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House of Cards: Season 6
A series review by Dr. Lloyd Sederer
Was it worth Netflix trying to resurrect House of Cards from last year’s Kevin Spacey debacle and the show’s abrupt termination? Drawing upon the magnetic and enigmatic Robin Wright, they bet on a tale about the first woman to become the President of the United States. The timing was certainly good, as women gain their rightful place in this country (and, by the way, in the entertainment industry). But Season 6 gave us a woman as duplicitous and intoxicated with power as the man she replaced in the Netflix White House.
I did not finish viewing nor did I review last year’s Season 5 (after having reviewed Seasons 1-4). I was tired of the show’s dedication to heartless, power politics and the exercise of evil. But I was curious about the new, and last, season, released on November 2, 2018. What would the writers and executive producers do to grip an audience likely lost in the fireball of last year? How would they stage the ascendance of Robin Wright to the top of the food chain, after being the First Lady and then the Vice President? And would this brutal series continue to be so prescient about American and global politics, so observant about the behavior of despots?
Have you seen The Wife, with its Oscar-worthy performance by Glenn Close (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/therapy-it-s-more-just-talk/201…)? This is a story of a woman who finally surfaced from her husband’s exploitation and self-absorption to rightfully take center-stage. We witness a woman who acts to eclipse a manipulative, mendacious and philandering husband and win her proper laurels. In The Wife, there is no bitter aftertaste, as there is in House of Cards. Like the metaphor given us by the fox-trot dance, House of Cards ends in the very place it began, with evil steadily underfoot.
In Season 6 of House of Cards, President Francis Underwood is dead, reportedly from natural causes—but that is dubious given the nefarious crowd that surrounded him. We see no trace of him unless you count the vast stain on the nation and the White House he has left. Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) has become President of the United States. What will she do with her Presidency? We hear what she will not do: she is not going “…to do what any man says I should do.”
President (Claire) Underwood decides, among other imbroglios, to take on the billionaires running Washington and the White House, embodied in this show by the Shepherds, Bill (Greg Kinnear) and his sister, Annette (Diane Lane). Kinda like getting into a pissing contest with the Koch bully brothers, though here it is brother and sister. Her Vice-President, Mark Usher (Campbell Scott), is more lapdog than pit-bull, which leaves him begging rather than biting.
Casting a woman as President is a bait and switch. Of course, being a woman should not preclude or otherwise disqualify her from the highest office(s) in this land. But it does not matter whether a ruler is a woman or a man if they are out to perpetrate crimes and place the country in peril. Everyone must be held to the same moral standards; there are no exceptions.
The new President’s agenda looks worthy, on the surface. She cleans (White) house and appoints a host of women and people of color to her administration. But treachery abounds. Palace intrigue is thick. Everyone lies and betrays, including the new President. It is not clear what Claire is up to. She fakes a mental breakdown, not easy to do as she voices in sotto-voce asides, to trigger a 25th Amendment dismissal from office by her Cabinet, but they underestimate her. She has another agenda, which turns out has less to do with anyone but herself, and, like her predecessor, considers the ends deserving of any means.
The now-dead President’s former chief-of-staff, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), lurks in every shadow, past, and present. He is seeking some form of revenge, not the forgiveness they urged on him in AA. The body count mounts. Some abscond to Russia. The only hero, the celebrated Washington reporter Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver), is not spared. No good deed goes unpunished.
Of course, the show’s parallels to the current US President and his administration are monumental. Lies, tyranny, “fake news” and the massive digital manipulations of democracy, manufactured crises, a conservatively stacked Supreme Court, and shadow control by the “liberty” seeking billionaires who will spend (and do) anything to satisfy their narcissism and realize their ambitions.
As a psychiatrist, I have learned it is character, not chromosomes, that largely determines how a person navigates circumstances and contends with the arrows of opposition. While this country could benefit from a new calculus of more X chromosomes in our government, House of Cards does not further that aim. Claire Underwood is not a person to be admired or emulated. She was too deeply damaged - as we see in the flashbacks of her youth. She maneuvers into almost absolute power, and more than figuratively has her finger on the nuclear button. No one, woman or man, has any sway with her.
Claire’s greatest threat (beyond herself) lies in the wickedness of her (and Francis’) past, which only Doug Stamper can reveal. Stamper wants to take her down, not only reputationally but to assassinate her, to eliminate her from the face of the earth. He too underestimates this President.
Evil cares not whose body it occupies, male or female. What difference does it make for justice when a woman prevails - if she is a menace to society? Netflix should have shuttered its White House after the sudden termination of Season 5. We don’t need the bleakness layered on by Season 6: the mood and future of our country are fragile enough.
