Whether it was intentional or not the people at Netflix did a really good job of making their new show essential before it even began. Lilyhammer, its first venture into exclusive programming, wasn’t developed specifically for Netflix; it was a series that had already been produced, in Norway, and the streaming service bought it and branded it in an attempt to test the waters of a new programming paradigm. The idea was intriguing because it was free and legal to subscribers and because it had a nebulous attachment to Robert De Niro; in the end people didn’t flock to it because it was super-boring, I think.

But a brand-new series from the guy who did The Fight Club With The Social Tattoo and a bloody-handed Keyser Söze in the ad campaign would undoubtedly be anything but boring, and the prospect of having thirteen chapters of feature-quality television available to everyone everywhere on a single Friday night was enough to send the growing class of people with addictive “if you got ‘em, smoke ‘em” personalities into a frenzy. And even if the content itself wasn’t going to blow any minds, its mere consumption would provide media analysts enough material to propel it to headlines all over the internet, as it has managed to do here.

The show itself, it turned out, was good. Although it didn’t have the apocalyptic urgency of Homeland it still tugged at my heartstrings when I wasn’t watching. As wrapped up as I was in seeing Spacey’s Congressman Underwood hack his way through his opponents to the top of the Washington food chain, I found myself even more engrossed in the new meta-concepts and macroscopic details House of Cards brings to our rapidly-weirdening economy of entertainment.

Although it’s presented in a standard “TV show” format of a serialized thirteen-chapter season, the absurdly high production values used in House of Cards make it feel like a very long feature film. Although HBO has been doing filmic programming for years, no one has ever dropped an entire season on the world quite like this. In much the way social media has allowed us a deeper look into our friends’ emotions at all hours of the day, this new generation of epic TV offers a firsthand look at how its protagonists make the decisions that drive the plot forward. I like this development a lot: it forces the audience to step into the shoes of someone whose brain operates on a completely different plane. Tony Soprano, Nucky Thompson, and Frank Underwood are all rational killers who seem to operate on the world around them with a worldview we come to understand completely even if the outcome is coldhearted and violent. In the hands of lesser artists these moral lessons would fall apart, but the magic of high-budget TV ensures that the point comes across to anyone who has the patience to sit through a season.

For a testament to the artistry at work in House Of Cards, we can look at Kevin Spacey’s constant monologue directed at the audience: he breaks away from the action to explain what’s running through his head – not to evolve the plot, but to tell us why he’s making a decision. Frank Underwood will never cause us to scream, as we sometimes do at virgins about to be slaughtered in horror movies, “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?? DON’T GO IN THERE!” because he usually just tells us point blank why he’s going in there. If this narrative device were attempted by an under-funded production it would feel like a cheap gimmick, but David Fincher’s Capitol Hill and the staffers therein are executed with the clinical precision they were hired for, so the gimmick works. It works so well, in fact, that when the Congressman stops talking to the camera in the profound darkness of chapter eleven, we understand he’s plotting something so evil that even his ruthless conscience doesn’t want to acknowledge. When that fourth-wall confessional goes silent, we don’t have to hear what’s going on in his mind: we can feel it, which is an emotional brand of Hemingway-esque objective epitome that I’d never experienced before. Although Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson destroys less discriminately than Frank Underwood, I understand that Underwood is the far more immoral person: his depraved silence speaks volumes.

Everyone uses an iPhone, except when they don’t, and when they don’t, it’s for a reason

A primary reason the House of Cards universe is so convincing is its surreal representation of the way real people communicate in 2013. Much as they do in Girls (and the rest of real big-city America), everyone uses an iPhone, except when they don’t, and when they don’t, it’s for a reason. Frank prefers a BlackBerry just like a real congressman and tells his media cohort Zoe Barnes to “use a burner” for their illicit exchanges. Mercifully gone are the days of fairytale OS’s and phone numbers that start with 555: even the notification sounds are sculpted to ooze reality. The ringtones are really fucking good in this show, and Fincher knows he’s directing for a streaming audience that will appreciate them. Actually, David, while I’ve got you here – we need to see more Android next season, or your reality might begin to crack a little bit.