 Ruthless and cunning, Congressman Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) stop at nothing to conquer everything. This wicked political drama penetrates the shadowy world of greed, sex and corruption in modern D.C. Kate Mara and Corey Stoll co-star in the first original series from David Fincher and Beau Willimon. Storyline: Majority House Whip Francis Underwood takes you on a long journey as he exacts his vengeance on those he feels wronged him - that is, his own cabinet members including the President of the United States himself. Dashing, cunning, methodical and vicious, Frank Underwood along with his equally manipulative yet ambiguous wife, Claire take Washington by storm through climbing the hierarchical ladder to power in this Americanized recreation of the BBC series of the same name. Written by Jacob Oberfrank 1.01 Chapter 1 - Francis "Frank" Underwood is an ambitious Democratic congressman and the House Majority Whip. Frank helped ensure the election of President Garrett Walker, who promised to appoint Frank as Secretary of State. However, before Walker is sworn in, Chief of Staff Linda Vasquez announces that Walker will not honor the agreement and will instead nominate Senator Michael Kern. Linda tells Frank that they want him to continue helping their administration from within the House of Representatives, starting with working on an education reform bill with Representative Donald Blythe. Furious at Walker's betrayal, Frank and his wife Claire, an environmental activist, make a pact to destroy Walker, starting with Kern. Frank starts seeking out pawns in his war against Walker. When the troubled Representative Peter Russo is arrested for drunk driving, Frank offers him a reprieve in exchange for his loyalty, covering up the incident by bribing the commissioner with funds for his political ambitions. Frank also encounters Zoe Barnes, a young political reporter for the Washington Herald newspaper. The two come to an agreement where Frank will give Zoe inside information that will further Zoe's own stagnating career, and giving Frank a patsy to serve incriminating information to destroy his opponents. He starts by leaking a copy of the first draft of Donald's education bill that proposes massive increases in government control of education, promptly causing a scandal one day after the inauguration. 1.02 Chapter 2 - In the aftermath of the leak of the education bill draft, Frank manages to secure full control of the legislative course from the president and promptly removes Donald, who graciously takes the fall for the controversy in the press for Frank's sake. Frank hires a team of young interns to write a draft of the bill in a week that would usually take months to write. Claire fires over half of her NGO's staff to secure the necessary level of funds for her own plans for the organization. With Zoe's help, Frank plants a story that loosely ties Kern to an anti-Israel editorial that ran in the college newspaper he edited. Kern gravely mishandles the resulting media questions, throwing doubt on his candidacy. Frank then forces Russo to travel to meet a conspiracy junkie who used to be on the college newspaper and encourage him to state that Kern wrote the article himself, and the resulting firestorm of controversy destroys Kern's chances. Frank then tosses Catherine Durant's name to Zoe as the likely replacement before reinforcing her credentials to Vasquez. 1.03 Chapter 3 - Frank is forced to return to his hometown of Gaffney, South Carolina in the midst of negotiating the education bill's reforms to the teachers' unions when his main rival stirs trouble. A young woman has been killed in a car accident after texting while driving, apparently distracted by a peach water tower that Frank has advocated to keep standing. His rival encourages the parents to sue, forcing Frank into a difficult negotiation. Claire meets and hires a hesitant Gillian Cole, an activist for WorldWell, to secure her organization's expertise on the international stage. Christina Gallagher tells Peter of an offer to work elsewhere which will allow their relationship to come out in the open, so he makes an effort to clean up his act. Zoe gets into trouble for talking about the Herald and Tom on national TV. 1.04 Chapter 4 - Frank resorts to intricate political string-pulling when House Speaker Bob Birch refuses to support putting the education bill through the house with its controversial amendments. As a result, Frank organizes a coup that forces the majority leader to step down in place of one that Frank wants to put pressure on Birch to cooperate and keep his Speakership. Frank forces Russo to allow a shipyard in his district to close to keep a military base in his new majority leader Terry Womack's district open, ensuring his support for a coup if necessary. Tom is exasperated at Zoe's rebelliousness but the Herald's publisher overrules him. Tom offers Zoe the post of White House correspondent but she has doubts and is ultimately drawn closer to Frank. Remy re-tables an offer to the CWI but Claire refuses it at Frank's urging. Claire meets with photographer Adam Galloway, a former lover who tries to rekindle their relationship. 