House of Cards

[Beet]

They never said whether he got his jobs bill passed.

I stopped watching this show because of how they're making such an evil couple into the protagonists...

[Beet]

I stopped watching this show because of how they're making such an evil couple into the protagonists...

Are you serious?

Why wouldn't I be?

[Beet]

They actually put up someone against Frank that the audience would actually want to win. Thank God.

I wanted them all to win. Even the alcoholic from Pennsylvania in season 1!

[Beet]

I stopped watching this show because of how they're making such an evil couple into the protagonists...

So I suspect Breaking Bad is unwatchable too.

Yeah, it was pretty disgusting.

Edit: To be clear, I've only seen the first 2 episodes of Breaking Bad, and I stopped watching it not cause he's bad, but because the guy I was watching it with stopped coming over to my house. Normally I don't watch tv shows. House of Cards was an exception due to its political themes. So for all I know, Breakng Bad develops into a great show.

I've enjoyed movies like Scarface and Godfather, so I definitely think it's not impossible to have good story lines with an evil antihero, but for many reasons that's not the case for House of Cards. Perhaps because it hits too close to home? The 'opponents' are not some gangsters/goons from another world but archetypes of very familiar kinds of people. A friend of mine I know is a former alcoholic and I know he identified with that character. Who knows? For whatever reason the Underwoods became unlikeable enough to ruin the show as a whole.

Of course, the preference for fantasy narratives to have good/sympathetic characters and happy endings is quite normal and common, which is why no one should be surprised at my point of view. I'm merely expressing a variation of the most common one.

[Beet]

SPOILERS

I always thought Zoe Barnes was a sympathetic character. The conflict with her editor is the classic clash between "old media" and "new media", the established vs the up-and-coming. Of course, as the younger character, Zoe was going to be cast in the role of "new media". The point of her editor's firing was that it was new media that got him fired - the new media that can get someone fired just for one mistaken word that is publicized in the wrong way. House of Cards would hardly be a relevant show if it did not acknowledge the presence of social media and its significance in politics in some way.

Of course both her and Janine are portrayed as only getting stories by sleeping with those in the "inner circle." But Janine's behavior is in the past, so all we see is Zoe's- and you can hardly blame her, given the vast benefits that doing so accrued her. Her only mistake was getting too close to her subject... So the guilt of promoting negative stereotypes of women journalists rebound on the show's writers, not the characters. However, when I was watching it, I thought it was supposed to be a commentary on how power at the center is still male in nature and that trading sex for favors (of any type) does not alter that dynamic. Women who trade sex for favors from the rich and powerful are still at their mercy.