SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read on if you haven’t seen season three, episode one of House of Cards. Please do not leave spoilers for future episodes if you have seen further ahead. Frank’s back, urinating on his dad’s headstone. He may now be the president of the United States, but he’s not above oedipal score-settling. Last season, Underwood revealed that, aged 13, he had gone into the family barn and found his selfish coward of a father with a gun in his mouth. Little Frank was invited by his father to administer the coup de grace. “My only regret in life is that I didn’t pull that trigger.” In the opening scene of season three, Frank disclosed that he was the only mourner at his father’s funeral (even Mrs Underwood found she had something better to do) and had paid for that gravestone from his scholarship money. His funeral would be very different, and would not take place in his hometown of Gaffney, South Carolina. “I’ll tell you this, Pop,” he told the grave, before turning to face us.

“When they bury me it won’t be in my backyard. And they’ll have to wait in line to pay their respects.” This pre-credits scene nicely established the looming season’s concerns. But all the security crew who lingered by their cars, while the president wandered, quite possibility in snipers’ crosshairs, on a graveyard hilltop, would surely have been fired for gross dereliction of duty. And, if this was a treacly photo op, why weren’t the media allowed to take pictures of Frank at the graveside? The scene didn’t make a lick of sense, but for the chance it gave us to hear Frank wax hubristic, resume his confidential mugging to camera – and unburden himself before his father. After the credits, we learned that things aren’t going well for the unelected leader of the world’s greatest democracy. Six months into the job and eight out of 10 Americans think Frank lacks leadership and effectiveness; his approval ratings are now below those of the milksop he replaced in the Oval Office.

Underwood is in so much trouble he dare not accept the resignation of a Supreme Court judge because of his early onset Alzheimer’s in case the resultant brouhaha over a replacement might allow the Republicans to exercise damaging leverage. If Frank is to be elected in 2016, he’ll have to risk a bold manoeuvre to woo back voters. Which is, quite possibly, why he agreed to the drone strike on the Yemeni terrorist even though his military advisers weren’t entirely sure that the kill zone around the target was free of children. ikea sanela curtains grayWe don’t know yet whether this bombing amounts to the president taking out the terrorist trash or, rather, will result in him becoming known as a child killer.jcpenney toile curtains On the domestic front, the president’s policies are similarly poised. umbra curtain rod extension

Foolishly, he allowed himself to be interviewed on TV by Stephen Colbert, who proved himself an eviscerating interrogator. Frank was there to announce America Works, his new jobs programme, which he claimed would eclipse Roosevelt’s New Deal. “So it’s a socialist raid on the wealthy,” suggested Colbert, “wherein the baby boomers will latch on to the millennials like a lamprey and just keep sucking until they’re as dry as a crouton?” curtain czujnikToo few TV presenters’ sentences contain ”wherein”, “lamprey” and “crouton”.sanderson dandelion curtains red To be fair, Frank had something different in mind – he conceived Amworks not so much as a socialistic raid on cash-strapped youth, more a crypto-Reaganite rolling back of the US welfare state in the manner beloved of ordinary God-fearing, tax-terrified Americans (think: Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation), though with the neo-Keynesian twist that all those entitlement savings would bankroll jobsarlee curtains

, many of them in the military. Which suggests Frank may stop at nothing, fresh wars included, to win in 2016. In theory, Underwood is a Democrat; in temperament, he’s doing whatever is necessary to get elected. He wants to eradicate unemployment, and put the 10 million jobless Americans back to work by slashing the entitlements budget. But, countered the patsy politician that Frank had put at the head of the task force to realise his crazy scheme, these programmes are the bedrock of America. net curtain shops in lowestoftAs Frank swept from the meeting in high dudgeon, it was left to new chief of staff Remy Danton to tell the patsy politician that his services were no longer required. He would have to leave the room without taking his things from the conference table. They would be sent on to him. In fact, Danton’s glower suggested he might do what Frank had just done to his dad’s grave.

Most of this episode was taken up with the recovery of Doug Stamper, who proved to be less dead than he looked at the end of season two. Claire Underwood visited him in hospital and, fulfilling her duty as Flotus, coached him not to blab to the cops what really went down in the woods. No, he was not bashed over the head by Rachel Posner, the crazed born-again ex-call girl with whom he had unwisely and unrequitedly fallen in love. Rather, he was carjacked by some man whose face he never saw and thus could not identify. That is what happened, said Claire, incontrovertibly. Quite so, retorted Doug’s eyes, conspiratorially. Neither of them know where Rachel is, but, given that she tried to kill Doug and that he had been tasked with ensuring that she kept shtum about Frank’s murder of bigmouth reporter Zoe Barnes, you wouldn’t give her five minutes if they caught up with her. I don’t know about you, but if I’d spent months hospitalised and undergoing painful physiotherapy after being found nearly dead in the woods, I’d have sprung for a walk-in shower at my apartment rather than risking breaking more limbs climbing into the bath.

Doug Stamper didn’t roll that way. As a result, when he gingerly climbed into the bath for a shower so he’d be fragrant for his first meeting with the president since that incident in the woods, he slipped and broke his arm. Again, I don’t know about you, but I spent quite a lot of the next few minutes looking anywhere but at the screen as Doug, with his arm hideously distended by broken bone, got himself dressed and to his White House appointment. Because of his history of addictions (he is a recovering alcoholic), Doug toughed out the pain without Percocet. He is made of sterner stuff than me. In their Oval Office meeting, however, Frank decided that Doug should not yet come back to work for him. Quite sensible: apart from being a physical wreck, Doug’s now expendable – all the disgusting things he did could come back to bite Frank on the proverbial ass unless the president puts distance between them. At the same time, Frank must keep Doug on side so that he doesn’t get the hump and take down his already teetering presidency.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a spurned henchman. Unfortunately, Doug went into meltdown as a result of Frank’s rejection. He chugged Percocet and then got a prostitute to shoot bourbon from a syringe into his mouth. Frank should be worried. Particularly as Doug is now having furtive meetings with Gavin Orsay. I very much enjoyed Claire Underwood’s nocturnal visit to Frank. She stood silhouetted on the threshold, woke him and, with the president of the free world at his most vulnerable, told him that he would back her bid to become the next US ambassador to the UN. Frank doesn’t seem too keen. Nepotism notwithstanding, a mere raised eyebrow from Claire would surely make Putin’s lackeys cry. Perhaps Frank likes the deal as it is, with her in the passenger seat rather than at the wheel. Having Lady Macbeth as his wing woman is one thing, but a rival using the office of Flotus to build a political career likely to eclipse his own is intolerable. How far she can be the Hillary emerging from Slick Willy’s shadow is going to be one of this season’s more fascinating sub-plots.