There are some other pretty risky things the show does, in addition to the chance it took going with the Netflix model, and with establishing its primary relationship on completely ambiguous terms. The main one that people seem to be talking about is Kevin Spacey’s narration, in which he talks directly to the camera in the middle of a scene, or on occasion, simply offers a knowing glance to the audience. This breaking of the fourth wall tends to be characterized as a kind of cliché, or lazy writing, or trying to be edgy or something. And it’s not uncommon for these criticisms to be fair and true, but I think House of Cards pulls it off in an interesting and compelling way.
For one thing, it allows us to see every situation from Francis’ perspective, which is intentionally limiting, and part of the point of the show. It’s exaggerated reality, I can’t stress that enough, and this is because it’s a drama carried out through the prism of his perception. He’s the hero of this drama he cast himself in, and we’re the audience he’s appealing to see it from his point of view. Where it really gets interesting is when we start to see the cracks in his narrative perspective, when he’s wrong about things, when he talks to us about an event we witness and his view of it specifically does not align with what we saw with our own eyes. A narrator that we don’t find as necessarily reliable in all cases is maybe the most interesting style of narration there can be.
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