Photo courtesy of vulture.com

How about this for an image? The president of the United States stands under a large statue of the crucifixion and looks up onto the face of Jesus.

“Love?” he says with a smirk. “That’s what you’re selling? Well, I don’t buy it.”

With that, he spits on the face of Christ.

If that type of sequence isn’t enough to tell about where Frank Underwood stands in the eyes of the Lord, what happens next should help you figure it out. As he goes to wipe the spit away, Frank accidentally knocks the statue of the cross and it comes tumbling down. Jesus shatters at the president’s feet. 

The visit to the church was the end of a winding fourth episode of season three that was filled with the absence of forgiveness and compassion. When Frank finds out that the Democratic leadership has chosen Solicitor General Heather Dunbar as their top 2016 candidate, the same woman who led the investigation of President Walker last season and was testifying before the Supreme Court on the drone strike casualties this year, he tries to make a signature Underwood power move. He tells Dunbar that he has chosen her to replace Justice Jacobs, the Supreme Court member who came to him earlier saying he was considering retirement because of Alzheimer’s. This move would look like a reward for Dunbar while also sidelining her for 2016. But Frank finds himself in a good old-fashioned mess when Jacobs decides to renege on his decision to retire and Dunbar therefore declares her candidacy for president.

After her public announcement, Dunbar is contacted by none other than Doug Stamper. In his normal semi-creepy-semi-cool way, he tells her that he wants to work on her campaign. It’s clear that Stamper’s still got it when it comes to Washington mind games, so Dunbar knows that he could be an asset. She doesn’t decide yet whether to bring him aboard but if she does it will open up a door to quite a storyline. The big question going forward is whether Stamper actually wants to help Dunbar out of a growing resentment of Frank’s attempts to keep him out of the game or if he will get on the inside of Dunbar’s operation only to aide Frank, his true master. This seems like the perfect position to put a character as unreadable as Stamper in and I’m sure it will be something I will speculate more and more on every week if Dunbar accepts his offer.

Frank’s ferocious attempts to knock Dunbar out of the picture so early on show that he is still all in on getting that re-election in 2016 no matter what he said in episode two about focusing on the work. Surely, viewers knew this all along, and it was nice to see Frank return to some of his old tricks, but let’s hope the show maintains that second dimension of presidential drama instead of focusing on Frank’s power ascension.

But it’s not the unsuccessful attempts at steamrolling Jacobs and Dunbar that places Frank in a church at the end of the episode, it’s a talk he has with the man who lost both of his legs in a drone strike that appeared before the Supreme Court. Frank tries to convince the man that the call was not his and that, regardless of whose it was, the attack was justified. He seems to genuinely seek this man’s forgiveness. But he doesn’t get it.

The man, fraught with anger, says, “I won’t forgive you, Mr. President. I don’t want to make it any easier for you to sleep at night.”

“I have a duty to this nation, Mr. Mahmood. I swore an oath,” says Frank.

“There is a fine line between duty and murder,” says Mahmood.

For once, Frank seems to see the blood on his hands, and this time it doesn’t belong to his fellow corrupt Washington figureheads. It belongs to real people.

After struggling with this and his frustration at the Dunbar situation, Frank calls up the priest he met at the beginning of the episode at a military funeral (played by John Doman, aka Rawls from The Wire). Much like Jed Bartlet in that famous “Two Cathedrals” scene from The West Wing, he turns to the church with questions about what is right and what justice really is in the eyes of God. 

Why does this TV trope of presidents turning to God with anger exist? Maybe it’s because that unseen power is the only thing that looms above them, the only thing that could possibly overrule their power. Like Bartlet, Underwood turns to the Church with questions and if the shattered figurine on the floor means anything, it’s that Frank didn’t like the answers he received.

Sidenotes:

– Claire doesn’t have much screen time in this episode, but it’s clear she is gearing up for a little clash of her own. She failed to get Russia on board with the UN vote to assist in the Middle East so she has no choice but to try and go around them. Let’s see if she can strong-arm powerful people as well as her husband can.

– I love how Rawls is an edgy biker priest. Please tell me that there will be more time dedicated to him and his biker priest gang that undoubtedly exists.

– On a real note, Doman is a great actor so I hope they can find some room on the show for a recurring spot for him.

– With the shattered Jesus and the father’s grave piss, this season has really turned to iconoclastic images to make some strong points.

– The final scene as a whole was a really bold choice for the show, but I think it’s a risk that paid off. Frank has been entering into new levels of cold-heartedness lately, but that is just the way we like him.