S05.E13: Chapter 65

[Janc]

OK, Frank signed his resignation letter, which was addressed to SoS Catherine Durant - ?? You mean to say she's not been replaced by an Acting SoS, after her 'fall'?   And what is this show with the lack of creativity in naming characters:  Novelist Tom and Herald Tom, hooker Rachel and Romano's gang rape victim Rochelle, ...?  

Just about had it with this show, how can these people last in power for so long?   Saw in an interview they were taping S05 Eps 10 and 11 during the Nov 8th election, so much of the storyline was in the can before the real crazyness  occurred.

[polyhymnia]

On 6/4/2017 at 5:44 PM, fivestone said:

I didn't see Frank being the leak coming. I thought it was Claire and that she was doing it to either get him to resign or for someone to try to assassinate him. I like Claire (lord help me, I do) so I'm looking forward to her running things.

I almost want to believe that he is making it up to save his ego, "NO, I am the author of my own fall!!  MWHAHAHA."

Jane was the only saving grace this season.  She is definitely the power behind the power with no interest in being part of the real political apparatus and I like that the Underwoods may or may not be being played by both Usher and Jane.  Who may or may not be on the same team.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

Claire Underwood Is In Charge Now On House Of Cards

As Season 5 comes to a close, it becomes apparent who was running the show all along.

[MaggieG]

I'm still not over Frank pushing Cathy down the stairs. Was he hoping she would die? Now that's she's in a coma she could wake up at any time and say "the President pushed me." I mean, he could hope for memory loss or that she never comes out of a come but that's not a guaranteee. Or was he hoping that Claire would pardon him for that too?

I really hope next season is that last and it all comes crashing down on these two.

[Diane12251]

On 6/2/2017 at 1:09 PM, Michichick said:

Claire didn't really kill Tom during sex. She killed him with the herbal remedy overdose in his drink, during sex is just when it overwhelmed his system. Although that doesn't make it less ridiculous so I dunno why I'm writing this.

She had sex with him so the poison would go through his system quicker - blood pumping and all.  Just shows how calculating Claire really is - tying up loose ends.  I felt bad for Tom on the one hand, but on the other hand he knew that both Claire and Frank are ruthless, so if he didn't know he was in danger, then he was being delusional.  I'm looking forward to seeing where they go next season.  Not tired of House of Cards at all - I find it very compelling and interesting.

[roughing it]

On 6/26/2017 at 8:45 AM, MaggieG said:

I'm still not over Frank pushing Cathy down the stairs. Was he hoping she would die?

Coma, really?  It was only 3 or 4 stairs to the landing, which should have been just an ouchie.  If Frank really wanted to do some damage he should have shoved her down the rest of the stairs.

[Mindthinkr]

That last scene of Jane getting into the meditation pod and assuming Lotus...is she a Buddhist? Strange if she is as they believe in peace and she brokers power. We never found out for who she worked for tho...just that last conversation she was having on the phone where she was reporting to someone. Jackie or Remi perhaps?

On a shallow note:

Once Claire had power the buttons started missing on her clothes and her choice of colors became more somber. Was not a fan of what they were doing with her hair. When she attended Franks's second inauguration was she attempting a French twist look? With her resources she could have done a lot better. Hated the pillows in the Oval Office (the brown striped ones); they looked cheap. There was nothing personal about any of the characters homes. They were all  so austere. Didn't Claire and Frank have a home before he landed in the WH? Why did he have nowhere to go when Claire pushed him out of the WH for appearances sake? 

Edited July 4, 2017 by Mindthinkr

[EdnasEdibles]

I hated this season but I did like the final episode. I loved Claire's "MY turn!" at the end. When you think back to the early seasons and the amount of waiting and standing in the background and putting her career on hold and putting her projects on the backburner only to get here and have him think he's pulling the puppet strings. NOPE. You had the strings long enough, Frank. And (I'm terrible with names) but Mr. "I think I should be Vice President" needs to step aside with his blackmail. Does he even know the complete death count of how many people the Underwoods had to put aside for them to get power? Go away all of you terrible men trying to control everything!  

