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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
23
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
May 30, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The relevance doesn’t redeem the execution. Plot points take interminable hours to come to fruition, and if the show ever had any sense of fun before, it’s lost it almost entirely. ... At the same time, House of Cards continues to be adept at mimicking and critiquing media narratives, with a facility that tends to transcend the plot of the show.
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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 18, 2015
Season 3 Review:
Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright remain splendid as the central couple, but with their quest for power having succeeded, series architect Beau Willimon seems forced to resort to unconvincing contortions to maintain the drama. Even then, the first half of Season 3 feels flimsy.
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Nov 2, 2018
Season 6 Review:
By the time the last three episodes roll around, House of Cards’ final season has abruptly buried itself in a whole host of weird, borderline anti-feminist tropes. ... Every time season six starts to build some momentum behind either of its other two major ideas, it lumbers backward to ponder what Frank would have done, or what Frank would have wanted, and it kills that momentum immediately.
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Jan 31, 2013
Nov 1, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Even with the topically on-point crisis--some would say gift--of having to fire its star, Kevin Spacey (amid allegations of sexual assault), and replace him with the show’s far more interesting co-star and character (Robin Wright as the newly sworn-in, stainless-steel President Claire Underwood), House of Cards had already drifted hopelessly away from any kind of resonance or plausibility. Even as a hate-watch it had stopped delivering.
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Nov 2, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Robin Wright is many things, but possessed of a light touch she is not. Her grim addresses--to the camera, and to anyone within camera range--are steely and unceasing, with very little variation in tone or emotion. It doesn’t help that the dialogue--for nearly every character, but especially for Claire--is stilted. ... The show has gotten rid of its biggest troublemaker without replacing him with new trouble that would be more entertaining.
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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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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 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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