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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
23
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
Jan 31, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The two hours available for review are cinematically rich, full of sleek, oily pools of darkness. [11 Feb 2013]
Dec 14, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Every now and then, the nearly overwhelming clutter of characters and storylines gives way to intense, revealing scenes featuring only Claire and Annette. Thanks to the electrifying performances of Wright and Lane, in those moments “House of Cards” is as good as it’s ever been.
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Oct 23, 2018
Season 6 Review:
House of Cards does not suffer from the lack of Kevin Spacey; anyone who has stayed with the Underwoods this long knows Wright is more than capable of carrying the action as the show’s anti-hero. ... Wright brings more humor to Claire than ever before as the President exploits sexist stereotypes about female hysteria.
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Mar 2, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Kevin Spacey, that wicked walking wink, remains a spellbinding hoot as Frank. But more than ever, it’s the First Lady--and Robin Wright--who rules this term. Her story resonates with issues of gender, race, and power, bringing in a trio of actresses who provide a sparky jolt.
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ColliderMar 10, 2016
Season 4 Review:
While Season 4 still has the “Netflix Problem” of being a few episodes too long, it’s tough to say what should be cut this year. Almost every plotline serves a purpose, delivers some kind of rewarding payoff, and it further drags us down in the muck of Frank and Claire’s life.
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Feb 27, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The Underwoods--usually robots of ambition, subsisting only on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches--engage in sex at a moment that would not inspire lustful feelings in more ordinary folk. It’s touches like this that keep the viewer of House of Cards off-balance, eager to fire up the next episode in the Netflix queue. The third season of House of Cards comes up with some formidable foes for Frank Underwood.
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Feb 27, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The first few episodes sent out for review are the most satisfying to date. Season three moves away from the colorful but ultimately tedious power-tripping of seasons one and two--Frank Underwood is underestimated; Frank Underwood wins; yay, Frank!--and becomes more of a political procedural.
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Feb 27, 2015
Season 3 Review:
House of Cards has traded in the fun of watching Frank shuck and jive in exchange for accomplishing his long game, which isn’t as fun as watching all the manipulative plays go down on each episode. In certain ways, Frank and Claire are being forced to grow up and have grownup jobs to prove it.
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Feb 14, 2014
Season 2 Review:
But it's Claire, and the Underwood marriage, that makes "House of Cards" more than just a better-than-average addition to the genre of Antihero Drama Being Used to Establish a New Fiefdom in the Television Landscape (see also "Nip/Tuck," "Dexter," "Mad Men," "Vikings" and "Klondike").
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Feb 14, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Frank Underwood may see himself as a man of action, but the odd explosion of violence notwithstanding, House of Cards is primarily a character study, one that can begin to feel a little stale after prolonged exposure. So maybe it's best to treat it like a box of chocolates. A piece (or three) at a time? Still delicious.
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Feb 14, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The episode just dives back into the fast-moving plot, which may take some forgetful viewers a little time to catch up. Molly Parker plays Frank's hand-picked replacement, and at first her character seems like a convenient, controllable choice. But episode by episode, she begins to emerge as a power broker in her own right who might someday be capable of turning on Frank.
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Feb 13, 2014
Season 2 Review:
House of Cards, like “The West Wing,” has soap and melodrama in its DNA. It also moves at a surprisingly deliberate pace, often seeming to linger on a scene just so it won’t clutter itself up by bringing in too many subplots. Still, the second season maintains the tension of the first season, and the “Bad Boys at Work” sign is still up. Let the binging begin.
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Feb 1, 2013
Season 1 Review:
If the rest of the series is as good as the two episodes released early for review (the fact that Netflix made only the episodes directed by Fincher available is slightly worrisome), House of Cards will in all probability become the first nontelevised television show to receive an Emmy nomination, or four.... [However,] not everything in House of Cards lives up to the standard set by its leads; for all its cutting-edge delivery system, it is at times surprisingly pat.
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Oct 30, 2018
Season 6 Review:
While serving up a new batch of so-so operatives (Greg Kinnear and Diane Lane play tech billionaire siblings with a right-wing bent) to vex Claire, the best thing about the final episodes of House of Cards is the return of several ghosts of Underwood administrations past.
