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| courtesy of Ken Thomas |
As House of Cards enters its third chapter, we finally get to travel outside of the wheelings and dealings of Washington politics to get some insight into Frank Underwood's roots in his home state of South Carolina. In the process, we get to see what caused him to be elected to Congress 11 times, as he proudly declares in this episode. More than anything else, Frank knows how to use his words to sucker people into doing anything he wants, even if that means delivering a eulogy he doesn't fully believe in. Frank is called away to do some damage control after a 17-year-old girl gets into a fatal car accident after texting her boyfriend about the "Peachoid" (pictured above), which Frank paid an exorbitant amount of money to construct. Though his colleagues try to persuade him to stay and work on the education reform bill, his image and worth as a Congressman are more important. What I found interesting about this whole episode was the motivations behind Frank's behavior. He doesn't go down to South Carolina to express grief over the loss of a young girl, he goes down after a local politician blames Frank's "Peachoid" for the girl's death. Frank is primarily looking to make the problem go away with a settlement by offering a scholarship to be made in the girl's name. Through meetings with locals, a eulogy at a church and a talk with the girl's parents, his rhetoric is almost mechanically sympathetic, designed to tap into the emotions of who Frank regards as easily persuaded, simple-minded folk. He is a master at speechifying and Kevin Spacey probably delivers his most nuanced performance yet. You almost want to believe there's a decent man underneath all the rhetorical bullshit and the selfish ambition, but his asides to the camera indicate a man whose been in this business for so long that he may have lost his capacity to connect to the common folk.
