Designated Survivor “The Mission” was written by the team of Sang Kyu Kim and Michael Russell Gunn and was directed by Paul Edwards. Kim previously wrote for 24: Live Another Day as well as
The Walking Dead and
Crash while Gunn is an alum of
The Newsroom. They are certainly doing a good job in keeping up both the action and the political side of the show. This episode definitely deepens the mysteries and intrigues.
As the episode opens, Tom (Kiefer Sutherland) is having another sleepless night. It’s go time in regards to getting Nassar (Nicholas Massouh). Tom’s biggest concern is that there are no civilian casualties in a nearby village. The Admiral (Mykelti Williamson) assures them they will be safe. Unfortunately, just as Tom gives the greenlight, Carrera (Paulino Nunes) tells them to stop, and Tom must call it off because they’ve waited too long and Nassar has escaped.
We get another very early morning briefing – which Emily (Italia Ricci) is once again not apprised of. And another great walk and talk scene. Seth (Kal Penn) has settled right into his role and knows he has to tell the press nothing. Michigan is back under control. Rather than bring Emily into the Algeria situation, Tom essentially shuts her out and puts her onto rebuilding Congress.
Aaron (Adan Canto) attempts to apologize to her later in the day, but she says it’s fine, she answers to the President and is prepared to do as he says. He asks her about the Kirkmans knowing Jeffery Myles, and she keeps a great poker face as she says she doesn’t recognize the name. Emily certainly does seem to be bothered, yet denies it here and works well with Aaron throughout the rest of the episode. I’m not entirely convinced about how I’m supposed to be feeling with these two. And the entire Jeffery Miles plotline feels very overdone and unnecessary. But maybe they’ll send us an interesting curve ball somewhere along the way.
Emily contacts Alex (Natascha McElhone) and tells her about the interest in Jeffery. We learn that she had a relationship with him – or dated him at any rate – about 20 years ago. He’s now serving time in a federal prison. We have no details on Alex and Jeffery’s relationship, just that Tom knows all the details. We also don’t know what he’s serving time for. What we do find out when Alex goes to Aaron is that Jeffery is telling everyone in his prison that Leo (Tanner Buchanan) is his son! And it would appear that Leo knows nothing of this.
I can’t say that this storyline does much for me at all. It’s impossible not to compare
Designated Survivor with
Madam Secretary, and frankly, one of the most impressive things about that show is that they strike such a good balance between the political storylines and the family storylines. Part of what makes the family storyline compelling is giving the spouse a sufficiently interesting storyline. So far, Alex and the Leo drama are not strong elements of the show. I really question if we need this dimension when we already have drama on two fronts with the FBI investigation and the Whitehouse.
Kimble (Virginia Madsen) continues to be a thorn in Tom’s side. She accosts Seth after the medal ceremony to try to get information out of him. He puts her off and really isn’t intimidated by her. She tries to get information on Nassar out of him and he just tells her that they can’t respond to Nassar until they can find him. She knows he’s lying.
Seth pulls almost the same tactic later in the episode in the press room. The journalists are hammering him on what’s going on in Algeria and he simply keeps deflecting them. They know exactly what he’s doing and tell him he can’t dodge them with talking points indefinitely and he simply responds, “Watch me!”
Tom has good military personnel and they do find Nassar quite quickly – I really thought they might have dragged this on for a while yet, and I really like that they are moving this plot line along quickly. Nassar has gone to ground in the basement of a hospital which means sending in a team to extract him. In fact, the Admiral wants to bring him in alive! Tom insists that not only does he want to speak to the leader of the mission, he’s going to break the chain of command and go to the commander. It’s almost a Dowager Countess moment from the Admiral as he’s a little taken aback by such a breach of protocol!
Kimble is not happy about being blocked by Tom. She tells him that he’s being erratic: he fired the General and arrested a Governor on the same day! She reminds him that he has an obligation as President to consult with Congress if they are going to war. She’s not stupid and proves it again by telling him that she knows the Pentagon parking lot was full at 3am. And she knows what that means.
Tom makes the journey to Virginia and Commander Clarkson (Dylan Walsh) takes him through the mission and shows him the troops at work. Tom is impressed, but Clarkson tells him, “Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics.” When Tom insists on knowing the odds, Clarkson tells him 50/50, but because they know Nassar is there, they can’t wait. It has to be now.
Clarkson tells Tom that no Seal has ever been captured or left alive on the ground in enemy territory. He’s determined that won’t change with this mission. Tom learns about the soldier who spent his honeymoon training and Chief Marino (Alex Mallari Jr) who is expecting his first child. Before he leaves, he orders Clarkson to kill Nassar and get his men out if it comes to it. This is such a completely different outlook from Jack Bauer! Bauer was willing to sacrifice almost anyone for the mission, but is Tom going too far in the opposite direction?
Tom has another sleepless night waiting for the mission to start. Alex finds him up, hovering over the computer. She tells him to come to bed – this is the job. She points out that the Seals are trained to do this. He’s not sending innocents in to be slaughtered. In the end, he sends her back to bed without him.
