House Of Cards “Chapter Fifty-One”

This episode opens with a dual President/Vice President debate as hosted on PBS.  And apparently, Claire gets really high approval ratings even if Conway is overall ahead in the polls.  People like the idea of the First Lady being Vice President.

What kind of alternate reality is this?

I’m not dumb.  I know why that scene was set up.  We need to see the Underwoods together, especially as they are secretly running as co-presidents.  Sure, there’s some stuff there about how Will Conway’s own running mate is getting increasingly uncomfortable with outright lies and other media manipulation, but that’s the real reason.

But then the debate is called off as there’s a crisis.  Terrorists have kidnapped a family of three from Knoxville, Tennessee.  It seems that domestically-born members of ICO (or IKIL as I’d been thinking it…I’m not really sure) are upset that a raid on Syria captured the group’s leader and they are threatening to kill the Millers if they don’t get their demands.  And they’ll only negotiate with Conway.

The whole thing plays right into Frank’s hands.

See, Frank addresses the camera more than he has recently for this episode, and we see the whole thing getting set-up.  He invites the Conway family to the White House, but everything Frank does is designed to put Conway out front.  Frank realized his opponent, a New York Republican, just loves attention.  That sounds weird.  But the thing is, Frank can exploit that.

I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but I did find a genuine thrill when Frank, privately, told Conway how much he would suck as president after Conway assumed he got under Frank’s skin.  Frank doesn’t let much of anyone get under his skin.

Claire, meanwhile, looks wistfully at the Conways’ kids, as she often does, but then when asked if she regrets not having children by Mrs. Conway counters by asking if Mrs. Conway if she regrets having them.

This might all be a moot point.  Frank has federal agents closing in on the would be terrorists, and he sent Claire off to do…something.

And that might all be a moot point because Tom Hammerschmidt got Garret Walker on the record about how angry he is over Frank taking his job.  Hammerschmidt may very well get that article out.  Someone may be going down…

Of course, there’s at least one more season of House of Cards to go, so it won’t be Frank any time soon.