Thursday, March 20, 2014

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 9

I don't know what happen to the WaPo recaps, but here's a Baltimore Sun one.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-02-17/entertainment/bal-house-of-cards-recap-season-2-episode-9-20140217_1_claire-adam-freddy

Things went south for Rib Shack Guy, collateral damage in shots taken at Frank Underwood (not literally, at least not yet.) You know he was el doomedo when he reached out to bring in the troubled ex-con son who didn't want anything to do with him and had a hot temper and was only one strike away from going back in the clink... I'm sure there's some name for this meme, but it always reminds me of Goose's wife showing up to surprise him right before the big flight in Top Gun.

Still, they actually handled it well. In retrospect they had to do something with this character, because the alternative was that he was becoming a bit of the "Kindly Wise Poor Black Man" one-dimensional character, and this show's been good about zagging when you expect it to zig... and yet zagging still actually makes sense. Cutting the legs out from under a friend of Frank hurts Frank deep... on a couple of levels: 1) Frank feels powerless to help a friend, and being powerless really bothers him... and 2) The few people he genuinely cares about he does in fact care about.

The other main storyline is that the artsyfartsy photographer guy released a photo of Claire in the shower, and Claire's reaction / response is to hire a model to cut her hair similarly and say it was her. This plan seems kind of fragile --- my guess is the wheels are gonna come off it.

This was the Jodie Foster-helmed one. I kinda braced for it, but it was actually not particularly annoying, which was a relief.

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