10 Problems With House Of Cards Nobody Wants To Admit
6. There Are No Likeable Characters
The speaking directly to the audience gambit does help somewhat in endearing the audience to Frank Underwood despite his first appearance on screen coinciding with the dog-strangling episode but less so as the show goes on. He's not a particularly relatable character, and he's never a sympathetic one. He's a textbook psychopath with tunnel vision, doing whatever he can in pursuit of power. Unless you're also a textbook psychopath with absolutely corrupting absolute power on your mind, you might be less than pleased to be spending so much time with Underwood. In most shows you'd have somebody in the supporting cast to root for instead but nope, everybody in House Of Cards is varying degrees of awful. Obviously that's the point. It's a version of humanity where everybody is out for themselves, doing whatever they can to get what they want. Maybe that is what Washington's really like. It can get a little wearying watching a bunch of arseholes doing arsehole-y things with no reprimand or alternative, however.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