[Dobian]

On 6/3/2017 at 10:07 PM, hincandenza said:

Well. That all happened.

I finished the last three episodes tonight, starting with this one, and it's all just so awful.  I hate this show now; it's full on Dexter shittiness, and doesn't deserve to be rewarded with any additional viewership...

Pretty much what you said.  This show has gone off the rails.  Frank shoves Durant down some stairs and somehow gets away with it, Claire poisons Yates, Davis tells Claire how she can kill Frank, Frank has Leann run into a concrete barrier.  Is that what this show about political intrigue been reduced to, the D.C. Edition of The Sopranos?  And once again, when someone is in a legitimate position to bring Frank down, the show invents dirt on them out of thin air.  So Romero gang-raped a girl in college.  How convenient.  That's the problem with this show, you can't trust it.  You know the writers will always pull something out of their ass at the last moment to derail anyone who can defeat Frank and Claire.  It means you can't even get invested in what Hammerchmidt or anyone else is doing, because you know the writers will undermine it in the most contrived way to hand the Underwoods another win.  It's just lazy and disingenuous writing.

[alexvillage]

I am also done with this show. This season was so bad, I hated all the stories, I hated all the characters.

I liked when it was over the top, all the machinations and pure evil, but it was possible for me to go with it. This season really jumped the shark. Claire entering a house without the secret service going in first and checking everything? All the people who do know about the murders not leaking anything? And really? the old push down the stairs to kill? And so much more.

The writers could have slowed down a little and let Francis and Claire feel the pressure of having to keep control of what they created. Instead, we got a lot of pointless Tom, pointless freaky Jane, the what's-her-name friend trying to find out what happened to Rachel, the sub-plot with the press secretaries, the investigative journalism that got it so wrong with the experienced journalists not having a clue about what they are actually doing.

Maybe they are afraid the show will not be renewed? Was it renewed? Or maybe it was renewed after they financed the writing/the storylines. I don't really care because I can't watch another 13 episodes of this.

[Duke2801]

On ‎6‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 1:07 AM, hincandenza said:

Well. That all happened.

I finished the last three episodes tonight, starting with this one, and it's all just so awful.  I hate this show now; it's full on Dexter shittiness, and doesn't deserve to be rewarded with any additional viewership.  The bounds of plausibility were shot past ages ago; now we find out somehow Francis had some 57-dimensional chess game going on, which could break apart at any minute simply if even one person were to not play along with their games.  There is simply ZERO plausible reason that LeAnn would fall for that trap- or for that matter, Tom Yates, or Cathy Durant, or anyone else.  Would real life DC people be that dumb?  Well, I mean, Devin Nunes is Exhibit A in recent memory, but in-show these people are much savvier and more cunning.  Tom can maybe be explained as suicide-by-Claire, but someone like LeAnn, who knows Aidan was a pawn that was eventually killed, knows she was under surveillance (illegally!) by the WH, knows they want the damning info, and... she just gives it up.  Doesn't make a copy (that we know), doesn't let the WH know it's in safe-keeping with multiple people, nothing.

I vaguely recall the first couple of seasons being pretty good because the logrolling and backroom politics felt real: lived in, plausible, earned.  Then the dogshit third season, a hopeful return to form in season 4, and now.... this turd in the punchbowl.  It's the epitome of bad writing these days: when no one behaves like a person, no one talks like an actual human being, and character's decisions make zero sense... unless you look at it through the lens of "What would a coked up hack screen writer at a deadline come up with?".

I hate this show like Laura Moretti hates Doug, except unlike every brunette this show has ever cast, I won't be sleeping with House of Cards.  Rather, I'm going to abandon it: there is too much good TV out there to waste one more hour on badly written dreck.  Everyone involved with season 5's overall plot and screenwriting should be professionally ashamed of themselves.  

