Scott Meslow is entertainment editor at TheWeek.com.

Last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner began with a very special introduction from one of the few members of Congress most Americans could identify by sight: Francis Underwood, the ladder-climbing sociopath played by Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s House of Cards. “You know my motto, Ed,” said Spacey to Fox News’s Ed Henry, then-president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “You scratch my back, I won’t lacerate yours.”

A short video that played after Spacey spoke exemplified a rare bipartisan convergence to get something done. Alongside a number of other politicians and journalists, John McCain, Mike Bloomberg, Valerie Jarrett and Steny Hoyer were shown in conversation with Underwood, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina who, when we last left him at the conclusion of the series’ first season, was the House majority whip. “I may lie, cheat and intimidate to get what I want, but at least I get the job done,” Underwood said at the video’s end. “So I hope some of you were taking notes.”


Right on cue, the room united in uproarious laughter. We’ve seen something similar these past few days, ever since the second season debuted on Netflix on Friday. But the across-the-aisle affection for the nefarious—even criminal—exploits at the center of the show raise a question: Why has Washington, D.C., been so enthusiastic about the grim, cynical funhouse version of itself that appears in House of Cards?

When it comes to anti-heroic dramas, this is more common than you’d think. The advertising industry has eagerly embraced the womanizing, alcoholic Don Draper of Mad Men, and the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico—the setting for Breaking Bad—has turned the locations frequented by Walter White and his compatriots into a cottage tourist industry. It’s true that Essex County, New Jersey took pains to distance itself from the mobsters of HBO’s The Sopranos, but, oddly, nothing of the sort is happening in the image-conscious Capital. In fact, in an odd effort to align itself with the show’s plotlines, the office of Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) actually sent out a press release on Wednesday touting the mention of an initiative similar to one that Slaughter had led (“The reference occurs at the 29:45 mark of the fifth episode, titled ‘Chapter 17’ of season two,” the release helpfully points out).

Shouldn’t this surprise us? Why would a town so careful about presentation so gleefully embrace a show that treats politicians as either imbecilic or deeply corrupt, and treats most established journalists as cynical, selfishly motivated and malleable? For a time, the popularity of House of Cards in the District was something of an open secret; a BuzzFeed article published two weeks after the show’s first-season premiere reported that “aides who gushed about the show off the record subsequently refused to be interviewed […] fearing it might reflect poorly on their bosses or themselves.” Mike Long, the press secretary for real-life House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, took to Twitter to clarify that his boss had nothing in common with Frank Underwood.

Since then, Hill staffers, journalists and politicians alike all seemed to finish watching the first season and something began to change. The less salient aspects of the show collapsed under the weight of a simple truth: House of Cards makes Washington and its two wonkiest industries—journalism and politics—look really cool, even as it implicitly attacks them at their very roots.

House of Newt Watching with the Gingriches Curious about how the former House speaker and his wife, a former Hill staffer, are reacting to the new season of House of Cards? Yeah, so were we. Here are the takeaways, as reported by the Gingriches: 1. “Kevin Spacey is brilliant and his performance alone would justify the series. The script is good, the other actors are solid, but Spacey is brilliant.” 2. [Spoiler alert!] “Frank Underwood is a far more aggressive vice president than Joe Biden.” 3. “Frank Underwood runs the Senate more ruthlessly than Harry Reid (actually in a style reminiscent of Speaker Tom Reed).” 4. “Tea parties should have viewing parties. House of Cards could be a great recruiting tool.” 5. “Claire Underwood is a study in ruthless professionalism.” 6. “Riding the Metro is a little scarier now. House of Cards reminds us to watch our backs while waiting for the train.” 7. “As Republicans we are happy that our party is portrayed as somewhat stubborn and a challenge to manage, while Democrats are shown as corrupt, conniving, and viciously ambitious. Maybe House of Cards is actually a reality show.”

Over the past year, House of Cards’s political accolades have continued to amass. In December, the show received an endorsement from no less than President Barack Obama, who asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, on a visit to the White House, if he’d brought along advance copies of the show’s second season. “I wish things were that ruthlessly efficient,” the president joked. “It’s true. I like Kevin Spacey. Man, this guy’s getting a lot of stuff done.”

The lines have only gotten blurrier from there. McCarthy—Underwood’s real-life alter-ego, whose staffers once distanced him from the show—appeared in a recent web video where he and other members of Congress repeated memorable lines from the first season. In short, the actual majority whip was willing to associate himself with a fictional politician who once held his office, and who’s best known for his ruthlessness and his penchant for murder. (In fact, on The Daily Show on Tuesday, Spacey told Jon Stewart that he’d followed McCarthy around Washington as part of his research for the role, and the two men ruminated about executing federal lawmakers. “If I could kill just one member of Congress,” Spacey says McCarthy told him, “I wouldn’t have to worry about another vote.”)

McCarthy’s cooperation isn’t the only thing helping the show—the media has played an even greater role in abetting the Beltway hype and in creating a sense of authenticity. Cameos aplenty appear in this new season, and include many of the big-name media personalities you’d expect: Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. But the show also manages to slip in a few deeper cuts, including CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield, Bloomberg TV’s Julianna Goldman and even a comparatively tougher-to-place print journalist—Matt Bai, formerly of The New York Times Magazine, recently of Yahoo News—who struggles to get an interview with Claire Underwood before producing a much ballyhooed longform magazine article (further demonstrating, of course, that glamor and pivotal plot turns are found in oddly Washington-esque places on this show—like, say, long magazine profiles in thought-leader publications).

Using media appearances in this way does a lot to increase the show’s verisimilitude, but only for its core audience; it’s safe to say that the average House of Cards viewer wouldn’t be able to distinguish each of the show’s many professional journalists from the fictional reporters generally played by actors who populate other shows like it.

