The Underwoods have been using shady backdoor dealings to get what they want for four seasons now, but the Underwoods in the season 5 premiere aren't the same.
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Tom Yates (Paul Sparks) is younger than the Underwoods, so the effect is less of a sexy threesome and more of the Underwoods at breakfast with their grown-up son.
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Cathy knows many of the crimes the Underwoods and Doug committed.
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Think your nerves can handle two Underwoods on the same ticket?
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Petrov wants him to do the interview and expose the Underwoods.
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Before long, news of the Underwoods' marital troubles make Fox News.
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Trump and the Underwoods share a pretty clear distaste for ideology.
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He has no choice but to tell the Underwoods about the situation.
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The Underwoods will release the Conway and Brockhart tapes slowly and strategically.
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The Underwoods are on shaky ground, but at least Frank has Doug.
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The Underwoods put it plainly to Doug over dinner the next night.
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The Underwoods are cutthroat masterminds who form plans of Doctor Doom–like complexity.
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Say what you will of the Underwoods, they at least have a plan.
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Last season's fracture in the Underwoods' relationship was primarily precipitated by two things.
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Ultimately, the Underwoods agree that meeting with the eastern leader was a mistake. Huh.
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Meanwhile, Aidan has carried out his threat to leak intel that damages the Underwoods.
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Is it bad that we're more worried about Aidan than we are the Underwoods?
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This departure of everyone's favorite um-man is quite the personal blow to the Underwoods.
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It's all so the Underwoods can get Catherine Durant on the ticket in his place.
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They know his new book takes inspiration from the Underwoods and that it's not terribly flattering.
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The point: Each piece the Underwoods wear is worn for a reason and has a subtext.
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Then she hangs out with the Underwoods and everyone talks far too much about Colton's sexual history.
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Shepherd, a step ahead, launches into a faux-concerning missive about how she pities the Underwoods' marriage.
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Yet however crazy real-life politics have become, the Underwoods' bag of dirty tricks still trumps them.
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The Underwoods have gained Tom Yates, but have lost Brockhart, who is now posing for Vanity Fair.
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The series' biggest problem has always been that it never presents any credible opposition to the Underwoods.
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The Underwoods want him back in the U.S. They also have an imaginative way of looking at things.
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Hers is with a lone couple who are getting produce thrown at their house for supporting the Underwoods.
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Thanks heavens for Jane Davis, a mysterious power player who's intelligent enough to disturb the Underwoods' domestic bliss.
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Like the Double Indemnity actors, the Underwoods seem to be uttering the same lines over and over again.
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The Underwoods are two weeks out from the election, and they're not about to let the public get comfortable.
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Someone looking for a crash course in protective power dressing could do worse than to look to the Underwoods.
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He does the Underwoods' bidding, takes enormous falls for Frank and has some immensely creepy relationships on the side.
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To make things worse for Claire, the siblings reportedly have had a rocky history with the Underwoods in the past.
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That's because for the Underwoods, politics is less about the art of the deal than mastery of the double cross.
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It's the dark cloud hanging above the nation, sure, but it's also a piece of political propaganda for the Underwoods.
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Now Claire suggests that the best thing to do is distract the American people while the Underwoods are being hit.
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As Claire notes, the Underwoods are willing to go farther than anyone, including the Conways, to get what they want.
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According to local newspaper The Gaffney Ledger, the idea of establishing an eternal resting place for the Underwoods came from Netflix.
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The early success of House of Cards was built on the audience wanting the Underwoods to win, no matter the cost.
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This problem is deeply compounded in season four, where things that would fell mere mortals only give the Underwoods greater heat.
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That, coupled with Frank's pointed use of the pronoun "we" instead of "I," confirms that the Underwoods are a unit now.
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Yes, the frosty Underwoods, a couple that hated each other more than they love power, actually did the horizontal tango to completion.
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After Buhl was arrested, police raided a party at the Underwoods' house, where a reported 50 to 60 underage teens were drinking.
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The ending of the Underwoods' story, which the producers called a "season of reckoning," will be available on Netflix on Nov. 2.
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In a joint interview, the Underwoods discussed Army base life, what makes a good salute, and that moment in the second act.
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Still, "House of Cards" has always operated on the fringes of absurdity, where murder and blackmail are among the Underwoods' tools of persuasion.
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A few skeletons -- er, characters, from past seasons also reappear, although it's unclear whether they pose any real threat to the imperious Underwoods.
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Davis tells Claire that nobody will be catching Al Ahmadi before the election, suggesting it's not in anyone's interest to help the Underwoods.
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Claire remarked in a previous episode that the only two people who felt like true friends of the Underwoods were Meechum and Tom.
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Few of us can be monsters like the Underwoods, but we all have it in us to be as pathetic as the Meyer staff.
