“All three of us dodged bullets,” he says, lingering over the Kennedy portrait. “And I can use what I see to rig this election.” Just to clarify: “I’m talking about tapping into every single home in America, and a weapon like that could blow up in my hand.” Frank’s Plan A was to simply expose Conway’s illegal use of the search engine now, though, that seems like a pointless course of action.įrank eyeballs Reagan and Kennedy. “I can see you,” he says, speaking right to us. Finally, HoC is engaging with reality - not by making self-aware references to real-life events, but by channeling our real-life fears. As POTUS, Frank goes on, he has a bigger gun: the NSA. He can tell what you think, what you want, where you are, who you are.” I’m so into, and terrified by, this whole notion of “you are what you search.” Very Ex-Machina. Conway has a powerful gun, a search engine. One of the best Frank fourth-wall monologues follows, as he paces through the halls of the White House, invoking various presidential portraits as their subjects enter his narrative. This is my way of listening to millions of you” - is a pitch-perfect echo of the tech-bro language deployed by do-no-evil types at Google and our “friends” running Facebook. And his speech about why Pollyhop releasing search data to Conway is so kosher and not anything to worry about at all - “A president should know his constituents, and the internet is the best tool for that … I can’t meet everyone. The release of Conway’s “personal” information is his team’s effort to get ahead of the story that he’s rifling through his would-be voters’ private information.

Conway is in cahoots with the founder of search engine Pollyhop, and this relationship has provided him with oodles of borderline-legal insight into the American subconscious. Though they’re on the older end of this generational spectrum, they’re basically a millennial couple, comfortable documenting their every art-directed move on their phones and down to share their every text, email, photo, and video with the entire electorate. And I don’t just mean their physical appearance: They have an apparent ease with, and fluency in, technology. The other fascinating thing about the Conways is how old they make the Underwoods seem. We’ll see how that works out for them.) Conway enlisted in the military within 24 hours of 9/11 - “When you want a career in politics and the Twin Towers fall in your lap, the timing couldn’t have been better” - and is running on the classic red-state platform of “less government, more freedom.” (The Underwoods, naturally, subscribe to the theory that it’s better to be feared. As Claire tells Frank at the end of the episode, America will never love Frank and Claire the way they’re already falling in love with the Conways. Across the aisle is Will Conway, governor of New York, with his telegenic British wife (the only kind of foreigner even xenophobes will get behind) and two children who are so camera-ready, I won’t be convinced he didn’t kidnap them from the Crewcuts catalog until I see both birth certificates. With Dunbar neutralized, Frank is the presumptive nominee for his party. And the murders of Zoe Barnes and Pete Russo are being investigated by an off-brand Spotlight crew, who, I have to believe, will find the proof that has eluded them so far. Frank and his very worthy opponent must navigate an election in which the most valuable currency isn’t fund-raising dollars, but (technically) private voter data.Īfter an entire season of Frank wasting political capital on issues that seemed suspiciously Republican - ending entitlement programs, battling the teachers’ union - he is now throwing his strongest political muscle, Claire, behind the big blue issue of gun control. Yes, we are out of our Sadness Cave and into the blinding light of the Zeitgeist. Heather Dunbar’s bid for the presidency is over, but the action is finally beginning.

Sneak a peek conway