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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
23
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
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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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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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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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 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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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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Nov 1, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The performances are excellent, maybe better than ever before. But Cards has always been a show whose plot contortions could confuse and whose incremental intrigue could bore, and those problems are worse now that everyone seems to be whispering. There are interesting ideas at play, though. ... Unfortunately, it isn’t until more than halfway through the eight-episode season that Claire’s big plan becomes clear.
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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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Oct 31, 2018
Season 6 Review:
They are smothered by the ghost of Frank/Spacey, as well as a stifling atmosphere that’s partly a combo of the weightless writing and Netflix’s digital gloss. It was already stuffy with Spacey around, but without his Foghorn Leghorn hamming to distract us, it has become even more unbearable.
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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 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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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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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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The Daily BeastOct 23, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The series still suffers from the same issues it has in past seasons. For a show with as many dastardly, dark, thrilling subplots--more than can even really be kept track of--it’s ever-confusing that it can seem to move so slowly. Robin Wright is characteristically hypnotizing in the lead, regally stalking the Oval Office as she cleans up messes without a hair moving out of place.
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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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IndieWireOct 23, 2018
Jun 1, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Underwood isn't Nixonian or Clintonian (pick your villain); he's a flat character for whom recognition is its own reward. This may make the show a surprisingly good fit for our times. But onscreen as in life, the desire for fame alone is insufficient motivation to compel viewers to stay tuned.
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May 31, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Five seasons in, House of Cards still trades in predictable scripting that recycles the same themes time and again. Even now we’re made to contend with an endless march of one-note side characters and expedient problem-solving via criminality, a set of moves that lost their ability to entice and shock some time ago.
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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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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 30, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Fans of the series will be relieved to know that new showrunners Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese have kept the trains moving on time, while more tentative or wearied viewers should be warned that the frustrating aspects of the series have only grown worse and House of Cards spends at least seven or eight episodes of the new season spinning its wheels and running on forgettable fumes. To the show's absolute credit, entertaining and amusing things begin to happen by the 11th or 12th episode.
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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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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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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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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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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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Mar 2, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Claire is as bad a person as Frank, but she's not as good at the game, so There's less pleasure in watching Wright, whose greatest achievement the past two seasons has been her admirable maturation as a director. Maybe that's what Kinnaman's character will eventually provide, either a worthy adversary or a rising protagonist? It doesn't matter whether or not Frank returns to talking to viewers, but he badly needs something worth talking about.
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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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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 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:
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:
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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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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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 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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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 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:
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 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 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 7, 2014
Season 2 Review:
For now, apart from the Underwoods, it's underwhelming. [17 Feb 2014, p.43]
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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