*Spoilers for previous House of Cards seasons*

House of Cards is one of the TV shows to come out with a big name star attached at the time when they were a dime a dozen. This one managed to stick and recently I have just finished the 5th season of the show. I know this did come out much earlier in the year, but I have been a little behind as of late and here at Bearded Robot, we like to review entire seasons or whole games after we have played or watched it. In this way we feel that we can give a full review of it in its entirety, much like a review for a film.
I have to admit, it is not JUST because of that reason as to why I have been a little behind with House of Cards. I started it only a month or so after it had released on Netflix earlier this year, but I have only just now got around to finally finish.
You see unlike traditional TV shows that that each season is its own self contained story, complete with a beginning, middle and end, which may or may not be greatly linked with the previous season, and have the finale also build the audience up for the next one, House of Cards does not really follow this format… to an extent.
You see it does follow on from the previous season nicely, as well as hinting what awaits us next year (this season in particular did an amazing job of making us wait with anticipation for the show’s return), the seasons mainly compile of shorter stories that get resolved as the season progresses as new ones are introduced and solved in the same way. This tends to make it a little difficult to watch at times as you a story will come to a conclusion and a new story will be unveiled all in the same episode, whilst others, that you thought were important, never seem to go anywhere.


While season 1 and season 2 did follow the traditional TV series formula, when House of Cards entered its third season, one of the most important seasons when Francis became the President of the United States, I found that the show tended to meandered about and not actually go anywhere. I sometimes felt as if they did not know how to bulk out the 13 episode seasons so they would throw in a new threat or situation every now and again which would be resolved as soon as it stuck its head out of the ground. If you are binge watching it, as most people do with Netflix shows, it is difficult to remember when one season ended and one began.
The third season, I found that everything involving the Russian President never seemed to go anywhere, and this is constant throughout both seasons 4 and 5 as well. Maybe this will come to a climax in season 6 (especially with the way it ended), but at this time it feels a little like filler.

It is not to say that House of Cards is bad, far from it! The show is brilliantly written and well acted by the entire cast. For a show where not much actually happens, it still managed to keep my attention throughout. There were jaw dropping moments, some that came completely out of left field, but these are few and far between and the rest of the time it is build up to these moments, or making us think there is a resolution coming, but it actually never arrives, leaving us a bit deflated.
The season suffered from this quite a lot this year, as a couple of stories did fall flat, while others are quickly done away with, but maybe they might have shone a bit better if they could have had a little more screen time.

A great example of this is, what I thought would be, the main focal point of season 5, and that is Francis and Conway battle for the Presidency. This was a story that began last season and continue on into the first half of the next. While the end of season 4 caused the campaign race to come to a halt following the terrorist beheading on American soil, season 5 picked up the race and saw it through to its completion. It was just a shame that it was not enough to last the entire season, and the characters involved in this plot are quickly done away with (minus a few who manage to stay on) as soon as the story is finished around the middle of the season. After that the season picks up random stories here and there that start and finish as soon as they appear as I have mentioned earlier.
The campaign race itself was brilliant. There is an excellent episode early on in the season that had me on the edge of my seat, and the ending to which was amazingly done and left me actually gagging to put the next one on, however, when I did, it appeared to be quite a disappointment.
Let me give you an example from another show that I can draw comparison from that doesn’t spoil this show.
In Fear The Walking Dead, the first season built up the epidemic as we all wanted to see how the events unfolded, but just as it was getting to that point, the next episode did a 2 week time jump, and we had missed all of the action. The same sort of thing happens here at one point during this campaign storyline. When it does finally come to an end, I felt it had missed the mark of what could have been, and a new story swiftly begins.
This is why I think I stopped watching it for a while, as more intriguing shows cropped up, and I temporarily put the show on hold for a time. As once the race is over, I lost interest for a while as they brought in a new storyline and washed the other away.
Now normally I don’t mind this in shows as ones that do this always have a mid-season break, making them feel like two completely different seasons, but when it crosses over into the next story abruptly, it makes me feel as if the writers did not have an idea for a story arch of the season as a whole.

It might seem that I am really slagging this season of House of Cards off, but I am really not. As I said, it is well written and the characters themselves and the interactions between is engaging enough that the show doesn’t need any needless action sequences or flashing lights to captivate its audience. It is very particular about what kind of fan base they want, and unlike other shows who are willing to change and adapt to cater to them, House of Cards stays true to its premise and never loses sight of that.


So other than the campaign race storyline there are a few others that are quite interesting in this season.
Of course Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright are both brilliant as Francis and Claire Underwood, there was never any doubt about their action abilities and how well they are perfectly suited for the roles. You know what you are going to get with them… so lets move on.
Claire’s relationship with Tom Yates continues throughout most of this season, as well as taking a strange turn towards the end. We all just want him to write that book that expose the Underwoods for what they really are, but we know that is never going to happen. It does make me laugh how they always play that pretentious poetic piece of music whenever he is on scene. Their scenes always feel like some French artsy-fartsy noir love film whenever I hear it.
Hammerschmidt, over at the Washington Herald continues his mission of exposing Underwood’s involvement in the death of Zoe Barnes (way back at the start of season 2), as well as all of the other shady things that Francis has done. This is clearly the main focus of the series as a whole, and I am sure that it will the one thing that eventually brings Francis down in the final series, if such a thing manages to take place. Although having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if this story comes to a dull and unsatisfying conclusion.

Doug Stamper continues to be Francis’ right hand man, doing all the dirty stuff that needs to be done, sometimes taking his commitments to the Underwoods too far. This story ends in a really interesting place that I am eager to see what happens in the next season.
There are plenty of other character that come and go throughout the course of the season, some of which I can’t remember if they came into late last season, or early into this one, but most of them are just brushed away and might pop up whenever they are needed.
A clear absence of Remy Danton was noticed by myself this season. I felt that Remy always brought an interesting change to the rest of the characters, and although the new equivalent of him; Mark Usher, does leave a lasting impression, I just noticed significantly that Remy was not involved whatsoever with this season.


Overall, I feel that it is hard to review an individual season of this show. I think with House of Cards, it is to measured in its entirety, rather than season by season, and for that, I think the show is brilliant. I know I will look back, long after the series has completely finished, and remember how good it actually was as a whole, much like the X-Files or Star Trek, but like those shows, if you go through it with a fine tooth comb, you will remember that particular seasons were not as good as others.
While it was a difficult journey at times, I do feel interested enough with how the show left this season to tune in next year and find out more, but this is a similar situation we have been with House of Cards since season 3; will the story be enough to fill the entire season, or will it be done away with to make way for the next issue that arises… we will have to wait and see.

Please follow and like us: