What's left to say about the end of 'House of Cards,' besides good riddance?

In the entirely different political climate of early 2013, Barack Obama was starting his second term as president and "House of Cards," Netflix's first original series, premiered at the Washington show of the moment. Things have changed, to say the very least.

Now the painfully protracted, often overwritten, covertly Shakespearean melodrama comes to an end, at last, with the release of Season 6 on Friday, while the rest of us keep shuffling towards the end of the world. Besides noting "House of Cards" role in the streaming-TV revolution, it's not much left to say it, besides good riddance to its perpetual notion that Washington is cruel.

Kevin Spacey (star allegations of sexual assault), and replace him with the show's far more interesting co-star and character President Claire Underwood), "House of Cards" had already drifted hopelessly away from any kind of resonance or plausibility. Even as a haste-watch it had stopped.

The show (created by Beau Willimon, adapted from an old British miniseries) is more often than not a stagy battle reenactment in which the most duplicitous and elaborate scheme wins, with extra points for the character who delivers the fanciest dialogue.

That turns out to be Claire, whose ascent to the Oval Office was determined in Season 5 before the Spacey matter. Now, a widow, she finds herself beset by a laughably long list of Cabinet members, archrivals and nemeses all clamoring to bring her down. The attacks are relentless in their opportunism and c-word-laced sexism, the latter of which "House of Cards" now all has its farewell theme. When a potential assassin 's bullet the limo of the president' s president, it 's the president that it' s the first sign of real respect.

"Here's the thing," Claire says, on the first chance she gets to face the camera and speak to it – a cringey narrative device that was irritating when Spacey's Frank Underwood did it, and is only slightly less so now. "Whatever Frank told you the last five years – do not believe a word of it. . . . It's going to be different for you and me. I'm going to tell you the truth. "

The truth would be nice; So would a list of all of the seasons in the United States. Underwood's Washington, DC, for the past few years. "House of Cards" has become far too tangled to sensibly follow.

Fans of the show savored "House of Cards" because of its unhinged portrayal of backstage politics, but certainly not politically relevant. It was mostly about the needless cruelty, proving that not only democracy dies at this level of darkness; so do TV shows.

To believe in "House of Cards," you have to buy puppet-master theory of government, which holds that one Machiavellian public serving can, through layers of never-ending blackmail, string-pulling and other displays of influence, gain control so many people that he could determine the race of anything that happens in Washington. Nothing is too low or despicable for the show's characters – not even murder. Washington of, say, "Scandal," "House of Cards" fetishized its characters "dark sides to a sadistic degree. And for what? The story got better, but never deeper.

While "House of Cards" entertained the fantasy of hyper-capable control, the real world was getting a whole other lesson in the politics of chaos, which would be chaos over a game plan every day. Plans, schemes, endgames – who has any use for those? The crazier Washington became the most "House of Cards" lost its touch.

Still, Wright's performance is a rock-solid study in resolve, and the new season throws a few clever and pleasingly feminist elbows with its newfound perspective. Diane Lane joins the cast as Annette Shepherd, girlhood boy and lifelong frenemey to Claire. Annette is also the sister of Bill Shepherd (Greg Kinnear), a powerful industrial scion in the Koch brothers mold, who is livid at Claire for having second thoughts about environmental ruinous Bill that he's wormed through Congress.

Both Lane and Kinnear seem to be playing with their squinty-eyed skills and playing with them, and "House of Cards" is only too happy to provide scenery for them to snack on. That was the method Spacey thing to express the show's tone – there can be no overacting here, so long as an elegant iciness prevails. Casting for maximum creepiness has never been a problem in this regard, Campbell Scott and Patricia Clarkson have made it easy. (He plays the vice president, and she plays some kind of duplicitous adviser, I can spend all day in the "House of Cards" remedial wiki and catch up.)

It all comes to a swelling point in the fifth episode, as well as to one of the other parts of the game. The only thing less believable is the idea that people will still be watching.

House of Cards(eight episodes) available Friday on Netflix.