1.05 Chapter 5 - After Frank spends the night with Zoe, Claire is tacitly understanding so long as it achieves their goals — but even so renews her interest in Adam. The changes to the education bill lead to a frosty meeting between Frank and the head lobbyist for the teachers' union, who proves himself a dangerous adversary. The fallout from being forced to close the shipyard along with thousands of jobs for his constituents by Frank, along with the departure of Christina, sends Peter Russo into depression. Zoe seeks alternative employment while Tom is forced to resign for firing her. Frank and Claire foil the lobbyist's attempt to disrupt their fundraising plans. In retaliation, the lobbyist calls for a nationwide strike. 1.06 Chapter 6 - As the teachers' strike escalates and the president quickly loses support due to it extending over three weeks, Frank is pressured to drop the bill entirely. He now has to achieve total victory to get the bill through and end the strike on his terms. A brick through Frank's window allows him to target the architect of the strike, lobbyist Marty Spinella, and the pair go head-to-head on TV in a confrontation that ends up embarrassing Frank further, and Frank is barely able to keep the president from forcing him to cut the bill. A cleaned-up Russo confides his intention to run for Governor of Pennsylvania; Frank sets the wheels in motion by enlisting Claire's help to draft a mutually beneficial environmental bill. A night spent scanning the police frequencies pays off when a local tragedy deals Frank a winning card, forcing Spinella to confront him. He goads Spinella into a rage, revealing he organized the brick incident himself, resulting in Spinella assaulting him when no one else is in the room. This gives Frank the leverage he needs: end the strike now, or Frank will press charges and send Spinella to jail. 1.07 Chapter 7 - President Walker finally signs the education bill into law, earning Frank a major victory by affording him great influence and favor with Walker. Vice President Matthews is feeling sidelined and expresses discontent with Walker. Peter Russo readies himself for the governor's race ahead by attending AA meetings while his campaign team discusses strategies. Frank uses his relationship with Zoe to generate some positive spin on the announcement and taps Christina for the position of deputy campaign manager. Someone from his past unexpectedly reappears in Doug Stamper's life. Zoe recommends Janine Skorsky for a job. 1.08 Chapter 8 - Along with Claire, Frank visits his alma mater at his military college, which is honoring him by naming a new library after him. He spends the night reminiscing and drinking with old friends, including one who may have been his former boyfriend, allowing a glimpse behind Frank's mask. Among the guests of the event is Remy Danton, who advises that SanCorp has concerns about Peter Russo running for governor. In the meantime, Peter returns to Philadelphia and visits his mother. He then tries to convince former shipyard employees to support him; an angry meeting with them reveals an uphill struggle ahead but he remains undeterred. 1.09 Chapter 9 - Peter goes on a bus tour around Pennsylvania with Vice-President Matthews. Matthews initially torpedoes Peter's campaign but is eventually won over. Frank tries to whip support in Congress for the Delaware River bill. He needs Claire's help, but she is disappointed about how little help she is receiving for her own projects and goes behind Frank's back to ensure that the bill fails. Zoe decides her relationship with Frank should be purely professional but changes her mind when he stonewalls her. 1.10 Chapter 10 - Frank is upset with Claire regarding the bill's failure, and Claire storms out. She approaches Zoe and informs her that the affair with her husband is not a secret. She then goes away to meet her own lover Adam, not telling Frank where she is. Frank is losing control of Russo and Zoe, who are turning on Frank for their own ends. He needs to keep Russo in line and also find out his wife's whereabouts. Russo slips in his sobriety and gets drunk with Rachel (the prostitute he was initially caught with in the premiere), falling into the trap Frank is setting for him. A drunk Russo makes a mess of a phone interview which Frank plans to use to crush his chances for governor and make his next move. 1.11 Chapter 11 - After Russo's disastrous phone interview, Frank convinces Matthews to run for Governor in Russo's place. Vasquez asks Frank forthrightly if he is ambitious to be Vice President himself and, after some reticence, he admits that this was his plan all along and reaches out to her as an ally. Meanwhile, after attempting to reconnect with his children, a still-inebriated Russo hands himself in to the police. Frank picks him up from jail and recognizing him to be too much of a liability proceeds to kill Russo, making it look like a suicide. 