Spoiler warning: contains spoilers from episodes seven to 10 of season three of Netflix’s House of Cards
The focus groups think Claire Underwood should change her hair colour. And the presidential image consultants agree: if her husband is to win in 2016, she must revert to blonde. In House of Cards, it’s not just the personal that’s political, but the hairdo too. The premise here, never really explored, is that brunettes not only have less fun but their hair colour is threatening to voters, especially women and, apparently, Iowans.
Why can’t a woman be more like a man? asked Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Because, comes House of Cards’ implicit and dismal answer, the key demographics wouldn’t go for it. As a brunette Claire looked insufficiently feminine; like she was becoming powerful in her own right rather than as an adjunct to her man’s power. Dyeing her hair was symbolic: blondes may have more fun, but they are also have less power. Such, at least, was the corollary of this drama.
Much of these three episodes involved the humbling of Claire. When Claire went back to her natural brown, she was at the peak of her powers as Ambassador Underwood, back-channelling with the Russians, balling out the Israelis, and apparently bringing about peace in the Middle East by means of an international force in the Jordan Valley. Not the power behind the throne, but a woman with Frank as her ankle bracelet.
But then it all went wrong. She crossed the Kremlin’s slimeball in chief, President Viktor Petrov, telling him that he should be ashamed of the suicide of US gay rights campaigner Michael Corrigan. “Shame on you Mr President” she said at a press conference before the world’s cameras. Lars Mikkelsen’s superb Petrov turned his glower knobs up to 11.
Those words came back to haunt her. When eight Russian troops were killed by an IED in the Jordan Valley while serving on the Claire-Frank brokered UN peacekeeping force, Petrov used one of his minions to do her up like the proverbial kipper. According to Alexei, it was quite possibly Petrov himself who had ordered the killing of these Russians for his own nefarious political purposes. (Hence his refusal to allow UN observers to do a spot of CSI Jordan Valley.)
When Claire reported all this to Frank, he sent in a US Navy Seals covert team to find out what had really happened. But the covert operation proved a disaster – one dead, three injured and, when it became public, egg all over the presidential face. Worse, the US intervention prompted the Israelis to send thousands of troops to the Jordan Valley, which prompted Hamas and Hezbollah to intervene. Result: Frank’s peace plan for the Middle East in tatters because his wife had been double-crossed by a vengeful Russian. And, also, because Frank had made the mistake of believing her report. Those Russian troops had not been killed on Petrov’s orders – and Petrov used this exposure of Claire’s credulousness to insist that Frank fire his wife.
Humiliated, Frank bent the knee to the Russian demand, on the grounds that having an apparently naive wife in such a key position risked putting him in similarly compromising situations later. Incredibly, she accepted this decision without demur and in the next scene was discussing hair care choices and how to maximise her husband’s chances of electoral victory.
Moral: don’t cross Russians, especially those whose glower knobs go up to 11. And there is also a pragmatic lesson that Claire, albeit for the moment, has to live by: she can aspire only to be Lady Macbeth rather than Hillary Clinton. Dyeing her hair blonde thus served as ritual abasement akin to having her having her epaulettes torn off, her sword broken in two and being drummed out of the diplomatic corps. But perhaps we shouldn’t feel too sorry that Claire broke through the glass ceiling only briefly - she did only become ambassador to the UN following her husband’s nepotistic intervention.
Hurricanes hardly ever happen
In episode eight, Hurricane Faith was bearing down on the eastern seaboard. But what had Frank done? Plundered the disaster relief fund to bankroll jobs creation scheme Amworks against the wishes of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and the head of Federal Emergency Management Agency.
What could Frank do? In order to secure emergency funds, he would have to sign a bill that would liberate funds, only on condition that he agreed never to do so again. “The only question,” said new Senate Majority leader Republican Henry Mitchell, “is whether you sign before the hurricane hits or whether it will become law after thousands have died.” Underwood’s signature would mean he could no longer plunder Fema’s funds for his Amworks jobs programme – the policy he hopes will win him the presidential election in 2016. (Even though he has promised he has no plans to run.) In the end he signed.
