway with her “alternative facts,” but close enough. My favorite quote from episode 12: “It’s unthinkable to assume that the FBI would involve itself in an election.”
As vice president, Claire Underwood is peddling the same fear and supposedly soothing promise of her and her husband as America’s parents. The series opens on her cutting a TV commercial in which she urges Americans to essentially spy on their neighbors and trust the Underwoods to keep them safe.
Yes, the Underwoods are pushing paranoia, too, straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s Cold War mindset — and Team Trump today. Enemies are everywhere, from terrorists to hackers to what Claire Underwood calls the “noisy press.”
Gov. Conway, though, has youth, optimism, a record as war hero and the backing of a social media executive with deep pockets.
No problem. War heroes have been swift-boated before in American politics. And with the threat of a terrorist attack on the front burner of American consciousness, the president has all sorts of weapons he can use to try and suppress votes in some places and even suspend voting in others — especially in swing states.
Gibson and Pugliese keep the dramatic pot boiling.
Adding to the tension this season is the addition of Patricia Clarkson as Jane Davis, a Washington insider who seems to have phenomenal connections and inside knowledge on all things Russian. Clarkson is a superb actress, and she plays her character on a razor’s edge so that you can never truly get a fix on her as friend or foe to the Underwoods.