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Oct 29, 2018
Season 6 Review:
In this truncated season (only eight episodes as opposed to the usual 13), Wright remains outstanding. But “House” suffers from the same problem as HBO’s “Veep.” Both started as daring satires of the highest office in our land and both have been surpassed by our current reality in which every day brings a new tweet storm of chaos.
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Oct 23, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Serious weight is given to mundane moments with other, seemingly more substantial ones ending before they began. Everything just feels a little… off. And yet, amid the choppiness, I found myself mostly engrossed in what was happening--and the reason for that is Wright. ...The actress now goes it alone and more than rises to the occasion.
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Feb 18, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Sure, the show’s “politics” feel ripped from a Politico comment section, and yes, the show’s plot doesn’t really go anywhere until the final handful of episodes. But the season also tosses an incredible number of balls in the air and manages to keep juggling them, which is impressive in and of itself.
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Feb 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The Underwoods have no worthy opponents.... Kate Mara's Zoe and her more interesting colleague Janine Skorsky (Constance Zimmer) are an okay team, but their muckraking efforts are now led by Washington Herald editor Lucas (Sebastian Arcelus), who unfortunately looks like a boy in need of a nap (or a hug).... My money is on rising politico Jacqueline Sharp, played with throbbing edge by Deadwood alum Molly Parker.
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Nov 1, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Wright’s reserve, unlike Spacey’s bombast, helps keep some of the writing’s mania in check. ... The self-serious drama hasn’t just morphed into a Ryan Murphy fantasy sequence; it appears to have thought more holistically about what promoting women should actually look like. ... Generally speaking, the show feels knowingly ludicrous, so in on its own jokes that it can occasionally transcend them.
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Oct 30, 2018
Season 6 Review:
A lot of the subplots revolve around established and new characters trying to hold Claire to whatever arrangement they had with Frank and learning that the solid ground they thought they were standing on has turned to quicksand. This is explored most elegantly through Claire’s relationship with former White House chief of staff Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) and battles against siblings Annette and Bill Shepherd (Diane Lane and Greg Kinnear), a couple of tech billionaires turned right-wing influencers.
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May 30, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The atmosphere feels looser, more wild and daring. ... [Michael] Kelly’s performance [as White House Chief of Staff Doug Stamper] continues to be subtle in the midst of a show that doesn’t much care about subtlety. That’s certainly true of Spacey’s ever-more-broad performance, and Wright’s near self-parody of a woman who wears her power like a suffocating mask.
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May 25, 2017
Season 5 Review:
By this point, the actors are comfortably in their element. Spacey is as assured as ever, even if Frank's occasional addresses to the camera seem to come out of nowhere. Wright again wears a cool mask to hide what Claire is really thinking as she deals with assorted crises while looking impeccable in her tailored suits. Less successful--again--are the portrayals of writers and journalists.
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Mar 2, 2016
Season 4 Review:
House of Cards has opted to diminish its central figure to allow others to emerge, even if that is done strategically, in the hope of consolidating his personal power. Whether that’s a winning strategy remains to be seen when all of the episodes are available to be binged.
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Feb 29, 2016
Season 4 Review:
The cat-and-mouse game between them [Francis and Clair Underwood] possesses genuine electricity, especially with Underwood’s chief hatchet man Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) back in the fold and running interference, having survived the tortures of the damned to get there. Yet it’s also on this front where some of the smarter political insights the show has exhibited begin to break down, with Claire veering past Hillary Clinton into something closer to Eva Peron territory, if not quite Lady Macbeth.
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Feb 27, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The show has dispensed with a lot of the real-world elements that made it so coldly compelling.... On the other hand, though, that purging of minor characters is setting the stage for a bigger drama entirely: the showdown between Claire and Frank.... It is a satisfying, slow build, and one that feels not just 13 episodes in the making but three seasons--not just three seasons but 30 years--for the inscrutable Claire Underwood.
