House of Cards (Season 1)

[Qrazy]

Just finished the series. Meh. His central scheme is fairly ridiculous.

[ledfloyd]

Just finished the series. Meh. His central scheme is fairly ridiculous.

It requires a pretty hefty suspension of disbelief.

I think one of the advantages to this season at once model is you don't have a week to dwell on the inconsistencies and weaknesses before moving on to the next installment.

[Lucky]

Ep 11
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Won't it be suspicious to find Russo alone in his car in the passenger seat?

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[Qrazy]

Ep 11
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Won't it be suspicious to find Russo alone in his car in the passenger seat?

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I would say yes but I think the show is trying to say it's not because of the manner in which that type of car can be started. Which is to say you don't need your foot on the clutch.

[number8]

I would say yes but I think the show is trying to say it's not because of the manner in which that type of car can be started. Which is to say you don't need your foot on the clutch.

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I think the question is more about why Russo would move to the passenger seat in the first place, since no one except Stamper was supposed to know that Underwood drove him home. It's a very odd way to commit suicide.

My guess is that Zoe will find out about it and try to pin it on Underwood.

]

[Qrazy]

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I think the question is more about why Russo would move to the passenger seat in the first place, since no one except Stamper was supposed to know that Underwood drove him home. It's a very odd way to commit suicide.

My guess is that Zoe will find out about it and try to pin it on Underwood.

]

[

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Right but my point is that because of the way that car can be started I think the show is trying to justify that the cops wouldn't immediately think this makes no sense whereas they would if it was a standard vehicle.

In terms of your second point, yeah that seems likely. Or more likely I think she'll confront him with it and then he'll kill her. There was a conversation between them on the street when they were breaking up for the second time and someone walks a dog in the background. This seemed like a call back to his killing the dog at the beginning of the show and thus foreshadowing her eventual demise.

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[number8]

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Yeah, seems likely. Or more likely I think she'll confront him with it and then he'll kill her. There was a conversation between them on the street when they were breaking up for the second time and someone walks a dog in the background. This seemed like a call back to his killing the dog at the beginning of the show and thus foreshadowing her eventual demise.

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Not sure if you've seen the original [

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but that's exactly what happened in the S1 finale. They met on the parliament rooftop, she told him her theory, he admitted to all of it, then pushed her off the roof to her death.

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[Qrazy]

Not sure if you've seen the original [

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but that's exactly what happened in the S1 finale. They met on the parliament rooftop, she told him her theory, he admitted to all of it, then pushed her off the roof to her death.

]

I have seen it, I'm just speculating that they'll probably do the same here because they have made a couple changes.[

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Although in this one I feel like he has many more loose ends to tie up than the the first series (the other two journalists, the prostitute).

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[DavidSeven]

Watched the pilot. Fincher's influence obviously all over it. Feels like it would be a completely different show if he wasn't involved at inception. As of now, I think this is a good thing .

I feel like Robin Wright was born to be in all of Fincher's movies.

[Irish]

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It's a very odd way to commit suicide.

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You're basing that off, what, exactly?

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My only knowledge of this form of suicide comes from ... other TV shows and movies. Granted, in every other show the person is sitting in the driver's seat, presumably because it's easier to turn on the car.

But here, the guy is a drunk and a known drunk, so I'm not sure that his crawling around the car's interior would be deemed suspicious right off the bat.

Worse for me was that the show ignores the presence of CCTV, and the possibility that a US Congressman would probably live in a secure building (meaning that there'd be a written record of all cars and visitors coming and going).

They kinda/sorta acknowledge this a bit by conveniently allowing Underwood to find a ballcap nearby .. but sheesh, was that weak.

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[number8]

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But here, the guy is a drunk and a known drunk, so I'm not sure that his crawling around the car's interior would be deemed suspicious right off the bat.

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I guess? But every time i see someone sitting alone in the passenger seat (like, say, in a parked car on the side of a street) my first thought would always be that someone else was driving.

Maybe the cops in House of Cards need to watch more movies.

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[Lucky]

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Blackout drunk or not, that's odd. And if you follow the mentality that he's crawling around the interior of his car and passed out, the death should have been questioned as "accidental" in lieu of "suicide."

