House of Cards Season 5 Episode 1 No-spoilers Review

Anticipation

Since its debut in 2013, each successive season of House of Cards, has always been very eagerly anticipated by millions of fans. The show has been the most talked about political drama series over the last four years.

One of the key elements of the last season's finale was an investigative article on possible crimes committed by the president being written by Tom Hammerschmidt and published by ‘The Washington Herald’, the  leading daily newspaper of the House of Cards world. Upto the last season, Frank Underwood had the unparalleled ability to shock us with his unethical ways, thirst for power and seemingly unconventional or unstatesmanlike behaviour. This year however we are in the Trump era. Just five months into the Trump presidency we already have Washington Post articles about his unethical behaviour while his statements and tweets are often far from usual standards expected of world leaders and always very dramatic.

How to be more dramatic than what is being shown on the daily news cycle and whether to draw parallels to the Trump presidency was always going to be a challenge for the House of Cards Season 5. 

The season 5 trailer, released earlier this year did manage to add to the excitement in the run up to the season premiere.

Action

The episode picks off from the previous season finale, making it very clear that ICO (House of Card world's equivalent of ISIS) is going to remain a focus in this one as well. A significant part of the episode is about the search for the ICO terrorist. One of the iconic lines of season 4 finale was Frank saying  “War. Fear. Brutal. Total.”  and in season 5 we have Underwoods implementing their strategy of fear by ruthless manipulation of the events around them to fit their own objectives. 

The other theme which carries over immediately into the second episode is the fall out of Tom Hammerschmidt’s article on Frank’s alleged crimes and Frank’s attempt to keep the story from expanding any further. We are treated to scene of Frank tossing away the copy of the Herald with that article which was featured prominently in the season 5 trailer as well.

Analysis

Much of the fourth season was about an embattled Frank trying to cope with the crises facing his presidency and the election campaign. The manipulative Russian president, his extremely good looking opponent with a picture perfect family, and Claire’s increasingly ambitious demands were all situations Frank was forced into. What feels fresh about the opening episode of season five is that once again we have Frank setting the agenda and doing things his way. This also seems to be the way in which the writers are distinguishing themselves from the Trump administration which is lurching from crisis to crisis. However, the episode does include a sort of a travel ban which seems really familiar.

Having become the vice presidential candidate already, Claire also seems to be aligned with Frank’s objectives in season five and playing a key role in his plans. In that way the episode brings back the memories of the initial seasons especially when Claire and Frank go on to the White House balcony for the final scene of this epsiode.

There is also much to reflect about after watching the episode. Art afterall so often mimics reality. It made me think of the extent to which political leaders closer to home are using fear and nationalism to further their own agenda. Frank Underwood encourages the sort of sentiment which is on the lines of ‘’Either you agree with me or you are an anti-national”, throughout the episode.  Eerily familiar, isn’t it?

Watch the House of Cards Season 5 premiere on Zee Café and let me know what you think about it! #HOConZCafe

Frank Underwood is coming to India with the television premiere of House Of Cards Season 5 on Saturday, 3rd June, 5 PM onwards, only on Zee Café!

This post is a part of Indiblogger.in's Homecoming of Terror activity.

What an Irony!

The Guardian's theatre critic, Mark Lawson has written about historical inaccuracies of modern television shows in his article "Not in this day and age: when will TV stop horrendously airbrushing history?" published on the Guardian website on Friday.

Lawson argues that the modern day television shows 'characters with laughably liberal values for their day'. He points out that protagonists in Sky1's eight part drama 'Jamestown' are portrayed as surprisingly liberal feminists which women from colonial Virginia in 1619 were most unlikely to be.

Screenshot from the Guardian website

 He goes on to compare it with a movie set in 1914 in which a character declares “The first world war has just broken out!” While showing someone in 1914 saying 'first' world war is clearly a mistake, I don't think it is quite the same as comparing it with fictional characters' values. The purpose of fiction is to be entertaining and stories of exceptional persons are likely to be much more entertaining that the average folks of the time. Why would any person be interested in a show about the daily drudgery of life in 1619? To be fair to him, later on in the article Lawson does consider the justifications for giving women in the series some modern values but also goes on to discard the those justifications.

However what I found the most ironic was how Lawson also trains his guns on the hit show 'Downton Abbey'. He says (emphasis added),

"Jamestown is produced by Carnival, the company that made Downton Abbey, a show that shocked many students of English class history with its presentation of an early 20th-century Earl who agonised about the working conditions and personal lives of his servants and would obviously have voted Liberal Democrat if the option had existed."

While complaining about the television writers/producers lack of understanding of the historical context, Lawson commits the same mistake himself! In the early 20th century (1900-1925) voters in Britain did have an option to vote for the Liberal Party.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, of the Liberal Party served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908 while another Liberal, Herbert Henry Asquith, who was later made the 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith served as the Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916. Downton Abbey is set in 1912. It is thus set in a time when the Liberal Party had managed to secure the largest number of seats in the preceding General Election in December 1910. It is this same Liberal Party that later merged with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form today's Liberal Democrats.

So Mr. Mark Lawson, an earlier version of Liberal Democrats did exist in early 20th-century and the Downton Abbey protagonist may well have voted Liberal!

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Sources:

• Gov.uk - Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 
• Gov.uk - Herbert Henry Asquith
• Wikipedia - United Kingdom general election, December 1910