Frank Underwood’s Strange Afterlife

House of Cards season five came out while Trump was president, which was the worst possible timing. The show is built on this idea that power is a game for smart people, that politics rewards cunning and patience. Frank Underwood is the villain you’re supposed to find terrifying because he actually understands how things work. But then Trump was in office doing none of that and getting everything anyway, and the whole premise just fell apart.

Watching a show about ruthless calculation when actual chaos is running things is surreal. It becomes historical overnight—a fossil from some other era where brains mattered. Frank manipulates his way to everything through strategy. Trump got there through luck and incoherence. They’re in the same genre now, but only one of them feels like it has anything to do with reality.

I haven’t really wanted to go back to it. Once you’ve seen that intelligence isn’t actually required, that someone can be completely unstable and still get what they want, the whole ruthless-mastermind fantasy stops being interesting. The show was built on a lie about how the world works, and that lie got exposed by someone just being himself.