When Tom arrives in the morning, he’s called in Kimble and Peter McLeish (Ashley Zukerman). He now has two Congressional representatives. He briefs them on the mission, and Peter approves enthusiastically. Kimble is as condescending to him as she is to Tom. She tells Peter that Tom doesn’t need their approval, he just needs to tell them. She then goes on to essentially threaten Tom: If it succeeds, he’s Reagan. If it fails, he’s Carter. Tom sarcastically responds with “As usual, your support is overwhelming.” It’s Aaron that goes after her. Clarifying that if the mission fails, Kimble will withdraw all her support of Tom and start an investigation. She doesn’t deny it.
Aaron urges Tom to appoint another speaker – he has a choice now in Peter. Tom tells Aaron to look into it. In a very surprising turn of events, Peter turns it down when Aaron offers the position to him. He tells Aaron that he came to Washington because he wanted to serve. Speaker is too political a position to let him do that. Peter says that he’s happy to serve the President – just not as Speaker.
Meanwhile, the mission runs into trouble when one of the helicopters crashes in a sandstorm. Only one soldier is slightly injured, but it means that Clarkson has to go in with the team when he was going to run it from outside. Tom watches as they infiltrate the hospital. He’s asked Peter to join him, and Peter is able to advise that one flash of light that results in a loss of signal is probably a flash bomb, used to disorient the enemy. It’s another way to underscore Peter’s military background – something that is also mentioned at the medal ceremony earlier in the episode.
It looks like the mission is going south when they find Nassar, surrounded by children with guns to their heads. Tom has a moment of panic, chastising himself for not listening to the Cochran. But the Admiral remains calm in the face of all the turmoil. When Tom asks him if it ever gets any easier, the Admiral wisely replies that it shouldn’t. And that is one good thing about Tom’s reluctance to shed anyone’s blood. He’s never going to lose that respect for the sanctity of life – so important in a place where power is so much the focus and where complete power can corrupt completely. And this dovetails nicely into the final discussion of Peter turning down the power of the Speaker position.
In the end, the mission is a success and they get Nassar alive with no civilian casualties. The only one to lose his life is Clarkson. And he dies heroically shielding two children. Tom is deeply affected by it, however. Alex again tries to get him to see that one life is a justifiable sacrifice.
Meanwhile, Hannah (Maggie Q) is back in the office and tenaciously following the lead of room 105. Atwood (Malik Yoba) is happy to see her back. Hannah finds out that 105 is a “secret” room or a hideaway office and that they are used for privacy, work, or rest, and that Teddy Kennedy’s was like a clubhouse. She’s also able to determine that Peter was IN 105 at the time of the blast through a simulation. There had been some kind of renovation being done on 105, but those are classified by Congress.
Hannah goes to Kimble for help. Kimble seems to have some knowledge of Hannah – or maybe that’s just a function of how Madsen played the scene. Kimble tells Hannah that neither they nor the FBI are responsible for the terrorist attack. That responsibility clearly lies with Nassar. It’s interesting that she should stress that point. When she brings Hannah the information on the renovations, she insist that she be updated on the investigation going forward. I really thought she might be in on it somehow, but she seems genuinely in the dark. It turns out the renovations were done by a subcontractor she’d never heard of and that’s now defunct.
Hannah takes her discovery to Atwood who is completely freaked out. It turns out that 105 had been reinforced with steel to act as a bomb shelter! Furthermore, all of the subcontractors who had worked on it are now dead. They all died from seemingly natural causes or accidents in the last two months! Atwood tells her not to tell anyone!
I really liked the end of day scene in which Aaron, Emily, and Seth de-stress and de-brief over drinks and take out. They are all a bit baffled by Peter’s turning down Speaker. It’s also telling that Tom just wanders in and joins them. He really has no feeling that he is superior to them. He understands Peter’s declaration that he wants to serve but doesn’t care about power. The problem, of course, is what we know about Hannah’s investigation, and that doesn’t support Peter’s declaration. However, it does make him seem like a sympatico fit to Tom – who really does feel that way, so is it simply a set up? It certainly results in Tom wanting to offer him the Vice Presidency…
In the final scene, Tom goes to pay his respects to Clarkson’s body. It’s a nice touch that he’s wearing his ball cap, so we know that he’s snuck out of the Whitehouse the back way. This isn’t a publicity stunt. Tom is genuinely paying his respects. He receives – and seems to finally absorb – comfort from an unusual source. It’s Chief Marino who tells Tom that Clarkson had voluntarily taken Denton’s place on the mission. Marino tells Tom not to feel guilty.
Marino also tells him to never question his decision because none of them did. Tom lays his hand on the coffin a final time and then turns to leave. This shot with the flag on the coffin and the long perspective shot of him walking out, nicely mimic the opening credits of the show as well as the shot in the scene in which Alex tries to convince him he did what he had to do. These shots are a great way to reinforce these very seminal moments in Tom’s evolution into President.
What did you think of the episode? Is Tom over-thinking? Should he just accept casualties and move on? Do you trust Peter? How are you liking the “family” storyline? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
