One of the joys of House Of Cards is watching the Underwoods crush those around them, stamping on anyone they have to in order to gain power. All of this is punctuated by a brooding Kevin Spacey, who remains a pleasure to watch regardless of what he's doing. Sprinkle a few plot twists into the mix and you've got a total winner. The problem with season three is that it's got none of those things at least, it's got them in much lower doses. What starts out great (Frank pees on his father's grave, what's not to love?) soon becomes...well, a bit boring. So much time is spent on Doug Stamper, yet so little actually happens during his sub-plot. You could practically fast forward through his scenes and not lose out on much. The same can be said (to a lesser extent) about Claire Underwood...and what was that whole book biography sub-plot about? At times it felt like absolutely ages before the main plot would resume moving forward, but then it was always interrupted by boring distractions.
