What I’m Watching: House of Cards

House of Cards: Season 4, Episode 12 “Chapter 51” (B+)

It’s easy to forget sometimes that Frank is actually in charge of the country when he’s so busy manipulating events to his control, and occasionally true global events do influence him. It’s been a while since the failure of America Works and his dealings with Petrov, and therefore the threat of domestic ICO terrorism and the potential murder of an innocent family is extremely troubling and not what anyone except for Conway was thinking about until this point. It’s interesting to see how Frank let Conway be involved after the terrorists asked to speak only to him because he has a family, and how they both spoke on the phone in a recording that unsurprisingly got leaked to the press for the entire American public to hear. Having the Conway family stay with the Underwoods was both awkward and terrific, with the best moments being Frank’s quick transition from anger that the kid was playing with his figurine to giving it up and Claire firing back to the question of whether she regretted not having kids with a question about whether Hannah regretted having them. Tom’s timing couldn’t be any worse in assembling his team to make real progress in building a case against Frank, and his drive to press on and take advantage of the situation to bring the Underwoods down while he’s dealing with a national crisis is going to end up backfiring very soon. There’s no way things stay quiet and the Underwoods get away clean, but I don’t think this information is going to come out in a positive way.