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In the third season of the show, following a string of preposterous murders and schemes, the Underwoods finally make it to the White House.
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Spotify is getting America back on the track with two House of Cards themed playlists sure to motivate any fan to run like the Underwoods.
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Looking back on the tumultuous 2016 election, it will be interesting to see just how this plays out in the cynical world of the Underwoods.
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The Underwoods are only using the gun bill as political leverage to undermine Senator Dean Austin, the Democratic Party's choice to be Frank's running mate.
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Brian Lowry, CNN Entertainment: House of Cards has always operated on the fringes of absurdity, where murder and blackmail are among the Underwoods' tools of persuasion.
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With season four of Netflix's "House of Cards" now available, we are having a lot of fun going back into the shady world of the Underwoods.
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Not only did she get a one-on-one during the most important week of the season, but that date also brought her home to the Underwoods.
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The death of Joshua and the terror instilled in the people might swing the election in the Underwoods' favor, but there are other problems to deal with.
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The hacker finally calls and warns her that if the FBI and CIA don't stop trying to hunt him down, he'll start leaking intel about the Underwoods.
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She wants to raise the alarm about the attack before it happens; the Underwoods pull out her resignation letter and basically bully her into following their plan.
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The only point of view House of Cards has is that it's really exciting and awesome to see the Underwoods reap the spoils of their various power plays.
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This season continues that re-election battle -- and the Underwoods' spat -- at a time when the U.S. is embroiled in its own fractious, stranger-than-fiction presidential campaign.
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Just like anyone else spinning around the Underwoods, Sean is ready to play dirty to get ahead and probably commit a few federal crimes while he's at it.
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This is the Season 4 episode when most people will be tempted to see the Underwoods as stand-ins for Bill and Hillary Clinton, assuming they haven't already.
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But where it gets tripped up is in the fact that seemingly everybody in its universe cares only about what the Underwoods are up to at any given moment.
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The net may also be closing in on Aidan MacAllen (Damian Young), the hack-happy data scientist who has, as he notes, been doing "some illegal things" for the Underwoods.
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Frank Underwood season; then Part 2 (Episodes 7 through 10), the "Can the Underwoods get the nomination?" season; and finally Part 3, which focused largely on the ICO hostage situation.
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Season 523, Episode 11: Chapter 50Now that they've secured their joint nominations, the Underwoods are busy hitting the campaign trail, though they're still behind Conway by 12 to 14 points.
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But it does, because Willimon and company are 100 percent committed to their vision of the Underwoods as all of the worst things you possibly imagine about Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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In a time when real-life politics can feel like a country racing toward oblivion, it's harder and harder to watch the Underwoods actively do so and feel like it's entertainment.
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The Underwoods were facing scandal in the form of a tell-all like the one that Zoe Barnes would have written before Frank Underwood pushed her in front of a train.
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Considering the seriousness of the subject, Sheryl's got a pretty humorous take on the whole thing ... telling us Spacey has ruined the Underwood name for herself and other real Underwoods in Hollywood.
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The Underwoods vote, then head home to take part in their Election Day tradition: watching Double Indemnity, a classic film noir about a couple who resort to murder to get their way.
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We could probably have done without Abba's "The Winner Takes It All" and JoJo's "Too Little Too Late ..." but hey, these tracks just represent the very complex personalities of the Underwoods I suppose.
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"House of Cards" Season 5 delves right back into the complicated lives of the Underwoods, with Frank and Claire (Robin Wright) fighting harder than ever to keep their spot in the White House.
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But for the most part, fictional American political figures tend to be either aspirational, like the characters on The West Wing, or behind-the-scenes Machiavellis, like the Underwoods on House of Cards.
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House of Cards is clearly reaching the end of its narrative, but I've said that at the end of every season since the second, and the Underwoods continue to skate free, largely without consequence.
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On House of Cards, if the Underwoods ever slip behind in the polls, all they need to do is start talking about themselves as much as possible, because that's what the American people want.
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It's challenging to feel invested in what happens to the Underwoods' marriage at this point, and it's even more confounding to determine how, exactly, Claire had time to orchestrate such an elaborate campaign strategy.
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The show spends so little time building up any other characters that it becomes The Frank and Claire Steamroller Hour, as the Underwoods flatten everyone who stands in their way with the greatest of ease.
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There's a scene in the latest season of House of Cards that you may have missed amidst the cloud of election fraud, murder, and general intrigue that tends to follow the Underwoods wherever they go.
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It also enables the Underwoods to target their gun control lobbying efforts in a way that elicits a groundswell of public support, putting an overwhelming amount of pressure on Congress to get the legislation passed.
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Last season, data scientist Aidan Macallan used surveillance data intended to help fight ICO (the show's ISIS equivelent) to try to give the Underwoods an edge in the election, but the government took over his algorithm.
