"HOUSE OF CARDS - SEASON 6".........THE HOUSE IN FULL COLLAPSE......

House Of Cards - Season 6 (2018)   Watching this slow motion trainwreck inch toward its idiotic final episode, we couldn't help wondering........

             Maybe they should have used Ridley Scott's 'All the Money In The World' option.....hire Christopher Plummer to take over Kevin Spacey's role for the final season.........and continue shooting the planned scripts they'd already written......

                But nope, they killed off Spacey's Francis Underwood, who cavorted like a duplicitous, murderous  Southern-fried Richard III through five seasons......and handed off the Presidency to his wife-Vice President Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), who's a like a mixture of Hilary Clinton, Lady MacBeth and every female assassin from James Bond movies.......

                About halfway into this series, we started to think of it as a dumb, dark fantasy.........how else could we explain how any character with sanity and common sense could fall for the Underwoods' perpetual line of conniving bullshit.

                 And this problem only got progressively worse as Spacey and Wright leave a trail of destroyed lives and murder victims in their wake. Which leads you to ask.......what moron would ever fall in with the Underwoods, given their history?

                But then again.........watching the hypnotized, mouth-breathing cultists who attend Trump rallies, the whole life-imitating-art part of the show began to make us nauseous.....

                Kevin Spacey, before he self-destructed his career into oblivion, successfully carried this show along with his sardonic-to-the-max,  hammy performance. No matter how imbecilic and unrealistic the plot twists became, you stayed for the pure enjoyment of watching Spacey strut his stuff........

                 Let's face it......without him, "House Of Cards" collapses like a.......well, you know.

                 With the final season focusing on the machinations of Ice Queen Claire Underwood......the show can't even rouse itself to remain a Guilty Pleasure.......it's the complete opposite.....no pleasure and all guilt......guilt that you wasted 8 hours of your life on it.

                   Primarily, Claire does battle with a pair of bother-sister American Oligarchs (Greg Kinnear, Diane Lane) and her late husband's extra-creepy minion Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly);

                  Plots, counter-plots and counter-counter plots ensue, each twist more goofier than the next. Everyone quietly mumbles cryptic dialogue to each other while they plan assorted coups, back alley murders and public assassinations.

                   The whole mess starts to resemble a half-rehearsed community theater version of 'Titus Andronicus'........or try to imagine a version of 'The Manchurian Candidate' where everyone's playing Angela Lansbury's evil character, all attempting to one-up each other.

                   This is one Washington D.C. story where a nuclear strike on the capitol would almost constitute a happy ending for the rest of the nation.......

                    For all the desperate efforts this final season makes to dial up the crazy, it still can't compete with our current real-life horror of having a psychotic racist loon in the Oval Office.  The monumental corruption and evil of Trump makes the 'House Of Cards' villains look the line of Sugar Plum Fairies in your elementary school's production of 'The Nutcracker'........

                   Incoherent sludge and a colossal waste of everyone's time, actors and audiences alike..
…...Zero stars (0).......no.....wait......we've done a recount.......even worse, Minus Fifty Stars (-50)