| Aired on 02.14.2014
Things are getting messy as the second season of House of Cards barrels towards its sure-to-be explosive conclusion.
We start with hacker Gavin, who has a tracking system set up. It doesn't say who he's following, but thanks to the juxtaposition of the following scene, we can assume it's Doug, who's visiting Rachel and making her read to him. I'm sorry, but when did creepy reading fetishes become part of the "protection" deal? She doesn't seem all that bothered by his request, but that's probably because she's wracked with guilt over Lisa secretly staying with her. She comes clean and Doug loses it and demands that she kick Lisa, the woman who's spending her free time taking care of the kids at church, out on her ass. Doug's jealousy really knows no bounds.
Meanwhile, something is amiss at the Underwoods, where a strange man tries to drop a bomb in the alleyway. Luckily, Meechum catches him on the camera feed and the secret service nabs him, but when it's made clear that the VP is at the White House, it seems that perhaps Claire was the target instead.
At the White House, the President and Frank are speaking with the Japanese Prime Minister about a potential threat from China. They're not really very clear on why this conflict has come about, but boy is it a problem, or so they say. Frank needs to excuse himself when he hears about the bomb threat, so we're left even more in the dark, but we do find out that the guy who tried to bomb the Underwood house is a former marine whose wife was about to have an abortion, so the target really was Claire. This is a big reveal, so who cares about China, right? Frank assigns Meechum to watch over Claire, meanwhile China is doing something super shady that we will apparently never understand.
Things are a little more pleasant on the Remy and Jackie front. They wake up in bed together and share pillow talk -- the usual, "Don't go to California!" "But I have to, baby" chatter. Eventually, Remy's hands find their way to Jackie's tattoo and he asks what it's for. She resists initially, but when he starts pleasuring her, she gives in and tells him. He thinks they're playing a sexy game where she talks about the pain of the tattoo needle while she gets off, but when the drops the bomb on him: she got the tattoo as a way of coping with all the people she killed in the army. This is the sign of two people who just went past the point of no return, which means something big is about to tear them apart.