We finally managed to drag ourselves through season 2. We had to watch it given its pop culture significance but not necessarily enjoy it. While the first season had a sense of intrigue, a sense of balance, the 2nd season went off the deep end pretty quickly. The show's only hope is ripped off swiftly and quickly continuing the troubling trend of eliminating lead characters early and often.
Spacey's oversized, overdone, glib Frank Underwood fast became a rather tedious uni-dimensional character, a juggernaut. That itself isn't really the problem. The modern trend for moral bleakness in films and TV has a fairly established presence for a while now. The real issue with the show is the weakly challenged anti-hero who has no substantial anti-villian to make him interesting. Superman is interesting because of Kryptonite and Batman for the Joker. Frank Underwood has no such issues. Everyone around him in high-positions in Washington is comfortably an idiot. He is the only one who knows how to play games and how to win. Nothing wrong with that premise. He is the hero after all. The problem is just that his achievements aren't worth the viewer's while. One wonders, surrounded by such fools, what took him so long to come this far along. He might as well be the kung-fu hero in a 2-bit Hong Kong martial arts film. All his problems seem to disappear quickly as do his opponents. There is a theme and a lot of style but no real plot or characterization.
The key to great films and shows are interesting characters. This is House of Cards's biggest flaw. There are so few identifiable or interesting characters to root for. Mostly because the looming shadow of Frank and his equally morally dubious wife Claire, leaves little time to build any other character. An occasional attempt at building other characters often leads to disappointment...and death. He is the Walter White without a Skyler.
I have always been a huge admirer of Kevin Spacey. His Lester Bernham in "American Beauty" remain one of my favorite onscreen characters. However, I don't much care for his rather monotonous, alienating performance in this show. The entire show, in hind-sight, seems like a long, soporific monologue full of tiresome quips and truisms.
After all of this, it is still worth watching. It is a novel attempt at redoing TV delivery. I really hope Season 3 brings an actual story to the table. We don't want another unchallenged, flat discourse from Frank Underwood.