1.12 Chapter 12 - With Matthews about to win the governor's race, Frank is helping the White House vet VP candidates. The President suddenly sends him to evaluate Raymond Tusk, a multi-billionaire who lives modestly in St. Louis. But after staying with him, Frank eventually discovers deeper connections between Tusk and the President and learns that he is the one being vetted. Tusk offers to support him in return for an unspecified favor — but Frank refuses. Meanwhile Janine and Zoe's persistence starts to pay off as they begin to see through the conspiracy regarding Frank and Russo. 1.13 Chapter 13 - Frank meets again with Tusk and reaches an accommodation; the President offers him the VP post and he accepts. Claire learns that Gillian is suing her for wrongful termination and refusing any settlement. She also consults a doctor about possible fertility treatments. Claire fires Gillian. Meanwhile, Zoe, Lucas, and Janine learn Rachel's identity and begin to put together more of the pieces of Frank's plots. Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, June 7, 2013 Welcome to Washington. -- Modern adult-oriented television drama seems to have embraced dark tales of revenge, manipulation, a lust for power, and all kinds of evil conniving, the entire character roster made up of a bunch of no good, hateful, spiteful, self-centered, win-at-all-costs personalities. The drama yield is undeniably tense and relentless, and studios and filmmakers have been turning back the clock to explore these sorts of qualities. Programs like Spartacus and The Borgias are earning huge ratings and gaining significant followings by detailing the sordid lives of the morally corrupt from centuries past. But why go that far back in time when the modern American political landscape can do it just as well, just as deviously, just as devilishly, just as dramatically deliciously? House of Cards, a Netflix original Drama, tells the story of a wronged U.S. Congressman who will stop at nothing to work the system, hurt his enemies, and only help those who can help him. It's not quite so scandalous, sexy, or violent as those other programs, but it does beautifully cover similar ground and does a fine job of diving into the cesspool that is modern American politics. Eleven-term South Carolina Congressman and House Majority Whip Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) has played a key role in the election of Democrat Garrett Walker (Michael Gill) to the Presidency of the United States. Underwood's reward: a promised posting as U.S. Secretary of State. In Washington, however, promises aren't worth the handshake they're made on. When Underwood learns from Walker's Chief of Staff Linda Vasquez (Sakina Jaffrey) that The President has decided to go another direction for State, believing Underwood's value to the party remains in the House, The Congressman sets out to destroy the President's nominee, Michael Kern (Kevin Kilner), and reshape the course of Washington, and Walker's Presidency, more in his favor. Underwood's wife Claire (Robin Wright), who heads a D.C. nonprofit, backs his scheme. Underwood's first order of business is to take charge of the Education bill coming out of the White House by leaking the far-left leaning first draft to rookie Washington Herald writer Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), an ambitious young journalist whose sudden connection with the high-ranking Congressman makes her instant front-page news and a thorn in the side of the Herald's White House Correspondent Janine Skorsky (Constance Zimmer) and its Editor, Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver). Meanwhile, Underwood enlists the aid of a young and morally flawed Eastern Pennsylvania Congressman named Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) to play a critical part in his plan to remake Washington in his image. All of that makes for fine drama, but it's also rather disheartening to watch House of Cards play out with the realization in mind that this is probably a bit tame compared to the real sort of shady cloakroom deals and excess manipulation that takes place in Washington, D.C. The scope of corruption, scandal, hate, coercion, and all other forms of malfeasance must be staggering, well beyond even all that becomes public knowledge. House of Cards brilliantly works the system in its depiction of the moral decay at work in Washington, a place, the program demonstrates, that's less about public service and more about bad people doing bad things and the bad people putting down the few good people for their own agenda, agendas which usually don't mean a thing in the arena of public benefit but that amount to quite a bit for their own personal and financial bottom lines. There's not even so much of the old "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" but rather "I'll rip you to shreds if you don't scratch mine, and if you don't scratch it just as I demand." It's ugly business where ugly shouldn't exist. It's a fact of life, but at least with House of Cards television viewers can find at least a little bit of entertainment light from an otherwise darkened, long-decayed cornerstone of the American experiment. The arcing story of House of Cards flows