Chapter 3 (House of Cards)

Plot

Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is in the middle of negotiating with Marty Spinella (Al Sapienza), head of the teacher's union, about education bill reforms, when he learns that a 17-year-old girl Jessica has been killed, texting while driving at night in his hometown of Gaffney, South Carolina. She was distracted by a peach water tower that Frank had advocated to keep standing. Local County administrator, Oren Chase (Murphy Guyer), a Republican and old rival of Frank who wants his congressional seat, urges the girl's parents to file a lawsuit against Frank.

Despite Linda's (Sakina Jaffrey) and Spinella's consent, Frank leaves in the midst of negotiating the bill, and leaves for Gaffney, where he meets with the people campaigning against him. He meets Jessica's parents and assures them he will do everything to provide justice for their daughter. He delivers a eulogy at the county church, offers a settlement of $150,000, and promises to sponsor billboards warning against texting while driving, stating this as the real reason for accident. When Jessica's parents don't seem satisfied, he asks Reverend Jenkins (Bill Phillips) to arrange morning's service so he could get some time to figure things out.

After downsizing her organization, Claire (Robin Wright) recruits Stanford valedictorian Gillian Cole (Sandrine Holt), who owns her own organization WorldWell, which is due to collapse for lack of funds. Skeptical of Claire's motives, Cole tells her that Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted her to be a part of the Google team but she refused because she "felt like a trophy for them to brag about to the media." Unfazed, Claire follows Gillian home, telling her that she doesn't want to hire her but rather enable her to achieve. She notices that Gillian has been sick for quite some time and is unable to get treatment because of her lack of health insurance and money, so she takes care of her insurance and sets her a visit to a doctor for a complete checkup.

Barnes (Kate Mara) gets the attention of every talk show and media outlet because of her leak of Catherine Durant's (Jayne Atkinson) nomination for Secretary of State, and this leads to a rift with her editor-in-chief Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver), who claims that her appearance and comments on television have hurt the Herald's image. He grounds her for a month.

Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) starts making efforts to put his life back in order to maintain his relationship with Christina Gallagher (Kristen Connolly). She tells him that she has been offered a job as Deputy Leader in the speaker’s office and is leaning toward taking it. He gets rid of all his stash and tells her in the morning that if he is honest, he doesn't want her to leave.

Frank heads back to his South Carolina home and continues the education conference calls. He then calls Claire to say goodnight, and both talk about White Tulips she planted in their home. Franks sends flirtatious texts to Zoe and this leads to intimate conversations. During the morning service he demonstrates how his oratory skills helped him rise in Washington, and gives a passionate old-school sermon around the "idea of hate", going so far as to yell "I hate you, God" in front of a South Carolina congregation. He's then able to connect to the parishioners by making them equals, saying they've all done this before when feeling soul crushing loss, and two among them are feeling that today.

Frank invites Jessica's parents to lunch, where discussions get heated, with Underwood asking them if they want him to resign. He ends up on good terms with them, though, announcing a Furman Scholarship in their daughter's honor. In order to take Oren down, he finds out that the responsibility for guardrails is the county's - but none have been built. Along with the county mayor, Frank visits Oren, and faces him with that responsibility: "if there were guardrails the car wouldn't flip three times and the county administrator didn't build those guardrails and now she's dead." He also tells Oren that the planned power lines that the mayor has blocked because they would fall on Oren's property can go up this year if he claims it as "eminent domain." Just keeping his intentions to warn him, Frank offers his support to Oren's run for the fourth district congressional seat.

Cast

Following is the list of billed cast.

Main cast

Recurring characters

Guest characters

Reception

The episode received positive reviews from critics. Ryan McGee of The A.V. Club said, "the episode traversed in those soon-to-be-forgotten tales, even if the impact of them will be felt for the rest of this series."