![]() “I know you’ll do whatever you think is best,” Claire said. “I’m fully prepared and I have been for some time,” Frank responded. Where does that leave us?” she asked her husband. Here’s another question about the Zoe-meets-Metro moment: What did Claire Underwood know and when did she know it? She and Frank shared a deliberately vague, pre-bedtime conversation prior to Zoe’s subway-sassination. And now there are going to be massive delays on the Magenta Line - the nonexistent Metro line that obviously includes the Cathedral Heights station - because of it. Given her background as a scoop-hungry, territorial newspaper reporter, it’s possible she may have wanted to keep Frank all to herself as a vessel for intel about the highest levels of government. She also did not seem to buy that Underwood could possibly have killed Russo and staged his suicide. ![]() Zoe thought she could play both a long game - continuing to tap Frank for information once he became vice-president - and a short one - figuring out what actually happened to Peter Russo - without it being a problem. But the more concise, nuanced answer to that question is this: hubris. Here’s another question about all this: Why was Zoe foolish enough to break away from Lucas and Janine, comply with Frank’s demands about deleting all their exchanges from her phone, and attempt to keep him as a source? The most basic explanation is that her journalism instincts, as well as her common sense, suck and always have. but where Frank Underwood’s power of mass destruction overwhelms credibility. Evidently House of Cards takes place in an alternate universe version of D.C., one that mostly resembles the actual D.C. Then again, the whole murder went down at the Cathedral Heights Metro, which doesn’t even exist in real life. It’s far too risky for him to do the ugly shoving himself. No, if a vice-president were going to ice someone like Zoe, he’d get Doug, or some henchman hired by Doug, to do the dirty work. That, or Deep Throat, but even he was smart enough to meet in an empty parking garage in Arlington. Kevin Spacey looked like he had briefly turned back into Jack Abramoff, the very real and ethically compromised lobbyist he played in Casino Jack. But honestly, that outfit, especially the fedora? It only made him seem more suspicious. Would a man who is about to become Vice-President of the United States actually meet a reporter, one with whom he once shared a romantic relationship, in a public Metro station, and kill her? I know he was standing at the farthest, most shadowy end of the platform, and that he was wearing those glasses and that fedora. It was a moment that worked very well from a shock-and-awe perspective, even if it failed to pass the logic test. I did not see it coming I suspect most people who watched this episode before reading any House of Cards–related tweets did not see it coming and Zoe Barnes sure as hell did not see it coming. Okay, now that that’s out of the way: HOLY SHIT, ZOE BARNES GOT SHOVED INTO AN ONCOMING TRAIN BY FRANK UNDERWOOD AND NOW SHE IS DEAD. This insta-analysis is about to delve into the major shocker of this first episode. (If you need a refresher on exactly where it left off, take a moment to read this primer by Amanda Dobbins, as well as the season one recaps by the admirably detail-oriented Jessica Goldstein.)Įven though this is a recap and, therefore, by definition, wading in plot spoilers, I still want to take this moment to say: SPOILER ALERT. With this, its first, much-anticipated, Netflix-able episode of season two, the show has announced its intention to immediately hurtle forward from where it left off, with the unstoppable force of a speeding Metro train. House of Cards season two has clearly dispensed with such formalities. ![]() We had to meet Frank Underwood first get to know his Congressional, media-manipulating landscape and literally adjust our eyes to the low lighting levels before the really dirty stuff - the blackmail, and the planting of career-ruining stories, and the murders dressed up to look like suicide - could begin to unfold. One of the flaws in House of Cards’ first season was that it took a little time for all the ugly plot machinations to get going.
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