House of Cards: Season 4

HOC_S4_Keyart-Faces_US-PRE-1I recently finished season four of House of Cards. It was much better than the third season, which if you remember, I did not even write about once I finished watching it. Not saying it was terrible, but just not nearly as good as the first two seasons.

The fourth season could almost be considered two parts. The first part was Claire versus Frank. She wants Frank’s support to run for different offices, but since he is having enough trouble with his own campaign he decides to shut her down. Then Frank takes a bullet and when he recovers they reconcile and decide Claire should be his running mate.

I am not going to get too in-depth about the season. Instead I just want to mention my two favorite things. Joel Kinnaman as Will Conway and the endings.

Will Conway comes off as this perfect Republican presidential candidate. I bet the GOP would kill for someone like him in the real world. He is young, attractive, a veteran (hell, he joined the Air Force the day after 9/11), and has a beautiful family. He embraces technology (he makes videos of him and the family with his phone) and pretty much says all the right things to counter Frank Underwood. And then we see him behind the scenes and we learn that he used 9/11 as a political tool. He knew it would make him look good if he wanted to run for president. Also, he keeps talking about wanting to end the threat of ICO (I think that is their acronym, the ISIS stand-in), but when Underwood does exactly what he wants, Conway uses his contacts to quash it. He is just as ruthless and just as much of a bastard as Frank.

One of the major things that happens is a family in Kentucky (or somewhere) is kidnapped by ICO sympathizers. Frank and Conway try to deal with them, but they just keep shitting on his plans. Eventually they kill the father on Twitter and everyone is able to watch it. Frank decides to show everyone how tough he is and show them the meaning of fear. He allows the man to die and then says they will go and annihilate ICO. I think Frank plans to use the war and terrorism to show just how tough he can be and hopefully get people to vote for him. Or maybe I am just crazy on that theory.

So those are the two things that left me really excited for the fifth season. Yeah, I cannot wait to see how Frank handles the newspaper article. Sure, the entire internet thing is pretty cool. And the relationship of Claire/Frank/Thomas is definitely intriguing. However, those things all take a backseat to the election. Conway versus Underwood.

Author: Ngewo