~ IT’S JUST ABOUT a perfect show: each episode filmed, written, envisioned, performed like a work of art. It’s a refreshing joy to see such well-done and serious TV as House Of Cards.. not via the Networks, but NetFlix, with 100 million viewers and rising. Network TV literally would never make such a show: their political masters would not allow it.
How seductive is evil– Democrat Congressman Frank Underwood, played letter-perfectly by veteran actor Kevin Spacey, gets you on his side by 4th-wall talk directly to the camera about his machinations, schemes, cruelties, and using everybody around him as one might use toilet-paper, to put it politely. He’s the perfect political sociopath, all but soulless, vacuuming the life and goodness out of everyone he touches. You’re cheering him on, until you remember that his character is not an anti-hero or underdog, but a murdering brutalizing lying monster. His wife– played chillingly by Robin Wright (the princess from The Princess Bride, amongst many other things)– keeps showing signs of life and hope and desires larger than empowering her husband. The worst part is, she stamps to death her own hope, love, and dreams. It makes for gripping TV.
It is the great error of the movie-era and even novels before that to paint simple pictures of evil, preferably with special effects, glowing eyes, and a moralistically as possible, drawing in broad strokes the coming of their uppances. Life and real people aren’t like that.
Moral and political evil is first and foremost a choice to abase oneself at the foot of worldly power and wealth. Solzhenitsyn, that observer of his own and Russia’s soul, reminds us that the dividing line between good and evil is not between us and an externalized Them (as moralizers on the Left and Right would have it), but within each and every human heart. From the heart, says Jesus, come evil desires and good desires. Then, from the heart, come words, thoughts, ideas, actions– hence, “by their fruits, ye shall know them”.
Bravo to the writers, producers, actors, and everyone involved with House Of Cards. Here is a show that not only unmistakably speaks to the state of the disunion in Washington DC in 2014, but to the devices and desires of our own hearts. This kind of work is very dangerous, subversive, re-awakening, truthful, insightful, subtle yet entertaining. I’ve not read the book, or the BBC original.
Well done, then. A+, saith teh Binks, who while easily distracted, is not easily amused. How good do I find this show? Well, usually, I do 2 or 3 things at once (Look! A Squirrel!!): with Season 1, I’m just and only watching it. ~
P.S. I’m blaming my web-buddy Adef for getting me hooked on this. Check out her blodge.
WARNING: HoC is a drama for adults– there are some soft-pornographic scenes, foul language, and it’s not for kids or sensitive viewers.
