Table Of Content
He gets rid of his drug stash and tells Christina that he doesn't want her to leave. Over Linda (Sakina Jaffrey) and Spinella's protests, Frank leaves for Gaffney. There, he meets the girl's parents and delivers a eulogy at her funeral, offering a settlement of $150,000 and promising to sponsor billboards warning against texting while driving. When the parents don't seem satisfied, he asks Reverend Jenkins (Bill Phillips) to arrange the following morning's service to give him the pulpit. Meanwhile, Claire (Robin Wright) tries to recruit Gillian Cole (Sandrine Holt), the head of a competing environmental nonprofit, but is refused. Unfazed, Claire follows Gillian home and, noting that she can't afford treatment for her chronic illness, promises her health insurance.
Where Does Frank Underwood Go From Here, and Other House of Cards Season 3 Questions
I genuinely didn’t know if Doug was trying to get revenge on Frank or become a mole to get back in his good graces when he joined the Dunbar campaign, and I kind of think Doug didn’t know either. Whatever his motivations, watching him struggle and scheme was darkly entertaining, and I like how the show sort of gracefully moved him into third lead position. I guess he was already kind of there last season, but especially this season, House of Cards has begun to feel like Doug’s story, too.
House of Cards Season 6 Review: Claire's Reign Is Overdue, But Comes Too Late
He's then able to connect to the parishioners by making them equals, saying they've all done this before when feeling soul-crushing loss, and two among them are feeling that today. As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. We finally see where that clip from the first trailer for this season comes from. Frank riffs on courage, how it takes more courage to hold your tongue than to kill yourself or to word-vomit on television. And Claire says, “We’re murderers, Francis.” “No, we’re not,” he says. He tries to take the usual Underwood tactic — “It happened, let’s move on” — but Claire presses him.
Season 3 episodes (
In Russia, Claire goes to see Corrigan, showing him the statement he must read to be released by Petrov. It amounts, basically, to an apology, a retraction of his beliefs. And Claire hunkers down to convince him, saying she won't leave until they've figured something out. Tragically, the solution Corrigan settles on is hanging himself. At a joint press conference the next day, with Frank and Petrov on either side of her, Claire goes rogue, denouncing Petrov's treatment of Corrigan and hailing Corrigan as a hero. Petrov's face seems to indicate that we're on the brink of a cold war that'll make the 80s one look balmy.
How Michael Kelly Was Able to Finally Say Goodbye to House of Cards' Doug Stamper
When we interviewed Michael Kelly this summer, he gave no indication that he’d be back, that Doug would survive taking a big rock to the head. But survive he did, and I think he had probably the most interesting arc of anyone this season. Normally I don’t like that whole grim-relapse kind of plot, but I think House of Cards took it in some interesting, unexpected directions.
Review: 'House of Cards' Season 3 Episode 3, 'Chapter 29,' Plays Beer Pong in the White House - IndieWire
Review: 'House of Cards' Season 3 Episode 3, 'Chapter 29,' Plays Beer Pong in the White House.
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2015 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Cast
With the homoerotic memories of his days at The Sentinel, the Meechum threesome, and now that charged scene with Thomas Yates, you have to wonder if House of Cards is trying to tell us something about who Frank is. Plus there was all that stuff this season about Claire not seeming satisfied in the relationship. I know a lot of that had to do with other things, ambitions and dreams and whatnot, but there were definite sexual overtones to it too, no? Especially that bedroom scene with Claire demanding that Frank take her by force. I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into things, or asking too much of the show, but it does kind of seem like the series might be headed toward something a little less latent and a little more overt.
On TV episode pages
In order to take Oren down, he finds out that the responsibility for guardrails is the county's—but none have been built. Along with the mayor, Frank visits Oren and confronts him with that responsibility. He also tells Oren that the planned power lines that the mayor has blocked, because they would fall on Oren's property, can go up this year if he claims it as eminent domain. In South Carolina, Frank continues negotiating the education bill via conference call. After a brief phone conversation with Claire, he corresponds with Zoe via text and she sends him mildly flirty messages. The next morning, Underwood speaks to the congregation of his hometown church and gives a passionate old-school sermon around the "idea of hate".
