REVIEW: Is Netflix's 'House of Cards' a Show Worthy of Binge Watching?

When it comes to binge watching a TV show, I'm not one to pass up a challenge. I devoured the first four seasons of Breaking Bad in 12 days before Season 5 debuted, a feat that garnered its fair share of admiration and raised eyebrows. When Netflix announced that it would release the first season of House of Cards, its much-anticipated original series, all at once, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings basically dared me not to finish the 13-episode season as quickly as possible.

Thanks to the late shift that I once worked at my previous job, I'm blessed/cursed with the ability to stay up to 4 a.m. and beyond, making the concept of beginning to watch House of Cards when it went live at 3 a.m. ET on Friday seem like a completely sane idea to me. I absorbed the show's first two episodes before going to bed that night/morning, and was done with the season by Saturday evening. Thirteen episodes in roughly 40 hours. Mission accomplished.

Of course, I wasn't just watching House of Cards to set some kind of binge-watching record. This was a show that I was very excited to watch and had been following since Netflix announced that it had acquired the series. The DVD-distributer-turned-content-streamer declared war on the television networks and their traditional schedules of time slots and seasons with House of cards, dropping millions of dollars to bring in top-tier talent like Kevin Spacey and David Fincher. Not only did Netflix erase the fear of creating a pilot that never got picked up, Hastings guaranteed House of Cards two seasons right off the bat, giving the show's talent the freedom to plot out a story that didn't need to be neatly wrapped up after just 13 episodes.

House of Cards is more than a warning shot to the networks. If you want a warning shot, that would be Netflix's revival of Arrested Development, bringing back a fan favorite for a victory lap while excluding the networks from the celebration. House of Cards is a full-on attack, a smart, cynical and dark drama that will challenge cable TV darlings like Homeland, Breaking Bad and Mad Men when it comes to Emmy and Golden Globe glory.

The story? Multi-layered and complex, with a story that was plotted out beyond Season 1. When House Majority Whip Frank Underwood is betrayed by a newly elected president and denied the Secretary of State job that was promised, the congressman sets to work devising and carrying out a plan to take his revenge and secure even greater power. Every person he comes into contact with is a pawn in his game, whether its the young reporter who's willing to trade sex for insider secrets, the young congressman with a history of booze, drugs and hookers or even his own wife. If The West Wing inspired an entire generation of optimistic kids to enter politics, House of Cards will be the siren song that draws in power-hungry psychopaths.

The acting? Spacey summons the most villainous traits he possesses as an actor to portray Underwood, seamlessly switching between the cunning majority whip willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his ultimate goal and the homespun South Carolinian who speaks of God with a Southern twang. Watching Spacey in House of Cards made me realize that had director Bryan Singer not gone for the campish tone of the original Superman movies with 2006's Superman Returns, Spacey would have made a fantastically devious Lex Luthor, especially the version of the character that sets his sights on the White House.

Kate Mara delivers the performance of her career with House of Cards, playing Zoe Barnes, the young reporter who enters into a dark deal with Underwood in exchange for the information she needs to advance her journalistic career. If you kind of recognize Mara, you probably know her sister, Rooney Mara. The younger Mara sister worked with Fincher on both The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, earning an Oscar nomination for the latter. Kate has worked mostly small roles up until this point, with her most memorable probably being opposite Mark Wahlberg in Shooter. I noticed that Kate had considerably stepped up her acting game for House of Cards, exhibiting many of the same mannerisms that Rooney brought to the screen in The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo. She didn't forcibly tattoo anyone in House of Cards, but there's always Season 2 for that.

The story? In reality, House of Cards is more of a 13-hour film than a TV series, telling an ambitious story that involves a large cast of characters. While you can see some of its plot points coming, House of Cards has shuffled a few game-changing twists into its deck, keeping viewers guessing what Underwood is really up to and whether or not he really is one step ahead of the game. Show developer Beau Willimon is no stranger to political tales, as he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for 2011's Ides of March.

My only complaint about House of Cards? I wanted more. Like Mad Men, House of Cards is a slow burner, and with the knowledge that it already has a second season lock in, the show doesn't worry about delivering an epic season finale. No one stands on a bridge screaming that they have to go back to the island. There isn't a slow pan to a poisonous plant sitting on someone's deck. Everyone's secretary remains unengaged to their bosses. House of Cards is confident enough to believe that if you made it this far, you'll be back for Season 2. The fuses are lit, but they're long fuses.

If you haven't already binge watched House of Cards, should you? Or should you show some restraint and slowly dole out the show, enforcing some pretend schedule of one episode per week? Well, I can see benefits in both approaches. Obviously, I chose Option A, watching House of Cards as if it were one continuous 13-hour movie. Thanks to that method, I now get to the chance to write this review and possibly influence your thoughts on the show. I'm also impervious to show spoilage now.

The downfall to binge watching House of Cards, or any show for that matter, is that I think I missed out on developing an emotional connection with the show's characters. I know their names and backstories, and I want to see what happens to them, but I only knew them for 40 hours. If you watch a season of a show on a week-to-week basis, you spend months with its characters, carving out time to check in on their lives every week. If you want an experience that was different than mine, if you want to parse out House of Cards over an amount of time longer than a weekend, you might want to choose Option B.

How you watch House of Cards is up to you. If you love great television, the important thing is that you watch it. Netflix has changed the rules with this series. It's now up to us to tell them whether or not we're going to play along.