House of Cards: The Complete Fourth Season

The fourth season of this Netflix original series starring Kevin Spacey as a ruthlessly ambitious politician who schemes, manipulates, blackmails, and murders his way into the White House opens with (unelected) American President Frank Underwood (Spacey) at loggerheads with First Lady Claire (Robin Wright), his equally ambitious and coldly calculating wife. Claire threatens to walk out on Frank to start her own political career, and Frank stymies her at every turn in order to keep her by his side as he runs for his party's nomination in the next election. But when Frank hovers between life and death after an assassination attempt, Claire takes over the hardball negotiations with Russia over an oil embargo. When Frank recovers, he sets in motion a scheme to make Claire his running mate by holding an open primary and arranging a "spontaneous" groundswell of support for her. Meanwhile, a reporter digs into the scandals that Frank has buried, and Frank's Republican rival (Joel Kinnaman) proves to be as ruthless as Frank at manipulating politicians and sabotaging government plans. This season features a presidential election, an oil crisis, a showdown with a Putin-like Russian prime minister, a military crisis involving an ISIS-like terrorist group, and plenty of backroom dealings, broken promises, and political backstabbing. House of Cards remains entertaining, yet the stories imagined by the writers can't quite compete with the real-life political sideshow of the current election season. Compiling all 13 episodes from the 2016 fourth season, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)