One peculiar thing about my self-imposed TV hiatus is that sometimes I feel its power even stronger than when I wasn't in hiatus.
In other words, I had to watch House of Cards, a relatively new series created by Netflix.
A friend kept insisting, "You have to watch it", repeating this message every time after he watched it, as if every next episode raised his opinion of the show. A co-worker endorses it strongly. And my boss says she's hooked on it.
It was beginning to feel like the whole world had come upon a revelation, while I remained in the dark. So I finally caved and watched one episode, the opening episode.
The series, starring Kevin Spacey, is about a U.S. senator and his underhanded schemes to gain and exert power, which involve using and destroying others, if that will suit his purpose. His motivation is exacting revenge and getting his due after being passed over for promotion to U.S. Secretary of State. The series is in its second season, and won actress Robin Wright, who plays the congressman's wife, the 2013 Golden Globe award for best actress in a TV series drama.
When people rave about the series, I hear echos of Downton Abbey and Scandal.Those were major hits too, practically until the other day. What is it about these shows that hooks us so?
For House of Cards, at least part of the answer is a carefully calibrated combination of viewer preferences, according to this really interesting article in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-to-guarantee-its-popularity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Netflix used its accumulation of rental data to arrive at a sure recipe. Not by accident, House of Cards combines three powerful rent-demand drivers: Kevin Spacey (a hot seller, who knew?), director David Fincher (he directed The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and The Social Network) whose work people love, and, lastly, a previous and similar BBC mini series also called House of Cards, based on a novel by Michael Dobbs, and which had flown off Netflix's shelves. Netflix adapted that BBC production into the U.S. version.
It's like improvising a cookie recipe by combining Godiva chocolate...(okay, I'm gonna stop this analogy, because I'm also on a diet and if I keep going, I won't be able to resist getting up for the Chips Ahoy bag.)
So the other night I watched the first episode. Being that it was on Netflix, which is to say without any commercials, it was pretty engaging. It's safe to say that watching Senator Underwood (Kevin Spacey's character) is probably more interesting than any real life political debate about health care or immigration. Underwood is very troubled. So is everything and everyone around him, from his calculating wife to the desperate newspaper reporter who hooks him as a source
Maybe that's one of the things about TV that hooks us -- how overdone the plots are. People aren't just damaged -- they are really damaged. They're not evil, they are super evil. They're not plain ol' good, they are heroic. It gives definition to the blurry gray areas, inconsistencies and contradictions that make up real life and real people.
But I think the most resonating element of House of Cards is the root of the drama, which is Underwood's injured pride or vanity, along with a sense of betrayal. All his actions -- and they are not pretty -- are propelled by that injury.
As I write my silly blog, I wonder if Netflix calculated one more element when creating the series: how powerless we are against someone else's decision to use or betray us. Underwood is the "bad" version of seeking reparation, of setting the score even. He is an anti-hero, and we love him.
Hmm...Makes me think of another series I've been hearing raves about: Breaking Bad. I haven't watched it, but hear it's about a high school science professor who begins finding it more rewarding, financially and otherwise, to cook up drugs in his lab and sell them. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Hero or anti-hero, maybe we're all tired of getting the short end of the stick and it makes us happy to see Mr. Nice Guy grow fangs.
I think I get it. One episode will do.
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