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Feb 27, 2015
Season 3 Review:
Netflix’s soapy House of Cards stumbles out of the gate in its third season with a first hour that’s short on lead character Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and long on a supporting player whose foibles are by now a TV cliche.... but the show recovers in its second episode, returning the emphasis to Frank’s political brinksmanship.
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The Daily BeastFeb 25, 2015
Season 3 Review:
Claire, whether she’s riding an inebriated Frank like Seabiscuit or throwing down in a game of beer pong, does exhibit some of that killer instinct we’ve come to know and love.... Given that House of Cards is a series designed to be binge-watched in its entirety, it’s too early to tell whether or not it too has fallen victim to the third season curse.
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Feb 20, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The series needed a change-up and season 3 provides one, a bit; Frank is not fighting to get somewhere but to stay where he is, and his enemy is not so much a single Big Bad as it is the processes of government and diplomacy. When he’s off-balance, we are, and that makes the plot turns more interesting.
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Feb 14, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The fourth hour immediately went on my list of the year's best drama episodes; at least half of it is eye-rollingly silly, but the other half is magnificent. Just when you think the Underwoods can be written off as comic strip political cousins of the Macbeths, they do or say something that's genuinely moving, and that makes you realize they have hearts after all, even though they're probably tiny and ice-cold, and only beat for one another.
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Feb 12, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Francis needs a stronger nemesis, if not for the sake of justice then for the sake of excitement. And House of Cards would be a greater show if it had characters who were people more than game pieces. Still, on its limited terms, it’s absorbing to watch as a story of, in Underwood’s preferred metaphor, the climb up Washington’s “food chain,” one with two kinds of creature: hogs at the trough, and hogs to the slaughter.
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Feb 22, 2013
Season 1 Review:
I found the first two episodes handsome but sleazy, like a C.E.O. in a hotel bar. Yet by Episode 5 I was hypnotized by the show’s ensemble of two-faced sociopaths. Episode 8 was a thoughtful side trip into sympathy for Spacey’s devilish main character, but by then I was exhausted, and only my compulsive streak kept me going until the finale--at which point I was critically destabilized and looking forward to Season 2.
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Feb 1, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The first two installments of House of Cards are smartly acted and written, crisply directed by Fincher, and sumptuously photographed by Eigl Bryld (In Bruges), but they’re not mind-bogglingly great, or even particularly surprising or delightful--just solidly adult, with moments of dark wit.
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Uncle BarkyNov 1, 2018
Season 6 Review:
House of Cards also can be a victim of its own excesses, which are now built up into a heavy goo of previous evil and investigations of same by the sometimes ridiculously dogged Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver). ... Wright’s performance reflects all of [Francis's] cynicism, calculation and deep, unhealed wounds that powered his engine, and now hers as a President who pledges allegiance only to herself and her gender.
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Mar 2, 2016
Season 4 Review:
It’s hard not to wish that one of our most popular shows about politics cared more about the real world. That said, there are some real risks taken this season, both stylistically, and in terms of plot.... Whether it ends up giving the series somewhere new to go isn’t clear in the six episodes screened for critics, but it’s nice to see House Of Cards showing some of the ambition Frank so admires.
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Oct 31, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The hammy wink Mr. Spacey brought to these breaking-the-fourth-wall moments was fun in the beginning, but they grew tiresome and predictable. At this point, it’s probably better to breathe fresher air into the proceedings, which Ms. Wright does. Claire as the lead offers a different perspective, a worthy way to end a series that launched hundreds of other shows.
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Mar 4, 2015
Season 3 Review:
House of Cards is at its best when investigating the uneasy balance of studied, built-up political performance and personal dogmas, obsessions, gripes, and fears, but as many of these masks begin to give way in the story, the series noticeably struggles to keep up its addictive tension.
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Feb 7, 2014
Season 2 Review:
For now, apart from the Underwoods, it's underwhelming. [17 Feb 2014, p.43]
Oct 23, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The shift in focus from Frank to Claire Underwood finds House of Cards somewhat reinvigorated through its first five new episodes. It's a change that comes far too late for the show to escape many of its worst narrative instincts, or a surplus of flat recurring characters, but for the first time in years House of Cards has something new and frequently interesting to say.
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