Happy Valentine’s Day! And more importantly, Happy House of Cards day! Season two of the Netflix political drama was released en masse today, and at first glance, it might look kind of strange that it coincides with the nation’s top romantic holiday. Because let’s be honest, Frank Underwood doesn’t seem romantic. At all. He seems like an asshole. He is an asshole. But one thing we know is that he has a deep, abiding affection for his icy, terrifying wife Claire. (“I love that woman,” he says in the pilot. “I love her more than sharks love blood.” AWWWWW!)
So for Valentine’s Day, let’s really explore Underwood’s secret romantic side. Let’s take 25 quotes from the most famous romcoms around, and translate them into the speech of the ruthless, drawling southerner who is slowly grinding our nation under his heel.
1. THE NOTEBOOK
Original Quote: “So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now? What’s it look like? If it’s with him, go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again. If I thought that’s what you really wanted. But don’t you take the easy way out.”
Underwood Translation: “You better think long and hard before you make this decision, love of mine. I simply cannot account for my actions when I am mired in throes of heartbreak and rage.”
2. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: THE NEW MOON
Original Quote: “I love you. You’re my only reason to stay alive… if that’s what I am.”
Underwood Translation: “There are only two outcomes here: Love, and death. And trust me, beloved: I have no plans to shuffle off this mortal coil.”
3. DIRTY DANCING
Original Quote: “Me? I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”
Underwood Translation: “I will not deny my feelings for you, yet I refuse to list my fears like a bleating lamb stuck in a barbed wire fence. Baahhhhh. BAHHHHHH. (Pounds table) No!”
4. AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Original Quote: ”…I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and … I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.”
Underwood Translation: “There are so few humans who do not inspire me in me a frisson of immense joy when I imagine them suffering in a psychological torture chamber of my own devising. You are such a human.”
5. FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL
Original Quote: “Ehm, look. Sorry, sorry. I just, ehm, well, this is a very stupid question and… particularly in view of our recent shopping excursion, but I just wondered, by any chance, ehm, eh, I mean obviously not because I guess I’ve only slept with nine people, but-but I-I just wondered… ehh. I really feel, ehh, in short, to recap it slightly in a clearer version, eh, the words of David Cassidy in fact, eh, while he was still with the Partridge family, eh, “I think I love you,” and eh, I… I just wondered by any chance you wouldn’t like to… Eh… Eh… No, no, no of course not… I’m an idiot, he’s not… Excellent, excellent, fantastic, eh, I was gonna say lovely to see you, sorry to disturb… Better get on…”
Underwood Translation: “I WILL NOT TWIDDLE MY THUMBS HERE LIKE A DODDERING GERIATRIC WHILE YOU DELIBERATE MY PROPOSAL! WILL YOU JOIN ME ON A DATE OR WON’T YOU? ANSWER NOW, AND I DO BESEECH YOU TO ANSWER CORRECTLY!”
6. SAY ANYTHING
Original Quote: “What I really want to do with my life — what I want to do for a living — is I want to be with your daughter. I’m good at it.”
Underwood Translation: “Sir, I am a man of compromise and negotiation. And so I present you with an offer. If you agree to give me your daughter’s hand in marriage, these… (slides a manila folder full of photos across the table) shall never see the light of day. Are we agreed?”
7. TITANIC
Original Quote: “Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me… it brought me to you … You must do me this honor, Rose. Promise me you’ll survive. That you won’t give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.”
Underwood Translation: “You do not seem to understand, sunshine, that this world is a dissolute jungle in which only cannibals survive. You have fooled yourself into a state of love, but that delusion lasts only as long as we stay afloat. The ship is sinking, angel. And you, with your pitiful eyes, expect mercy? You expect a spot on MY life boat? (He slowly, thoughtfully pushes her into the ocean with the oar.) Tonight, you swim alone.”
8. GONE WITH THE WIND
Original Quote: “No, I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
Underwood Translation: “You disgust me.”
9. SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Original Quote: “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together … and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home. .. only to no home I’d ever known … I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like … magic.”
Underwood Translation: “Isn’t it funny, the way everybody wants to believe in destiny? As if the stars were anything more than lights we can never touch, and the fates had anything more than our death in their forecast? We are weak, my love, weak and vulnerable and credulous. We pine for moments of kindness, and we dread the fist. Honey pie…I am that fist. (Drops to one knee.) Will you marry me?”
10. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
Original Quote: “I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle in your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Underwood Translation: “I find courtship so tiresome. We are both sadists, my love. Power intoxicates us. Then why this charade? Why this silly chase? Take my hand or do not, and if you do not, look in my eyes and know that you have angered a most vengeful man. Love you.”