And then what happened? Hurricane Faith changed course, missing the eastern seaboard. He needn’t have signed the bill that scuppered his Amworks policy. How very vexing, Mr President. If Frank had a cat, he might have kicked it.
This reverse, though, precipitated Frank to announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination which, you think is just the thing to give ex-secreteary general Heather Dunbar the pip. She thought she was standing for the Democratic nomination against Congresswoman Jackie Sharp and seemed to be doing very well in that battle. There she was out on the campaign trail, making superb speeches about the need for the government to get Walmart to take its snout out of the federal trough. “The starting salary at Walmart is below the poverty line,” she told a caucus. I’m not even American and that makes me furious and want to vote for Dunbar.
Little does Heather know that Frank has secretly anointed Jackie as his running mate in 2016 and suggested that she stand for nomination against Heather in order to undermine the latter’s chances. Later, she will stand down and join Frank’s ticket. Of course Frank’s ruse could yet backfire: Jackie may try to win on her own rather than being second banana to the corrupt old man of a placeholder who, last time I looked, has two murders on his hands. It’s hardly self-evident that the incumbent president is going to get the Democratic nomination for 2016, particularly if his first campaign meetings go as badly as the ones we saw in episode 10. He couldn’t tell even his supporters the truth about his failed peace-keeping initiative in the Jordan Valley.
Crapulous slide into slough of despond, part two
Oh dear. Doug’s crashed and burned again. He’s reverted to alcoholic crapulousness because Gavin Orsay, the FBI informant hacker, showed him the contents of an envelope. In it was a photo of a charred body, apparently proving that the love of his life, Rachel Posner, ex-call girl turned born again lesbian, is dead. True, she did try to kill Doug in the woods, but judging from his grief-stricken, booze-addled slide into the slough of despond, he got over that and still adores her.
What now? Will Doug unblock Gavin’s passport so he can flee American justice? If so, who will look after Cashew, Gavin’s guinea pig? Pretend you care. Will Doug’s fall embroil the president who, after all, tasked him with hushing up Rachel because she knew too much about his murder of reporter Zoe Barnes? Or is Doug still the loyal henchman - he may well be employed on Heather Dunbar’s campaign team only to parlay that access to get damaging poop on her that he can pass on to his former master.
One last question. Was the president about to get it on in the White House with the ex-prostitute who is ghosting his biography? Certainly, during one of Frank’s nocturnal chats with Tom Yates, they held hands and looked longingly into each others’ eyes before calling it a night. Ever since last season’s slip into sexual silliness (remember the unwittingly hilarious threesome when Frank and Claire had a thing with Agent Meacham who, improbably, still seems to be on the payroll?), I’ve been wondering if Frank would produce further evidence of bisexuality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s the kind of stuff that could hit approval ratings: if the American people aren’t ready for a brown-haired first lady, they probably aren’t ready for a bisexual president either.
War stories, piggy banks, double dipping
“I have killed a man with my bare hands. It wasn’t make believe. Do you think you’re capable? I think you are,” Viktor Petrov to Frank Underwood. Is there anything funnier than two presidents, both in camouflage, one little the other large, trading war stories in a Middle Eastern bunker? If there is, I don’t care to hear it.
“You don’t get to break the piggy bank and ask us to glue it together and put in more pennies.” The leader of the Democrats in the Senate explaining to Frank why Congress won’t bail out his Amworks programme after his illegal raid on the disaster relief fund.
“The American government subsidises Walmart to the tune of $7.8 billion per year by the issue of food stamps to one tenth of its workers. Fifteen per cent of the food stamps are used at Walmart. So Walmart gets to double dip into the federal government’s coffers.” Heather Dunbar on the campaign stump, making a superb speech that, you’d think, makes the steam come out of Walmart’s real-life PR Johnnies’ ears.
