![]() Four months into Trump's tenure, Season 5 of the Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright series will premiere to give viewers a break from reality. House of Cards Season 4 premiered in March 2016 - during a time when a Donald Trump presidency seemed unlikely to most. And this House of Cards Season 4 recap will get you into fighting shape for when the Underwoods attempt to win the White House. With Season 5 premiering on May 30, you'll want to refresh your memory about the Underwoods' journey last season and how Frank finally began to view Claire as his equal. For better or for worse (better for fans of the series, but perhaps worse for their fictional world), the pair was back together and more united than ever by the end of Season 4 of House of Cards. Yet, after Claire walked out on Frank in Season 3 of House of Cards, the Netflix series explored what a world where Frank and Claire Underwood aren't united looks like. The notion that the hug at the episode represents a reforged mother/daughter alliance is one that should scare Frank as much as the Armenian Power gang scared Lucas’s former cellmate.When a power couple like the Underwoods breaks apart, it feels like the end of an era. We now know, at least, where Claire gets her chilly demeanor from. Burstyn in particular seems like a potentially important new player, with barely veiled fascination in her daughter’s political life and completely unveiled contempt for Frank. And the two new senior citizens on screen, Cicely Tyson as Congresswoman Doris Jones and Burstyn as Claire’s mother, are a thrill: weary from all they’ve been through, but both maintaining strong convictions. Neve Campbell’s consultant Leann Harvey has a faint Texas lilt that’s as subtly menacing as the little gun in her desk. There have been times in past seasons when the show seemed stuck in cul-de-sac, but for now the dynamic of Claire as an insurgent and Frank as a seething spurned husband (instead of folksy asides, we get a murder dream) has created an interesting, novel dynamic.Īlso promising are the new cast members. But we’ve never seen them employed by one Underwood against another for as sustained a period and with as high stakes as these. We’ve seen these moves and countermoves before: intimidation threats from the president slick but brutal interception from Stamper quid-pro-quo-or-maybe-just-extortion overtures from Claire, delivered with a slight smile. The episode finally revved up the real entertainment engine of House of Cards halfway through when Claire and Frank and their operatives got down to the business of dealmaking. She’s a locked box, both to the people within the show and the people watching it. While Frank cornily diaried into the camera in seasons past, Claire has maintained an icy, put-together exterior whether on the campaign trail or having late-night pillow talk with her husband. This episode’s early scenes of her creeping through David Fincher’s very favorite kind of setting-a drafty mansion-with unknown purpose (other than to avoid Ellen Burstyn) provided a reminder that Claire’s deeper motivations and thoughts have always been removed from the viewer. Like the one from Claire, gone rogue after one too many insults and sidelining of her ambitions last season. The president, of course, has more immediate threats to face. Might the season end with Frank in a jail cell? Throughout the series, Underwood has had not one but many Swords of Damocles over his head last season ended with the elimination of one in the form of onetime prostitute Rachel Posner, but Lucas’s reappearance and his escape into the Witness Protection Program may be a set-up for some nice symmetry. He was last seen in Season 2, when he was arrested for cybercrimes on the way to exposing the mortal crimes of Frank Underwood. The guy dictating erotica to his bunkmate is Lucas Goodwin, the hapless investigative journalist and boyfriend of the late Zoe Barnes. ![]() House of Cards Season 4: rebooted in Oz-land? Less-than-obsessive viewers, or even obsessive ones who’ve had to clear their memory banks as they’ve gorged on other complicated TV universes in the past two years, could be forgiven for some confusion at the opening scene of this season opener. As in previous years, I’m binge-reviewing the latest season of Netflix’s House of Cards, the TV show that helped popularize the idea of “binge watching” when it premiered in 2013.
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