Yes. She did confess, in an interview, that she had an abortion after being assaulted by Dalton McGinnis. The incriminating journal page revealed that her abortion had nothing to do with McGinnis.
The writers were deliberately vague about the details of the America Works program. When Frank is introducing it to his cabinet, he states that roughly $35,000 per year is paid to retirees rich or poor, whether they need it or not. He said he dislikes that idea and that the same $35,000 could be used to employ a person.
I got the implication that he was saying, basically, fuck you old bastards looking for a handout. If we are spending that money people will work for it. That started the whole “You are entitled to NOTHING” campaign line. I got the impression that he was eliminating these programs.
Then he discussed FDR and the New Deal and how it wasn’t meant to be etched in stone. That FDR himself would approve of changing programs when they are “not working” to fit the needs of each new generation. He even visited the FDR memorial as inspiration for his program.
In any event, there is no way that taking $500B from a $1.4T budget can leave a program anywhere near as solid as it used to be. Surely inefficiencies can be cut, but cuts of more than a third?
I disagree that it was a bad campaign line. Many, many workers who are just scraping by would eat up such a thing. Also, I thought Claire said that she had an abortion after she was raped by the General? Maybe I am not remembering correctly.
This season, I don’t view Frank as evil as he was during the first two seasons. He seems to be struggling to keep everything afloat while Claire is being a nagging wife. He made her ambassador to the UN and she got played by the Russians. He seems to still be devoted to her and will set her up to possibly succeed him in office. But like he said, he has to win this campaign first or else nothing happens for either of them.
I agree that it seems wildly impractical for a pragmatist like Frank. But he was betting that the success of AmWorks in DC would give it unstoppable momentum. That’s not an unreasonable expectation; it’s very difficult to reverse any entitlement program once it’s in place.
As for his motivation, Frank is concerned about his legacy. He doesn’t want to be a forgotten placeholder POTUS, and he’s determined to leave his mark on history with this vast, grandiose, FDR-style program.
I do think it’s a bit out of character for a ruthless sociopath like Frank to suddenly have all this compassion for the poor, though.
Maybe they see Stamper as being radioactive after the elimination of Rachel went so badly awry. Basically, he completely fucked it up and Rachel was still out there as a potential threat.
They’ll wear brown shirts while coaching the Underwood Youth?
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it from a libertarian-leaning conservative, e.g. someone like Rand Paul or Paul Ryan. Frank isn’t the most compassionate guy, but he’s supposed to be a Democrat, and it sounded “off” coming from him.
I don’t think he’s less evil; he just doesn’t have the time. As POTUS, Frank doesn’t have the freedom to engage in the kind of shenanigans we saw in Seasons 1 and 2. He can’t sneak out of the White House and push someone in front of a train. I noticed the same thing in the BBC version; in the third season Francis Urquhart gets swamped by his PM duties and can’t devote as much time to screwing over his adversaries.
She admitted to having one abortion, but she actually had (IIRC) three, and she lied about her rape resulting in the one pregnancy that she talked about.
How do I add spoiler tags to something? I’d like to discuss events in episode 13.
She had multiple abortions because having a child would get in the way of their whole power marriage. She used the rape to conveniently explain away one abortion, but none of the abortions were related to that incident.
[ spoiler ]text here, don’t use space in the tags[ /spoiler ]
Or quote this post to see the code:
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I’m on Ep 4. I don’t get AmeriWorks either. OK, you focus on infrastructure and that’s fantastic. But any economist will tell you that 0% unemployment is actually bad for the economy. Sure, Frank doesn’t care about what’s best for the economy. He cares about what’s best for him. But giving 10 million people jobs won’t guarantee that those 10 million people are registered to vote and actually vote for you. But let’s assume they did.
Fantastic. You just earned 10 million votes from category A while severely pissing off categories B-Z by slashing welfare, social security, and a host of other “entitlements” (a phrase no Democrat would say) in an effort to get the $500 billion it takes to run the program. Oh and in an effort to run the program and piss off half the country, you alienate yourself own party’s leadership who don’t support the program.
So yeah, two thirds of the season to go and I’m interested to see where it leads. But I just can’t see the appeal of this AmeriWorks.
In the British series, once FU was Prime Minister, we got lots of entertaining blackmail, cheerful backstabbing, embezzlement shenanigans and murder. Since Frank got in the oval office we’ve had to endure stump speeches, AA meetings, the dreary writer sub-plot, hair color anst and primary debates. Excepting the Putin character, who makes the season worth watching, it’s not especially riveting, IMO.
In an effort to be more complex, the series loses the truly engaging evil satire of the original.
…and if Doug Stamper doesn’t get blown up at the end of episode 13, I’m giving up on the whole thing!
The actor playing the author painful to watch. He’s just reading lines.
I keep expecting him to make a lame joke and then chortle.
Missing episode.
I’m not through the whole series yet, but so far, Kim Dickens considerable appeal is being wasted. They should have made her the author.
Now on Ep 6. Claire was 100%, completely in the wrong when she pulled her stunt at the end to embarrass Petrov. How wrong was she? Let me count the ways.
- She’s there as an ambassador. That was about the most undiplomatic thing she could do short of taking a dump on Petrov’s carpet.
- She’s an ambassador who serves as the pleasure of the President, the guy right behind her, whose deal she’s purposely fucking up.
- she’s First Lady, whose job and responsibilities are not very dissimilar to an ambassador. So again, she fucked up.
But frankly the biggest thing is #4. She could have taken her own advice which was correct. A protest does nothing but harm more people. Shut up, say what you have to say, and go home.
Cripes, what a dud that guy is.
Lots of tension with Doug Stamper (major spoiler here) after he finds Rachel again.
I guess a 4th season hasn’t been decided yet, but the ending to this one left some story arcs hanging and without any real comeuppance for Frank.
Just finished. The cliffhanger shouldn’t have been a surprise; they were leading up to it for several episodes.
As usual, Frank Underwood couldn’t plan a fart at a baked bean dinner. And he’s a lousy politician – not at campaigning, but at dealing with other politicians. As president (and even as Vice President), he’s the perfect representation of the Peter Principle. This has been an issue since the first season – the whole plot to have Peter Russo made no sense (why spend all that effort to get him to run only to sabotage him? And the whole plan is dependent on being ale to convince the vice president to step down to replace him. It’s a lot of effort with plenty of ways to fail.
I will admit that I like the British version better. Francis Urquhart would eat Frank Underwood for lunch.
One thing to watch, BTW, is the color scheme. As Slate pointed out, every scene – and nearly every indoor shot – has something yellow in the background (often table lamps). There is also something blue in the foreground (though that isn’t every single shot).
I agree. I know that TV shows leap frog each other to see how pro-gay they can be (probably a debate for another thread) but it just doesn’t work in this series. Frank and Claire don’t care about anyone except to the extent that a person furthers their political agenda. They would kill anyone, black or white, gay or straight to give them one inch of an advantage.
The idea that Claire was so moved by the prisoner’s (forget his name) story and the fact that he committed suicide leads her to stage an international incident with a powerful country when such a thing could make the Underwood administration look like fools on the international peace keeping mission they were trying to coordinate seemed so ridiculously out of character that it took me out of the series for the next episode.
That was what I was remembering. Yes, now I do recall that she said she had one due to the rape. But she’s had multiple.