It was bound to happen before long: all of Frank's allies are turning into enemies. Even his beloved Claire, the woman who's stuck by him for decades, has had enough of his lies, his manipulation and his using. For her to break away signifies a major shift in House Of Cards -- could it be that Frank's carefully calculated empire is finally crumbling to dust?

All of our main characters are either rewarded for their bravery or punished for their cowardice in this episode, and we start to see the decline of many relationships we thought were stable, relatively speaking. Tenuous threads of trust are severed as personal interests take precedence over the greater good.

This is a nice character exploration of the two main (male) characters, Frank and Peter. Like Episode 3, this one goes off on a personal tangent, and whisks us away from the grey sameness of D.C. To be honest, this show needs it.

It's interesting to think of politics as a vice, or something you can't shake. On House Of Cards, our Frank is an unabashed politics addict, which, of course, has horrible effects on everyone in his immediate surroundings.

You know when a TV show tries to convey an issue via a metaphor, and sometimes it's subtle, but other times it has all the covertness of a heavy brick hurtling through the air? Well, in this episode, House of Cards uses a very literal representation of what it's trying to communicate. In this case, yes, it's a brick, and it's smashing through Frank's window.

All of the relationships on House Of Cards move forward to varying degrees: Frank and Zoe take it there, Claire and Adam dance on the edge of danger and Frank and Peter test each other's limits. Master manipulator Frank always manages to come out on top, at least for now.