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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
23
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
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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Season 1 Review:
House of Cards is a strange mixture of freedom--Fincher and his cohorts clearly did what they wanted to do--and limitation: These powerful, venal characters and the well-tended hothouse they live in feel quite familiar (and not just because this is based on a UK miniseries of the same name).
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IndieWireOct 23, 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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