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Yet House of Cards also insists that it's worth all this fascination with the Clintons, and by extension the Underwoods, because they are by far the most interesting political characters in American public life in ages.
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Women end up boxed out of the industry altogether because, other than a few Carrie Underwoods and Maren Morrises, no one wants to fund their rise to superstardom because they've already been told the ROI is poor.
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In this way, he fits into a wave of Good Guys who suddenly seem to be filling our screens, perhaps as a post-#MeToo backlash to the volatile and abusive Frank Underwoods and Don Drapers of yore.
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Because the Underwoods and practically everyone else in their world have no core beliefs or values, topical story lines about Russian interference in American democracy, about Syria and about the ISIS-like terrorist organization "ICO" have no emotional impact.
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He's hungry after all that arguing, and he'd like to tell us (breaking the fourth wall, in HoC tradition) about his childhood friend Walter Ryson, who hung out in a tree on the Underwoods' property until Frank took an axe to it.
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After offering him a spot on the ticket, Frank tells the National Rifle Association supporter (and recipient of significant N.R.A. contributions) that he has to support Claire's bill or be booted from vice-presidential consideration, which is what the Underwoods actually want.
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Netflix announced on Monday that popular political show House of Cards would be ending after its sixth season following disturbing allegations made against series star Kevin Spacey; but fans won't have to say goodbye to the dark, twisted world of the Underwoods just yet.
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In season four, House of Cards' cynicism feels less like a worldview and more like a defense mechanism There are occasional murmurs about how the Underwoods' behavior isn't playing well with the public, but the show's tunnel vision is so acute that it doesn't matter.
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At some point, presumably, a journalist will turn over the right rock, or Doug will turn on the Underwoods, or they'll go to war with each other, and their whole power structure will crumble, but until then, the show is rise and rise and rise and rise.
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For the most part, season four is just a collection of incidents, of things that happen As the season wraps up, everything is coming down around the Underwoods' ears, and they're vowing to create more chaos in hopes of climbing the rubble as it falls around them.
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Marital spats generally aren't pretty, but the Underwoods fight to the death in Season 4, which finds President Frank (Kevin Spacey) on the campaign circuit while his wife, Claire (Robin Wright) — not content to be mere arm candy as first lady — masterminds her own political ascent.
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Unlike virtually every other politically themed show on TV, The Americans is not interested in the people at the top of the food chain — the Frank Underwoods and Selina Meyers, those who stalk through the halls of power or covet the seats of the heads of state.
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Perhaps that's because all the strategizing, off-the-record conversations and sudden changes in the voting wind — changes that, to the shock of the Underwoods, position Claire as one of three front-runners for the vice-presidential nomination — take place in an atmosphere already known for being a circus.
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In a show that's featured the Underwoods having a threesome with their Secret Service guard and Frank shoving a reporter/lover in front of a train, season 4 ratchets up the absurdity with the introduction of Will Conway, a moderate, handsome GOP candidate who brags about his humble home and works with his Democratic rival to thwart a terrorist situation.
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Also in the mix is a surveillance app developed by Annette's media mogul son Duncan (Cody Fern), a conflict over Syrian oil reserves with Russian president Viktor Petrov (Lars Mikkelsen), negotiations with a lawyer who represents the ISIS-like terrorist group, ICO, and the threat of testimony from former Secretary of State Cathy Durant (Jayne Atkinson) about all the illegal shit the Underwoods have done.
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The Underwoods are on their way to heaven, even if they have to kill St. Peter first House of Cards has always danced around the worst fears and darkest conspiracy theories about the Clintons with a lead foot, but it's slightly more deft in season four, when the show finally acknowledges that what draws these two together is seeing just how long they can tempt fate in a game of chicken, before fate blinks.
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The season's most powerful moments all come when the two are playing political brinkmanship against each other (a portion of the season that comprises far too little of its running time), and it delivers its most potent image when the Underwoods accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president and vice president, holding hands, softly lit from above, on their way to heaven, even if they have to kill St. Peter to enter.
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Brockhart, who jumps at the opportunity to become Will Conway's running mate; not the journalist Kate Baldwin, who has the integrity to reject Vanity Fair's suggestion that she write a Conway-proposed profile of Tom, but can't resist the chance to break the news about Brockhart; and not Tom, who agrees to help the Underwoods punch up their speeches solely so he can resume observing them and find a better ending to the "Primary Colors"-esque novel he's writing.
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As my former colleague and current Salon TV critic Sonia Saraiya points out, Willimon has actually written himself into the show — in a completely bonkers way: The House of Cards universe, of course, displays the Underwoods in all kinds of polyamorous, incestuous and destructive sexual relations, including one at the end of [the most recent] season where Claire brings the speechwriter she's sleeping with straight from the bedroom to the kitchen table, for breakfast with Frank.
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