I just finished this season. The final stretch introduces a much needed new crisis for Frank and Claire to beat, but I know they'll come out on top because there will be an indefinite amount of seasons which will probably span Frank's 4 years of a true presidential term. I'm worried that the show will just continue to reach for slight variations on the same beats it's already marched to in past season. I'm already thinking of scenarios wherein Claire and Frank will disagree and grow apart for a while, then join forces again. Or the scenarios in which a new, younger challenger to Frank's potency will fall to the Underwood cunning and resourcefulness under pressure. Or how much more Doug's creepiness they can try to shove on us before they get rid of him completely. I wasn't really sure what they wanted to do with his character in this season. I felt that up to a point, they kept up pretty well in establishing that, though he had fleeting moments of decency (like with his brother's family in S3), he was a true monster underneath. But they try to make him decent again this season. When they do the turn on that again next season, I suppose I should just imagine how it'll play out at this point. Will Remy finally retire and just live his life? Who knows?! Is such a thing possible given how much he's entangled with the Underwoods and their history? I wonder!
I'm ragging on the repetition of the show at this point, but it's not really a big a deal as I'm making it out to be. If that were a real bugaboo for me I wouldn't have kept up with the adventures of Don Draper on Mad Men or the ongoing cycle of optimism/pessimism on The Walking Dead, but I did put both of those shows on the backburner for a good while, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do the same for House of Cards from this point onward.