No Apologies

By Ryan O'Connell on 03/13/2014 • ( 0 )

Having moved on from True Detective and not-so patiently waiting for Game of Thrones and Mad Men to come back, the clock has struck House of Cards‘ time for My Darling Wife and I. We are three episodes in to the third season, meaning we know about “that thing” that happens in the first episode. I was able to avoid any spoilers, meaning my reaction was pretty much like this…

I mean…what????

But that’s all I’ll say about that.

As for having House of Cards back in our lives, it’s been fun so far. That show is like pepperoni pizza- delicious, bad for you and highly addictive. Sure it’s cheesy…get it, just like pizza, but who cares? Not every show needs to be Mad Men, some shows can just be Boardwalk Empire– simply entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less. Guess what? True Detective was more Boardwalk than it was Mad Men, even though the hullabaloo that engulfed the show with each episode after the third one had it lined up to be the second coming of Lost. It was never going to be Lost, was never meant to be Lost. The show is called True Detective. So really, no one should have been that shocked when the show turned out to be a straight up detective show.

Yet somehow people were.

Bummer for them.

House of Cards has no allusions about what is- it’s pulp, it’s one level up from a soap opera. It’s about the quest for power and how a certain kind of person goes about attaining it. It’s a shark tank about a shark tank and the one shark who has no problem killing or eliminating other sharks if it needs to happen. Spoiler alert: Frank Underwood is a shark. And so is his wife. Clumsy metaphors, clear-cut messaging, obvious symbolism- House of Cards is going to employ them all, with a smile and a wink to the camera.

If you have a problem with that, then the message is pretty clear…