 

All I can say is that this ^^ is better written than the majority of the dreck they served us this past season.  Bravo and - needless to say - I heartily concur. 

It was truly painful for me to trudge through this past season. In the very beginning, I retained some semblance of hope - thinking that perhaps the addition of some actors I have previously enjoyed in other shows and films would improve things - Joel Kinnaman, Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott. But oh how wrong I was.  (side note to Joel: Joel - I'm  going to try and forget this insipid role ever happened to you and do my best to remember you fondly as Holder in The Killing. It may take a while.  But we'll get there... eventually).

But as for you, HoC, trust me when I say to you that we are never ever, ever getting back together.

[Fen]

Ehhhh.

Just finished watching these episodes having caught up with the last two seasons over the space of three weeks, and need to vent

Season 4 had problems, but things started to go seriously off the rails this season.  

Writing issues.  Writing issues all over the place.

The pacing was dreadful.  The main part of the season was like protracted torture getting to the election - and then with no real resolution there.  I started to sympathise with Conway, and I'm relatively sure that was unintentional.  Then everything was just flung at us in the last few episodes.

They also seemed to have real difficulty doing two things: juggling characters, and providing satisfactory resolutions.  Seth, for example, did do things this season - but it felt like they lost a grip of him by the end of the season: we needed another encounter between him and Doug - or a more sustained look at their relationship.  Similarly - why bother killing off Frank's ex from military school at all if you're going to do precisely nothing with it?  What did happen to Conway when he was on duty?  You've managed to get me to the point where I care enough to want to know - so why leave me like this?

Tom.  Good God.  I have never been so profoundly bored by a character in my entire life.  All he did was make obvious and mediocre observations about Claire - delivered like they were profound insights (you have... a face.  And... hair.  You're.... 60% water.  You want.... things. ) - or spout 'fact of the day' type trivia (no, Tom - I don't care that you feel warm again just before you freeze to death.  Please feel free to sod off).  Also - he mumbled so much I had to turn on closed captioning.  More broadly speaking - his big fascination before was really with Frank, and I'm not convinced that he simply dropped that.  A more interesting story might have been if he had been sleeping with Claire as a twisted way to get closer to, and understand more about, Frank - and all the emotional fallout that would have resulted.  Although - actually - still would just have preferred that he never appeared.  His death was pretty silly, too.

Indecisiveness over Claire.  I feel - at this point - that the writers just desperately want me to see Claire as better than Frank.  More worthy.  But they can't make up their minds how - and it's making her inconsistent.  I see her having fits of conscience - presumably so I see her as a more compassionate and moral person.  But they're equally insistent that she's actually colder and more merciless than Frank.  They want to have their cake and eat it. 

Couldn't stand Davis - far too all-powerful, as well as bubbling over with quirks and eccentricity.  I have no idea why anyone would ever want to rely on her - she's like a walking red flag.

The big twist at the end felt too abrupt.  

Edited July 29, 2017 by Fen

[ElectricBoogaloo]

On 6/4/2017 at 3:03 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

"No one will ever love you as much as I do." Yikes. Some might consider that a curse.

That's classic abusive behavior right there. You make your victim think that no one else will ever like/love/understand them but you so that they feel isolated and they have only you as the one shining light in their lives, the savior who fixes things (even though you're the one who's fucking them up left and right).

On 6/4/2017 at 3:44 PM, fivestone said:

I didn't see Frank being the leak coming.

That reveal was about as bad as learning that Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl.

On 7/29/2017 at 9:38 AM, Fen said:

Tom.  Good God.  I have never been so profoundly bored by a character in my entire life.  All he did was make obvious and mediocre observations about Claire - delivered like they were profound insights (you have... a face.  And... hair.  You're.... 60% water.  You want.... things. ) - or spout 'fact of the day' type trivia (no, Tom - I don't care that you feel warm again just before you freeze to death.  Please feel free to sod off). 

