Netflix will premiere “House of Cards” season 2 on Valentine’s Day – and, once again, will premiere all the episodes at once.
The political drama’s 13-episode second season, featuring the return of Kevin Space, Robin Wright, Kate Mara, Gerald McRaney, director David Fincher and producer Beau Willimon, will launch on February 14, presumably around 12:01 a.m. Pacific like previously.
Netflix ordered the second season at the same time as the first, so the only questions on any level were what day “Cards” would return, and whether Netflix would stick with the all-at-once strategy after a year’s worth of data from the launch of this show, “Hemlock Grove,” “Arrested Development” and “Orange Is the New Black.” Yesterday, Netflix announced that it would launch its first original kids series, “Turbo Fast,” in a more piecemeal fashion, with five episodes launching on Christmas Eve, and the rest premiering throughout 2014. For a moment, it seemed like Netflix was experimenting with an alternative distribution plan, but it just turned out that the animation process for “Turbo Fast” was taking a long time, and this was a way to make the already-announced premiere date.
I was mixed on “Cards” immediately after I finished watching all 13 episodes, and some of this year’s other new series – including its fabulous Netflix sibling “Orange” – only highlighted some of the areas where I found the series wanting. But I’ll be back again – if not racing quite as intensely to finish it all – for Spacey, for some of the other performances (Molly Parker’s a new regular this year), and for the gorgeous visual style presented by Fincher and directors like Carl Franklin, James Foley and Jodie Foster, among others.
What does everybody else think? Nearly a year later, are you excited to get back to Frank Underwood’s world, or did you binge the show and then forget all about it?