]

[Irish]

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Blackout drunk or not, that's odd. And if you follow the mentality that he's crawling around the interior of his car and passed out, the death should have been questioned as "accidental" in lieu of "suicide."

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You could say the same thing -- that it's accidental -- had he been found in the driver's seat. The cops could easily speculate that he drove into the garage, threw the car in park, and passed out.

I guess you need to be black out drunk to know that people crawl around. At least, I've woken up in a few strange places with little to no idea how I got there. This guy moving from one seat to another, a few feet, doesn't seem wildly out of bounds to me.

In the context of other tv shows, yeah, I think it's unusual. But I'm willing to give "House of Cards" a pass on it, based on the understanding that it's not where the writers want to go, or spend time over-explaining.

The CCTV stuff and Underwood's easily egress is a much bigger stretch for me. They write their way around that half-heartedly. If we're going to choose stuff to pick on, that'd be it.

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[Lucky]

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Driver's seat to passenger seat is a dexterous move for a blacked out person. Especially when there's no real impulse to do so. I'm not saying I haven't moved during a stupor, but it was when I was younger. The hardcore drunks I've witnessed pass out. Hard. Similarly, I expect Mr. Russo to be experienced enough to not wake up in a puddle of his own vomit. He can probably wake up the next morning functioning with only a slight hangover, too.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that it's suspicious and I have a hunch someone will realize this during the next season.

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[Dukefrukem]

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I'm pretty sure you need to have your foot on the break to start the car in any PUSH TO START vehicle.

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[Dukefrukem]

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Driver's seat to passenger seat is a dexterous move for a blacked out person. Especially when there's no real impulse to do so. I'm not saying I haven't moved during a stupor, but it was when I was younger. The hardcore drunks I've witnessed pass out. Hard. Similarly, I expect Mr. Russo to be experienced enough to not wake up in a puddle of his own vomit. He can probably wake up the next morning functioning with only a slight hangover, too.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that it's suspicious and I have a hunch someone will realize this during the next season.

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He was a functioning alcoholic. It's not unheard of for people to be complete drunk and function only to pass out at a moments notice.

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[Lucky]

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I'm pretty sure you need to have your foot on the break to start the car in any PUSH TO START vehicle.

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I'm not arguing he's a functioning alcoholic, I agree. Don't understand what would possess him to switch seats though.

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[DavidSeven]

Through eight episodes. I'm still enjoying it, but it feels like there's been a pretty long lull since the second or third episode. Also, even though each episode is clearly following the aesthetic model that Fincher set up, the direction after the pilot has felt pretty lacking. A testament to how much a director can matter on an installment-to-installment basis, even in TV.

Spacey and Wright have been consistently fantastic, though.

[DavidSeven]

This ended up just being okay. It all started to feel kind of ludicrous and soapy toward the end. I wouldn't give the show a strong recommendation based on the first season.

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I'm sure this is carried over from source material, but the Russo murder felt like a giant misstep. Obviously, there's the moral issue and how that affects the audience's ability to empathize with the show's central character. But even without those considerations, it just seemed like a blatantly stupid and rash thing for the character to do.

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I'm not too excited about the direction the show is going in. The show intrigued me when I thought it would primarily be about deft political maneuvering as the main character's pathway to obtaining personal retribution. I liked the cold detachment of the early episodes. They seem to have gone away from that. We're seeing clearer lines now between the "bad guys" and the "good guys." And honestly, I have very little interest in watching these "good guys" methodically unravel a mystery that we already know the answer to.

[Irish]

The show intrigued me when I thought it would primarily be about deft political maneuvering as the main character's pathway to obtaining personal retribution.

I thought the same, based on the trailer and the first episode. I thought it was going to be all these plots and back room deals, a cerebral kind of show about how this guy enacts his revenge for getting passed over for the Secretary of State spot. It became much less interesting as it went on.

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I almost thought that the show wanted me to believe all of Underwood's jockeying around Russo, including the murder, was part of some master plan to put him into the Vice Presidency. Which feels really ludicrous.

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[slqrick]

The Russo storyline was the big misstep. Just hard to care about that dude's plight.