Slinging so much Spacey.
K binged watched “House of Cards” this weekend, polishing off the first season and getting into the second. (His response to the shocking twist in the first episode? “About damn time”.) I am of course, thrilled that my Love has gotten into it without my having to Sherlock him, because it really is a great show. Don’t believe me? Let’s hop over to my Blogger Buddy Binks Webelf at Free Canuckistan (oh, Canada!) for his excellent take:
IT’S JUST ABOUT a perfect show: each episode filmed, written, envisioned, performed like a work of art. It’s a refreshing joy to see such well-done and serious TV as House Of Cards.. not via the Networks, but NetFlix, with 100 million viewers and rising. Network TV literally would never make such a show: their political masters would not allow it.
How seductive is evil– Democrat Congressman Frank Underwood, played letter-perfectly by veteran actor Kevin Spacey, gets you on his side by 4th-wall talk directly to the camera about his machinations, schemes, cruelties, and using everybody around him as one might use toilet-paper, to put it politely. He’s the perfect political sociopath, all but soulless, vacuuming the life and goodness out of everyone he touches. You’re cheering him on, until you remember that his character is not an anti-hero or underdog, but a murdering brutalizing lying monster. His wife– played chillingly by Robin Wright (the princess from The Princess Bride, amongst many other things)– keeps showing signs of life and hope and desires larger than empowering her husband. The worst part is, she stamps to death her own hope, love, and dreams. It makes for gripping TV.
It is the great error of the movie-era and even novels before that to paint simple pictures of evil, preferably with special effects, glowing eyes, and a moralistically as possible, drawing in broad strokes the coming of their uppances. Life and real people aren’t like that.
Read the whole thing.Oh, and by the way, I totally take the blame for getting Binks hooked, just as I do with K. It’s hard being a pusher, slinging so much Spacey, but I do what I do. 😉