I've watched the first two and agree with most of the comments upthread - not bad, will keep watching, reporter very annoying. The UK original was so over-acted as to be unwatchable, and the repetition of "couldn't possibly comment" was like a flat comedy punchline. Addressing the camera directly also strikes me as a trick that's long since had its time.

G-Man wrote:


In what extraordinarily bizarre place would your mind have to be to hold a newborn baby girl in your arms, and say to your spouse: "Let's call her Rooney."

I mean, I know a lot of WASP couples go in for this rather odd thing of giving the kid an Anglo surname for a first name, but jesus christ.

Wayne would have been a crap name for a girl.

Kate and Rooney Mara are heirs to both the Maras who own the New York Giants and the Rooneys who own the Steelers, two of the only sports ownership families that fans actually like.

So Rooney is a family name.

I'm watching episode 1 now.
So far, Kate Mara's character is a lot like Rachael McAdams character in the Hollywood version of State of Play.

It reminds me why I hate Washington and am not sure I'm going to be ok in my current job. If I have to deal with lobbyists again, I'm going to get depressed.

Kevin Spacey is a white Democrat from South Carolina in the House. Are there any of those left?

watched a few more episodes of this, it may not be subtle but goddammit it's entertaining. robin wright is really excellent. she's terrifying. never losing emotional control. never smiling unless it's fake. poor frank!

I'd say being married to Sean Penn for more than a decade would do that to you.

She appears to have had shitloads of plastic surgery since the last time I clapped eyes on her, in Empire Falls.

I thought she looks really good. So if she's had work done, it was high quality.

I think I knocked out four episodes last night during my insomnia. I found the Frank fucking the reporter bit a little forced. It didn't seem to come about naturally in the plot, but oh well.

I found that new-fangled blog farm that she worked for to be really nauseating. It looked exactly like a Simpsons parody of how a new-hip-social-media-driven political media place would look. Unfortunately, it's probably accurate. I'm a little concerned that the show is trying to tell us that this is somehow better for democracy than the boring old print Washington Post (which the fictitious Washington Herald is supposed to be) because women get called cunts at the Post, whereas women of color are in charge at the Blog Farm. I'm all for inclusive hiring and promotion, and the Post is not the end all be all, but real news operations with editors and standards and what not are still better than a bunch of snotty kids right out of college cranking out their snarky blogs on their iPhone while sitting in a coffee shop.

I really did like the bit where she turned down the White House job because she rightly acknowledged that although that's a prestigious posting, the news value is less than bullshit. I wish more of America grasped that.

But the supposedly legit journalism she's doing is bullshit too. She's become the secret PR aparatus of the majority (minority? I forget) whip and she's accomplishing nothing other than getting on TV.

So she leaked an education bill that is far to the left of how the president wants to be perceived. That's not reality, that's all just perception and smoke and mirrors. And then she helped sink a candidate for SoS based on a editorial he didn't write in college 35 years ago and a stupid TV appearance that triggered the typical worthless non-debate debate about Palestine. I couldn't sleep at night if I participated in something so asinine, not to mention counterproductive for peace. And yet, I think a lot of reporters in DC really get off on being part of the story like that.

I'm also not sold on the plausibility of a national teachers strike in the USA.

I'm not against it, mind.

Reed John wrote:


She does indeed, but that's the whole point of high-grade cosmetic surgery.

Facially she looks like a different person now, a bit like the contrast between Eric Clapton in his Cream days and the way he has looked since about 1986.

Spot on, Reed. Of course, Netflix has an interest in presenting the traditional ways of media as outdated and irrelevant.

There are lots of implausibilities in the show, which is fine, because it is fiction. I found the website editor's instruction, "Don't show me your copy before posting", preposterous. If you hire someone with a profile working the political beat, you at least want to check that there are no possible legal issues.

Was the teacher strike plot a hold over from the UK original? Because a national teacher strike in the UK strikes me as more plausible.

imp wrote:


The sequels went further over the top than the first series, but from the off Urquhart seemed to be placed with those characters whose villainy is viewed as 'delicious' rather than truly unsettling.

The way politicians took up the catchphrase as a broad appeal in-joke suggested that there wasn't anything especially discomfiting for them in the series.

A significant part of Borgen's appeal is that it is quite rare to have a drama about politics that doesn't end up as a conspiracy thriller or murder mystery. Defaulting to the extraordinary and unlikely tends to undermine any insights into the day-to-day stuff.

Was there supposed to be? It's an over-the-top thriller.

Spoilers ahoy!

The Kate Mara character is just getting weirder.
The subplot with Robin Wright's character and the artist is going nowhere as is the subplot with her new associate who is pregnant.

Russo, the gubernatorial candidate going off the wagon is interesting. I can't recall anything like that happening -at least not in Pennsylvania - but it doesn't appear implausible. Maybe the Rod Blogovich thing in Illinois is the closest. Alcoholism is a terrible affliction. Shit like that happens. The complex Machiavellian plot by Kevin Spacey to raise him up just to crush him with that hooker doesn't seem as plausible. There are so many ways that could have gone off the rails in unpredictable ways.

Edit:
And now murder? Now this is just silly. How does Frank think that's not going to somehow stick to him. Not the murder, but the fact that he pushed a guy who fell apart so completely.

The guy playing Peter Russo is really good.

The actress playing the WH Chief of Staff is really good too. Gives the whole thing needed gravity.

I'm not sure why filmmakers think Baltimore makes for a good stand-in for Washington, as it is in this program. They look very different - the streets, the houses, everything. They might as well be in Toronto. Of course, 90% of the audience doesn't know that.

Great line "Whatever happens in the next few hours. Whatever you hear. We will never speak of it." I need to find an occasion to use that.

[quote="G-Man" post=761394]

Yes, that was wank, wasn't it? Unless the director's main aim was to get sued out of existence as quickly as possible.

I have one more episode to go. It's undeniably getting slightly silly now but I've enjoyed it overall.

Agree with Reed that the bloke playing the tortured skinhead congressman is exceptional. I'd never heard of him before.

can you actually get sued in america for writing stuff on a blog? i thought they had the first amendment.

Legally speaking, writing stuff on a blog is no different than writing it in a newspaper(online), in the US or Britain/Ireland. The main difference in the US is that if you're writing about a "public figure", which is usually very broadly interpreted, you have to prove "actual malice" to establish libel.

Libel is not a very big concern here.

Why do Tom Cruise's lawyers succeed in squashing speculations about their client's sexual orientation then?