Miss Kevin Spacey? Me too…

I must admit to having developed an unhealthy fascination of late with the final series sorry season (they’re called that now, aren’t they?) of House of Cards.  Sad to say that it makes virtually no sense whatsoever without Kevin Spacey …

… it reminds me of William Hartnell’s final Doctor Who story “The Tenth Planet” where because the lead actor was too ill to appear in most of the story his lines have been crudely re-allocated to his companions.  That just about worked even though we know that really Ben and Polly have either had an IQ transplant or by a complete series of flukes they just happen to be having an unusually bright day … because it’s just one episode in which they have to do all the exposition and because we know the Doctor will wake up (if only to die) … and one can suspend belief for that long ...but … but ... but...

Kevin Spacey having now graduated to real scandals will never again return as Frank Underwood so … the veil never lifts.  It’s like all his lines have been reallocated over the entire truncated series but on a colossal scale.  I’m sure significant re-writes were done but they’re not enough – the feat cannot be achieved…

Too scared to re-cast the character because they fear the audience wouldn’t accept it (I don’t see why not - I accepted Kevin Spacey not being Ian Richardson) the production team have decided to make Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood the lead instead.  I really want to be able say this works or could work … but it just 100 per cent doesn’t…and it bothers me as to why? because I wanted it to...

Perhaps because … they don’t let her lead and everyone constantly refers to Frank Underwood’s absence – including Claire herself.  Why does he have to be dead?  Could he not be missing?  Some programs – Taggart …? Blakes 7? … seem to manage to carry on or even improve without the original lead even though their titular character’s name remains in the title but … House of Cards just can’t pull it off ...for..for ...for...

…for whatever reason Robin Wright just can’t follow Kevin Spacey … just like Timothy Dalton couldn’t follow Roger Moore as 007.  The result is a fantastic achievement in awkwardness…

Indeed, not since David Nobbs wrote “The Legacy of Reginald Perrin” in the 1990s  – a brave attempt to keep all his other characters alive and just write around the fact that Leonard Rossiter/Reginald Perrin had died in 1984 by building a storyline around his will - has the departure of a central character so completely haunted a production.  

 I expect they’d already shot so much they had to try and do something with the remaining footage but it’s like Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space after the death of Bela Lugosi …

It isn’t just Frank Underwood who is missing either – I’m pretty sure that several other regular actors have done a bunk but as their departure is not signposted and I can’t remember who they were and worse it doesn’t seem to matter….  Or perhaps Frank Underwood is just 3 or 4 times bigger than many of the periphery characters.  But whatever…

The plot is all over the place too.  I’ve never been able to follow all the plots in all the series of House of Cards but the stakes and the impending disasters have always been clearly signposted to the audience from the very start.  For example – Series 1 … We know Frank is a psychopath and we know he’s going to end up killing Zoe Barnes at some point and we know Doug Stamper is going to have to cover it up …and we know there will need to be a cover up of the cover up … There’s no real mysteries …the plot is about the how not the why… Yet now in an attempt to make something interesting out of Frank’s “death” it’s turned into a mystery series and we don’t know why things are happening and I am too disinterested to try and figure it out.   

What I want is villainy but what they’re offering is a murder mystery (without a body).

It’s hard enough to accept Claire breaking the fourth wall instead of Frank when we have been inside his head for the past 5 seasons … but it is even harder when Claire doesn’t tell us anything. 

I doubt all the expectation will pay off either because it would have to be Universe shattering by this point to justify the extremely opaque set-up… so Claire constantly talks to us as if letting us into her conspiracy but says nothing.  At the moment the series has gone into a totally absurd storyline whereby Claire Underwood has gone all Queen Victoria and decided to become agoraphobic – of course this is supposed to be a clever Machiavellian scheme by Claire - but it all just becomes slightly boring.  I don’t need to watch someone else not going out the house enough – I can do that home alone…

Added to this Claire Underwood never had as complicated or carefully explained back story as Frank which means she was not as interesting to start with so the writers are trying desperately to make up for this by info-dumping a whole load of biographical backstory on us and it’s too much too quickly … so none of this is Robin Wright’s acting – it’s just they’re trying to make bricks without straw then trying to make bricks that are all straw.

Miss Kevin Spacey?  Me too…