House of Cards

if it's true, YES CLAIRE YES.

I think Cathy must be in a coma. She might have amnesia or something when she wakes up, otherwise that's another person out to get Frank.

Something's got to break Doug. I feel like there's been some build-up of that. Something. Eventually. Please.

I'm not entirely sure who Davis and Usher are and what their roles are. I think my brain just switched off when they were introduced so everything about them was a mystery to me

I felt like it was a strange choice to make the guy who played Frank's ancestor become his personal trainer. I wasn't sure where they were going with him, and then they killed him off.

A pretty cheesy ending to episode 5 but it was worth it for the look on Annette's face.

In general the episodes feel kinda slow (though that's not different from the last few seasons), and there's lots of stuff I really don't care about - like I'm still not sure who Jane is, where she came from or why I should care about her - but also there's some really great twists in there. Watching Claire play the game her own way is very satisfying - like how she dealt with Usher's blackmail attempt by saying that Russia killed Tom, which she got away with because she appeased Petrov at Cathy's "funeral". Or how she expanded on that by getting rid of her cabinet and VP since they were all Shephard stooges. I especially like how she keeps tricking her opponents into thinking she's not as smart as Frank was, so they keep underestimating her. Great stuff.

A lot of the time I find myself thinking how this season would've unfolded were Spacey still in it, and to be honest I don't think it would've been too different. Claire says in the first episode that Frank aligned himself with the Shephards before his death, and I think we would've seen that relationship he had with them. So instead of Claire vs Usher and the Shephards, it would've been Claire vs Usher, the Shephards and Frank. Like I think Frank would've been the one to tell them about Claire's abortion after 16 weeks instead of... however it is they found out (I must've missed that part).

There are still a few things that confuse me, like what's the deal with Cathy and wtf are the journalists doing this season - seriously I have no fucking clue what Janine's storyline is about, but Claire's story is definitely keeping me hooked.

Well those last 2 were... certainly something. I think that second last episode is where I took the turn from "this isn't too bad, there's a lot I like" to "please just let this end", which it thankfully did.

I'm not sure what I disliked the most: the casual, James-Bond-baddie-esque discussion about killing the president, or the fact that that whole subplot - and basically everything involving the Shephards - was kinda meaningless. I don't feel like there was any payoff for following them all season.

I didn't care at all about the Shephard family drama, particularly involving Duncan, but I'd hoped that there would have been a point to it later on, but no. Or I guess that's the motivation for Annette to kill Claire? Even then, it's still a really convoluted and largely uninteresting subplot which was really just there to kill time.

Speaking of not being much use, what happened to Seth? He was such a non-character this season. You could take him out the plot and I can't really tell what would've changed. And suddenly he's perfectly okay with killing the president - the wife of a man he worked for for years? There's no explanation for why he's so up for that plan and it's bizarre that he has zero input.

And maybe it's just my general disinterest in Doug since the end of S3, but that teary-eyed confession about killing Frank fell totally flat for me. Plus all the doublespeak just totally confused me. I hope someone can explain to me whose side he was on in those last episodes, since he didn't seem to be the guy the Shephards sent to kill Claire.

Were I to pick one thing I liked ... uh Lars Mikkelsen I guess? More of him is never a bad thing. But other than that, really underwhelmed.