Ha, this sums up Tom so well. He kept saying basic things and acting like they were these words of wisdom. To me he often sounded like a fake psychic throwing out generic lines to suckers who wanted to believe.

I still don't understand why anyone trusts Davis. From the moment she schemed her way into the vault with everyone, both Claire and Frank were suspicious of her yet they continued to believe everything she said. WHY? I feel like sometimes she just says stuff to see what the reaction will be (offering to have Frank killed, telling Claire that she can't always think clearly when she's around - like we're now supposed to believe she's in love with Claire?).

[Ina123]

On ‎7‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 2:41 PM, roughing it said:

Coma, really?  It was only 3 or 4 stairs to the landing, which should have been just an ouchie.  If Frank really wanted to do some damage he should have shoved her down the rest of the stairs.

A guy I graduated with fell down 5 carpeted steps and died. His neck was broken. My brother-in- law's mother fell down 8 carpeted steps and died. Granted, she was 70 years old, but, it happens. Another point is how violently Frank pushed her. Most genuine falls (like a slip of a foot) the person falling tries to correct it and saves themselves from violent death. Frank's violent push gave her no recovery time.

[HazelEyes4325]

12 hours ago, Ina123 said:

A guy I graduated with fell down 5 carpeted steps and died. His neck was broken.  My brother-in- law's mother fell down 8 carpeted steps and died. Granted, she was 70 years old, but, it happens. Another point is how violently Frank pushed her. Most genuine falls (like a slip of a foot) the person falling tries to correct it and saves themselves from violent death. Frank's violent push gave her no recovery time.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the possibility that Catherine would end up in a coma from her fall.  I just felt the whole thing was cheap.  Pushing someone down the stairs is anything but creative--and Frank has at least been creative in his murders.  It was all just so cliche that it came off as lazy writing/story telling.

[Hanahope]

Well, it will be interesting to see how S6 goes now without Frank.  He's already on the outs and not (yet) pardoned.  its hard to know if he has any friends/allies other than Doug, who may be going to prison afterall if Claire doesn't pardon him either.

I just think its so contrived that Frank planned all this out because now he wants to be in the private sector.  Really?  And in what capacity could he be in the private sector when he's a disgraced president.  Maybe not impeached, but certainly untrustworthy.  It took Nixon years/decades to be even partially respected again.

And funny that Frank would really trust Claire, she knows your secrets more than you know hers.  Though now she might be pressured into naming Usher as VP due to her killing Tom. (though how can Usher accuse her without implicating himself).

[Chaos Theory]

1 hour ago, Hanahope said:

Well, it will be interesting to see how S6 goes now without Frank.  He's already on the outs and not (yet) pardoned.  its hard to know if he has any friends/allies other than Doug, who may be going to prison afterall if Claire doesn't pardon him either.

I just think its so contrived that Frank planned all this out because now he wants to be in the private sector.  Really?  And in what capacity could he be in the private sector when he's a disgraced president.  Maybe not impeached, but certainly untrustworthy.  It took Nixon years/decades to be even partially respected again.

And funny that Frank would really trust Claire, she knows your secrets more than you know hers.  Though now she might be pressured into naming Usher as VP due to her killing Tom. (though how can Usher accuse her without implicating himself).

Its possible he thought he could pull a Raymond Tusk and control "The President" from a distance.   Whisper in his wife ear and control policy in his favor from afar and the shadow where he always did work best.  If things had gone according to plan (IE Kevin Spacey not being a perv) my guess is that the final season would have shown how much Frank Underwood was best suited for the shadows.  And with a few tweaks to the story it still kind of can.  Even without him physically there his influence still is and all the lives he left in ruin.   This last season could still ultimately be about Frank Underwood without Kevin Spacey uttering a line or being in a scene.