We need to talk about Doug
MARCH 7TH, 2016 — POST 063
This invariably will include spoilers for Seasons 1–3 of House of Cards, as well as up to Episode 11 of the newest Season 4.
It’s been years since I’ve watched a new episode of The Simpsons. Because of my age at the time, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the show lost its way. But somewhere between the 300th and 500th episode (probably closer to 300), it was done for. We can talk about the plots, about the increased inclusion of guest and celebrity characters, about the broadening of the comedy. The biggest fault in my eyes, however, is the disservice that was increasingly done by the show to its central characters. The show flattened its eponymous family so that their comic perspectives may be garishly obvious. Homer is the worst victim of this. His comic perspective — a dull-witted, food-loving, overweight man — became all he was. The number of ‘D’oh!’s and ‘Mmmmm’s increased as he was constructed more and more to play up to the expectation of his character. Homer became a lobotomised caricature and was deprived of the nuance displayed in episodes like And Maggie Makes Three or Stark Raving Dad.
In the fourth season of House of Cards, a similar disservice is being done to the character of Doug Stamper, The White House Chief of Staff. Firstly, though, it’s worth returning to the third season: one which arguably belonged entirely to Doug.
We always knew Doug to be loyal but this was something else. Doug’s arc for Season 3 centres on him tracking down Rachel Posner, who left him beaten and without a car at the conclusion of Season 2. Doug, left to a lengthy recovery from the attack is rendered impotent in his capacity to clean up the mess he’d made. However, he’s powered by more than just a mascohistic embodiement of “I serve at the pleasure of the President”. With Rachel playing both a surrogate daughter and sexual magnet for Doug, his tracking her down is as much to fulfill his duty as fill the gap left by an alcohol addiction. For now, these both drive toward the same goal. It’s not until the final episode that he must choose which will win. With a shovelful of tossed soil atop Rachel’s half-buried head, we see just how far this dog will go for his master. It’s not enough that he would illegally wield the FBI’s reach to locate Rachel. It’s not enough that he’s helped Frank make people go away before. It’s not even enough that he would kill. It’s the utter destruction of the one thing in recent memory that brought him happiness for the sake of honour that defined him.
Season 3 left me with the sense that these aren’t normal people. With Claire’s own trajectory through various levels of government despite her treatment by Frank, I was left feeling that this environment, of the world’s political elite, necessitates some form of sociopathology. You can’t be normal and succeed in this world. With Doug, this was peeled back layer by layer as the season played out and yet is all he seems to be left with in Season 4.
Doug has become Homer in Season 4: a lobotimised caricature of himself. He barks louder and more often than he ever did, confirming to the audience that yes, loyalty is his lifeblood, and yes, he’ll do anything for that. As such, Doug has lost his brooding unpredictability. Perhaps, it could be argued, killing Rachel just broke him to the point that there is some real sense in which he is lobotomised. But that tension, an indication of loss, is not made manifest, at least not until a lot of the damage to his character has been done. Additionally, the other pole, one of paranoia and hyperalertness to threats on Frank’s leadership, doesn’t go far enough to be recognised as symptomatic of what killing Rachel took out of him. Instead he’s flattened out, compressed, smooshed down to his dramatic perspective of “I’ll kill at the pleasure of the President”. Annihilating nuance, Doug’s fully become the mindless pit bull he only looked like under certain light.
There is a chance his character could yet be saved. I’m two episodes from the end of Season 4 and the writing has shown some indication of knowing what’s next for Doug. However, you still have to work to see past the caricature.
Where Doug’s character once opened my eyes, it’s now only there if I squint.
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