How to shake up ‘House of Cards’ in Season 4

The three seasons of “House of Cards” have taken the character of Frank Underwood from a powerful but low profile position as Majority Whip to president of the United States. It’s been a pretty impressive couple of years for Mr. Underwood (helped along, of course, by a series of betrayals, lies and the occasional murder), but we wonder if the show hasn’t lost something by having him rise so quickly. The most recent season got bogged down in Underwood’s attempts to fight Congress to get a jobs package passed, but we have a few ideas about how they can turn things around for the next season. As long as we’re all agreed that Zoe Barnes was not a good journalist, that is.

The fall of Frank Underwood

With the departure (spoilers, if you’re months behind on your Netflix duties) of Claire Underwood, and his empire teetering, the next season seems likely to be about Frank’s downfall. Great! The character so far has been invincible and perpetually smarter than everyone else, which makes it seem like everyone running the country is a bumbling fool. Insert joke here about real life parallels. But as president, he was no longer the scrappy underdog we fell in love with. Having Frank resort to all measures to maintain his throne, or even better, regain it, would be tons of fun.

Give us a little more information on the Underwood marriage

Throughout the run of the show, the marriage of Frank and Claire has been the near-silent third lead on the show. Is Frank gay? How much of their marriage (secret cigarettes, occasional affairs and all) is openly discussed between them? While the mystery of the whole thing has been fun, Claire leaving opens up the opportunity to finally look under the hood and see what’s really going on, and we hope the show goes for it.

Kill off Doug

That might seem harsh, but while we’re big fans of Michael Kelly’s performance as Underwood’s merciless right hand man Doug, his plots have taken him further and further afield from the main story on the show. And his slow stalking, kidnapping and eventual murder of Rachel (whose connection to the main story no longer even exists) took things to an unnecessarily grim, depressing place. This show may be cynical and soapy, but everything with Doug seemed like it came from some other, bleaker show. Just write him off already.