House Of Cards “Chapter Seventeen”

To the surprise of absolutely no one (or at least, not me), Lucas’ hacker associate is being blackmailed by the FBI to nab him.  Yeah, Stamper knew Lucas was looking into Zoe’s death, and managed to take care of it as promised.

At some point, it might be nice to see Frank get a formidable opponent.

But there are other things going on.  Back at the Capitol Building, Frank is working out of his old office to swing some reluctant Democrats to support the entitlement reform he got through the Senate to avoid a government shut down.  He’s got his replacement as Whip, one Jackie Sharp, off working out some details while Raymond Tusk’s new lobbyist, former Underwood staffer Remy Danton, is also there to help since Tusk wants to avoid a shut down to handle the whole “China” thing by getting the budget battle done and over with.  Frank is going to try his luck on big time lefty Congressman Donald Blythe, AKA the guy he worked with on the education bill, a man who has a totally good cause to hate Frank.

So, while Jackie and Remy are off dealing with other members of Congress, Frank sits down with Blythe and…an anthrax scare hits the office and locks both men in the office for much longer than the ten minutes either was anticipating.  This gives time for Frank to try going for Blythe’s brain, or even dealing with a secret pet issue in the form of Alzheimer’s disease.  It turns out Blythe’s wife has it.  And it also turns out that Blythe is too smart to fall for it.

Jackie, meanwhile, is out taking names and gaining votes her way, not Frank’s way.  It works fairly well.

But the thing that happens is Frank was supposed to do a live interview with Claire on CNN, but since he’s confined to the office, she has to go it alone.  And she has this press secretary who seems familiar in a creepy sort of way…

Where have I see that creepy guys before…

Well, Claire ends up going on alone, and Frank and Blythe manage to catch the interview on TV.  Claire is giving her stock answers when she is asked the “why no kids” question.  And the reporter calls her out for giving the same answer every time, and that means Claire admits to having had an abortion in the past.

Um, wow.

Now, privately, Claire admits she’s had three, and the last one was when Frank got her pregnant on the campaign trail.  So, she can’t say that.  But she can say that she got one for that time she got raped in college.  And then she can say she saw the guy at a recent ceremony and name him as Marine Corps General Dalton McGinnis.  And well, it turns out some woman calls in to say the same thing happened to her.

I’m still not sure how House of Cards is the best way to handle rape and such, but this may be going an interesting way.