Where to Watch
Netflix released the season in its entirety on February 27, 2015. The season was filmed from approximately June 12 through December 20, 2014. With Frank out of the picture, Claire Underwood steps fully into her own as the first woman president, but faces formidable threats to her legacy. With the stakes higher than ever, Frank and Claire work together to consolidate their power and win the White House by any means possible. President Underwood fights to secure his legacy.
Once Upon a Time
I’m tempted to call that tension sudden, but it wasn’t really, was it? The fundamental problems of their power dynamic were always there, it just took Frank’s ascendancy to the Oval Office to make them plain. Ambassador maybe seemed a bit abrupt this season, it makes sense that she would, with Frank finally ensconced in the White House, start wanting something more for herself. All the talk of her giving him his time and now wanting hers was, I’m assuming, a deliberate allusion to the Clintons, Hillary stepping forward as her husband retreated to the high-end lecture circuit. The trouble for Frank and Claire, of course, was that Frank’s rocky term in the White House was just getting started as Claire grew anxious to get her second act going. So they ruptured, the typically laser-focused duo now badly out of sync and clashing awkwardly.
I suspect it will be the former, but boy do I hope it’s the latter. Now that Remy has quit, seemingly for good, and Jackie Sharp is no longer in his corner, and Claire of all people has walked out, Frank needs some new blood. Either he gives Meechum a sexy promotion and they take over the world with Doug’s help, or he assembles a new team. I don’t like that shifty Seth Grayson, and I don’t feel that the show ever quite figured out what to do with him. He could be excused and no one would miss him. But even if he stays put, Frank is still curiously understaffed.
House of Cards should still primarily focus on Frank and Claire (and Doug) next season, because that’s how the show’s framework is set up, but the supporting cast has lost some of its depth. So I hope they replenish the roster in Season 4. And I hope that we’ve not seen the last of Remy, or poor, clueless, forever thwarted Jackie. I think their plotlines sorta wrapped up at the end of this season, but Mahershala Ali and Molly Parker are such good, engaging actors that it’d be a shame not to see more of them. As the return of Doug proved, we should never count anyone out on this show unless they’re for sure dead, so maybe there’s hope that we’ll see those two star-crossed lovers again. Petrov arrested him and has been holding him prisoner; he is the match flickering above the tinder box that is Frank and Petrov's relationship.
The biggest threat they face is contending with each other. Betrayed by the White House, Congressman Frank Underwood embarks on a ruthless rise to power. Blackmail, seduction and ambition are his weapons. Zoe (Kate Mara) makes numerous media appearances as a result of her leak of Durant's (Jayne Atkinson) nomination for Secretary of State. Her off-the-cuff comments during interviews lead to a rift with Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver), who suspends her for a month. Meanwhile, Russo (Corey Stoll) starts making efforts to put his life back in order to maintain his relationship with Christina (Kristen Connolly), who is considering taking a job with House Speaker Bob Birch.
Now that he’s realigned with Frank, or at least appears to be, I’m excited to see Doug maneuver the back corridors and darkened parking garages of power again. Doug, with that final brutal act, was the closest this show came to being the House of Cards of the first two seasons, when the show was less about emotional and psychological turmoil and more about good old fashioned plotting. Since it looks like he’s definitely sticking around, hopefully Doug can help get Frank back on track next year. Maybe there’s a concrete reason for all that marital misery.
There are plenty of other dramas about marriage and domestic strife on TV. So I wish House of Cards would leave all that alone for the most part and get back to all the twisty, turn-y stuff. While I originally thought that it’d be best if House of Cards was only a three-season series, I now find myself eagerly awaiting the fourth. Not because Season 3 left things in such great shape, but because I think it could be glorious to watch the show finds its way again.
This was definitely an uneven season of House of Cards. It still featured some great performances, with Spacey just skirting the line of overdoing it, and lots of striking composition. The finale episode, with Doug’s cold-blooded dispatching of Rachel and Frank and Claire’s implosion, did get the pulse racing.
And for a while I found myself frustrated by how much the third season focused on their relationship rather than some outside intrigue. But by the end, with that terrifying showdown in the Oval Office, I think the collapse of their marriage provided almost enough dramatic oomph to sustain the season. The question now is whether the fourth season will be about them coming back together or trying to destroy each other.
