Robin Wright deserves no matter awards the trade can throw at her for her work on the sixth and remaining season of Home of Playing cards, Netflix’s political cleaning soap opera that cosplayed as status tv. Her efforts to salvage these eight episodes of the present are nothing lower than heroic. However the odds have been stacked in opposition to her.

Final November, Kevin Spacey was fired from the present resulting from allegations of sexual assault, and within the remaining season, Frances Underwood isn’t seen nor heard this season, regardless of the present’s long-running tease of audio diaries, suggesting that his narration all through the present existed, not less than partially, in-universe.

Underwood’s demise is mentioned within the first episode of season six, however it takes till the finale for the viewers to learn the way he really died. It’s a thriller with no chunk, and the reply is given to us throughout a scene that tries to be Shakespearean however is as an alternative too absurd to take severely.

[Ed. note: the rest of this post contains spoilers for House of Cards’ final season and everything before it.]

I’ll ask the next two, barely spoilery questions concerning the finale earlier than completely revealing how the present killed off its predominant character: The place was the Secret Service by all that? What are they going do when Claire Underwood has to elucidate the bloody scene within the oval workplace?

The present’s writers by no means received over Frank Underwood, and the best way his figurative ghost haunts the season though he’s pointedly by no means proven appears like an uneasy compromise. Home of Playing cards nonetheless desires to middle Frank, however Netflix doesn’t need Kevin Spacey onscreen in any method. Which means no painted portraits of the useless character, and no inclusion of his voice-over regardless of the very fact it figures so closely within the plot.

There was solely a lot the present’s writers and producers might do below these limitations, and it results in fixed confusion for the viewer. Greg Kinnear and Diane Lane are added to the solid as a super-powerful brother and sister staff with cash and connections which will make them extra {powerful} than the President herself, however the characters are mentioned as if that they had been there all alongside.

Doug Stamper scowls by the season as he tries to defend Frank Underwood’s legacy whereas additionally looking for a misplaced will — sure, actually — and the character not less than offers a take a look at the collateral injury folks like Frank Underwood depart behind. What does somebody’s fixer do when their shopper is useless, however they nonetheless love them sufficient to care about their legacy?

Characters are introduced again from the useless solely to die once more

“I needed to defend the legacy from the person,” Stamper says at one level, in a line that carries a lot meta-significance for this present that I used to be shocked everybody didn’t pause to have a look at the digital camera. Stamper is interviewed by the Washington Herald’s Tom Hammerschmidt throughout one scene that gives some welcome catharsis, so not less than one character will get solutions to the questions they’ve been asking for therefore lengthy. However generally realizing the reality isn’t sufficient; it must be on the file for it to imply something.

It in the end seems that Stamper is the one who killed Frank when Frank was on his technique to kill Claire, a transfer that will have tarnished his legacy. However even within the present’s world the Underwood legacy was already fairly soiled, so I’m unsure the typical individual thinks Frank was as nice as Stamper would hope. Stamper cuts Claire with a letter opener whereas the Secret Service, as I famous above, have to be getting espresso or one thing, and Claire is ready to stab Stamper after which cuts off his air provide till he dies.

The Secret Service are going to have a variety of questions after that espresso break. Regardless of how this will get spun, the President simply killed somebody within the oval workplace. Whereas pregnant. After being minimize herself. Throughout a nuclear disaster. As a result of positive, that every one is sensible.

Characters are introduced again from the useless solely to die once more, and main plotlines are arrange however not often paid off. There’s an environmental disaster that units up an app that exists to suck up person data so a non-public entity can management elections, which is what occurs when somebody performs phrase scramble with headlines from the previous few years.

One character is established, makes some errors, is given the reality about the place he got here from and is then kind of dismissed. He had what passes for an arc, I assume, however nothing would have been impacted if he have been decreased to a line or two of dialog spoken by different characters.

The present appears to suppose that if a variety of stuff is going on, even when it doesn’t in the end matter, you’ll be fooled into considering these characters are grasp manipulators. As a substitute everybody comes throughout as inept, slap-fighting one another in probably the most petty and privileged methods conceivable.

Take, as an illustration, Claire Underwood’s plan to convey weak spot and embolden her enemies by pretending to be in a drawn-out interval of weeping despair. Everyone seems to be simply purported to be neglect the President was a shut-in for a couple of weeks? She heads off a narrative about having an abortion by appointing the nation’s first cupboard made up solely of ladies, after which turns into irritated when these ladies really need to do their job nicely and never simply log out on her weird schemes.

The our bodies pile up, the wheels inside wheels all go off the tracks and solely FBI agent Nathan Inexperienced appears to grasp what sort of present he’s in as he tries to take away himself the state of affairs solely.

Watching him do the minimal required to exist on this world after which carry his household to work in an try and persuade Claire to let him resign present the present with a few of its most twisted laughs. This man doesn’t care about something occurring with these folks, and he is aware of the longer he hangs round them the extra he’s prone to have an accident.

Nathan Inexperienced is the one good character on this showNetflix

It’s a messy, incoherent and complicated eight hours of tv with none robust thought of how you can carry this present to an in depth. The decadent staging and outsized performances create a type of cultural dissonance the place it’s laborious to imagine the remainder of it’s this dangerous when it typically seems to be so good.

In one other time in American historical past we’d giggle at a present that introduced a president with this many defections of their cupboard or the concept that a pacesetter would exaggerate a nuclear menace for political factors, however as of late each of these story beats appeared nearly banal. The American President assembly with a Russian chief to secretly minimize offers for their very own mutual profit? You don’t say.

And thru all of it, Robin Wright refuses to telephone it in or do something however her greatest with the ridiculous work these scripts give her. She finds an actual individual in Claire Underwood, after which doesn’t permit the silliness of the remainder of the manufacturing take that away. It’s a magnetic efficiency that’s greater than sufficient to hold its personal present, and it could be nice to get a seventh season or a spin-off that facilities Claire Underwood from the start.

The ultimate season of Home of Playing cards is simply too bizarre and atonal to disregard utterly, however it’s not adequate to suggest.