very well. It's a very fluid, organic tale, one fueled by all the Washington turmoil but solidified by some excellent performances. The program works as well as it does largely because it's infinitely believable; there's not a sight, sound, or syllable that feels manipulated or in any way something other than plausible at worst and realistic at best. The series travels through moral darkness with a strikingly believable rhythm to every step, offset by an almost gleeful cast of main characters who find a perverse pleasure in not just working the system, but taking advantage of it and using their own political skill to alter the landscape in their favor. Every character is in some way flawed -- spiteful, manipulative, dishonest, addicted, naive, oblivious -- and the program skillfully uses each and every one of those to fuel the drama and constantly shift the landscape for better or for worse, and usually the latter even if, on the individual level, it's for the former. Just as important, the production design proves top-notch in every scene; whether the Oval Office or a run-down apartment, whether a back alley rib shack or a shindig where all of the elite rub elbows with one another, House of Cards exudes a very real sense of location authenticity that will leave viewers believing it's all real or, at the very least, filmed on-location. Yet for all these positives, it's the cast that's the glue that brings it all together, the gears that make it tick. Kevin Spacey is marvelous in the lead. Not only does he do the South Carolina accent well, he feels like a born-and-bred Southerner, a master of the colloquialisms and metaphors he so often speaks, delivering them like an old pro, like somebody who's spent his enter life amongst his constituents and, outside of the suit and tie and power thirst and manipulation is really, at heart, one of them. His breaking of the fourth wall -- his offhand comments to the audience, sometimes delivered in full view or earshot of other characters but with no effect on the greater story -- gives the entire program a far more personal appeal and understanding, makes it all seem more involved and immediate rather than strictly third-person detached. The show does a wonderful job of shaping the relationship between Spacey's Francis and the character's wife, Claire; there's certainly a grey area to the relationship, particularly at first, that's slowly colored in as the season progresses, and that doubt about the intimate little details brings a heightened drama to all that plays out over the course of the thirteen chapters. Corey Stoll is fantastic as the drug- and alcohol-addicted Congressman who finds himself -- and potentially all his sins -- very much in the public spotlight when Francis finds in him the perfect pawn to further his own agenda. Kate Mara is also very good as the ambitious and confident but nevertheless wet-behind-the-years young journalist who also finds herself playing a significantly larger role in Washington politics than she could have ever imagined. House of Cards: The Complete First Season doesn't represent the pinnacle of the dark, morally bankrupt dealings and the people who engage in them sort of modern Drama that's all the rage, but it's a sound, balanced, smartly scripted, wonderfully acted, and fully addictive program about the dirty dealings in the nation's capital. Political junkies and ardent news and opinion absorbers who live and die by the headline, the candidate, the rally, the speech, and on election night will find it most appealing, but casual audiences might be turned off by the very real sense of being on the inside and the depth of the politics portrayed in the show. Sony's Blu-ray release of House of Cards: The Complete First Season features fine video and audio. However, no extras are included. Nevertheless, the release earns a recommendation for those who closely follow the world of politics. Cast Notes: Kevin Spacey (Francis Underwood [26 episodes, 2013-2014]), Robin Wright (Claire Underwood [26 episodes, 2013-2014]), Michael Kelly (Doug Stamper [25 episodes, 2013-2014]), Michael Gill (President Garrett Walker [22 episodes, 2013-2014]), Nathan Darrow (Edward Meechum [21 episodes, 2013-2014]), Sakina Jaffrey (Linda Vasquez [17 episodes, 2013-2014]), Kristen Connolly (Christina Gallagher [17 episodes, 2013-2014]), Mahershala Ali (Remy Danton / ... [16 episodes, 2013-2014]), Rachel Brosnahan (Rachel Posner / ... [15 episodes, 2013-2014]), Sebastian Arcelus (Lucas Goodwin [14 episodes, 2013-2014]), Elizabeth Norment (Nancy Kaufberger [14 episodes, 2013-2014]), Kate Mara (Zoe Barnes [13 episodes, 2013-2014]), Gerald McRaney (Raymond Tusk [13 episodes, 2013-2014]), Constance Zimmer (Janine Skorsky [12 episodes, 2013-2014]), Molly Parker (Jackie Sharp [12 episodes, 2014]), Corey Stoll (Rep. Peter Russo [11 episodes, 2013]), Reg E. Cathey (Freddy / ... [11 episodes, 2013-2014]), Larry Pine (Bob Birch [11 episodes, 2013-2014]), Jeremy McLain (Walker Secret Service [11 episodes, 2014]). IMDb Rating (06/18/14): 8.7/10 from 121,556 users
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