The cameos are a sign of the hidden backbone that has elevated House of Cards past rivals like Veep, Scandal and Alpha House in the eyes of its fans in the District: This is a show built for hardcore wonks by a hardcore wonk. House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon is no stranger to high level politics. He got his introduction to the business in 1998, on the senatorial campaign of New York's Charles Schumer and in the years that followed, for Hillary Clinton, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean, for whom he served as the head of press events in Iowa until the infamous "Dean scream" stopped his candidate's 2004 presidential bid. Willimon retains an enthusiasm for the minutiae of Washington that borders on obsessive. A telling aside in (the aforementioned, real life) New York Times Magazine describes how Willimon “explained with great excitement” that Frank Underwood’s office is “a near-exact replica of the actual House majority whip’s office, right down to the height of the light switches.”

Yet, at times, House of Cards is a show at war with itself; while some episodes offer the soap-opera pulpiness of Underwood committing murder or deviously purring belabored metaphors at the camera, others spend an abnormal amount of time on closed-door debates over entitlements or education legislation. The second season is both darker and wonkier than the first; having used the transition between the first season and the second to replace several of its more human-sized characters with aspirational political types—media consultants, political strategists, etc.— House of Cards is free to dig into issues like cybercrime, shutdown politics and overseas intervention with full abandon. In many cases, Underwood’s snarky asides serve a dual purpose: In addition to clearing up any confusion over the show’s subtext, they inject some color into otherwise dense, wonky political machinations.

Anyone who has walked those halls or sat in on those meetings would agree that House of Cards feels authentic. The real questions concern the show’s cynical narrative. Willimon has defended the show as “realistic.” Kevin Spacey recently argued that the show’s storylines “aren’t that crazy.” I won’t spoil the events of the second season, but it’s safe to say that Frank Underwood’s political ascent is implausible by real-world standards (but not, as Willimon has repeatedly stressed, impossible).

Indeed, despite those in Washington who are sending out press releases about the show’s plausibility, some think that the more sensationalized aspects actually insult the world it depicts—a world centered on a fictional public servant who once described imagining his colleagues’ lightly salted faces frying in a skillet. Barney Frank wrote that the show “demeans the democratic process in ways that are unfair, inaccurate, and if they were to be believed by a substantial number of the public, deeply unfortunate.” Former House Majority Whip David Bonior recently told WYNC that the show is “overly dramatic and pessimistic and dark” when compared with his experience. The show’s depiction of journalism has been met with similar critiques by actual journalists (of course, the derision not infrequently comes from people who happily binge-watch the show nonetheless).

And that’s a unique phenomenon that House of Cards wrestles with: A show that works so hard to capture so many of Washington’s microscopic details in ways that only a resident can fully appreciate is nonetheless at its best when it is lambasting those very same people—showing them as venal, petty and corrupt.

Playing a News Anchor on TV The new season of House of Cards is littered with media cameos designed to make the Beltway newshound smile with recognition. But while the show is replete with all the predictable cable news names—from Maddow to Hannity—perhaps the truest sign of the producers’ talent for authenticity comes with the appearance of veteran Washington anchor Morris Jones of NewsChannel 8, who was cast in a familiar role delivering some intense news. “The show wanted a realistic portrayal of a news anchor reading some stories and they asked me to adjust any copy that didn't sound right or wasn't my style without altering the message. So, even though this was fiction, by the time I delivered the lines it sounded like any other news story to me. I've had my brush with Hollywood before. I appeared in the NBC miniseries Centennial, adapted from Michener's book, where I moderated a debate and also was in the The War of the Roses, with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Turner was shown changing her clothes in her bedroom as she watched me on TV explain how hot the summer was. Clearly, not very serious news compared to the stuff that figures in House of Cards, where I was shown only the paragraphs in the script that related to me, and, because I had some big spoiler scenes, had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. You know, the type of thing that if you ask me for details about the show, I'd have to kill you. In this case they might have killed me!“ —Morris Jones

I suspect there’s an element of cathartic wish fulfillment for many politicians and Hill staffers who watch Frank Underwood’s ruthless maneuvering. Recall that even the president copped to some of this in admiring Underwood’s unstoppable ability to get things done. What pol wouldn’t be similarly awed by a legislator who always gets what he wants? What speechwriter who has stumbled over a tricky turn of phrase wouldn’t envy Underwood’s uncanny knack for exploiting colleagues (and charming viewers) with language? It’s a television show, sure, so the techniques and their effectiveness can often be absurd—but nonetheless impressive.

Cleverly, the show seems designed to tap into public perceptions, too. The darkness of the politics played on House of Cards is a genuine reflection of a Congress boasting an approval rating that has dipped below 10 percent. And the show’s grim vision of the political landscape is making waves globally: Charles Zhang, who recently licensed the rights to House of Cards for China’s streaming service Sohu.com, explained that he appreciates how the show “actually allows Chinese people to experience American politics as if they were there.”

In an interview with The Wrap last year, Willimon acknowledged Washington’s complicated relationship with House of Cards. “A lot of people have to watch it just so they can be part of the conversation. I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said. “A lot of people I know are biased because they know me, but some of these hardened D.C. journalists who know the world better than anyone feel like it’s one of the most authentic portrayals of that world that they’ve seen. There are other people in D.C. that are just going to decide that it’s all totally bogus and things don’t happen this way. They’re wrong, because I know from first-hand experience.”

Agree or disagree, the denizens of the District seem deeply invested in the argument. So much so that it almost makes you wonder how such a television show would be regarded in Frank Underwood’s Washington.