Designated Survivor – Bad Reception

By: Patience Kapfer

This episode begins with President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) dressed to the nines at the White House equinox reception. Kirkman doesn’t seem pleased to be in attendance, but Emily (Italia Ricci) says it’s a rite of passage and that they are celebrating the renewal of their fiscal bonds. The entire Beltway’s biggest donors are in attendance so people who will donate liberally to his most cherished causes, as Seth (Kal Penn) points out. During the reception, President Kirkman continues to take care of Presidential business, forcefully speaking with the Ambassador to Bultani (Keone Young). President Kirkman tells the Ambassador that Matthew Jennings (Gage Munroe) needs to be released from jail and allowed to come home, but the Ambassador says that Jennings committed a crime. Kirkman is quick to note that the crime was merely drawing a smiley face on the side of a building and he is a teenager that is now facing ten years in prison. The Ambassador insists that his country takes enforcement of the laws very seriously, but Kirkman says this has nothing to do with their laws and everything to do with the Pulu Islands. The Pulu Islands happen to be a territory that both the United States and Bultani share sovereignty over, which means that the exploitation of the oil reserves is subject to bilateral approval, which the US is not going to give and the reason why Bultani is now using an innocent teenager as some kind of leverage. While making the rounds at the reception, President Kirkman is met with Ethan West (Michael J. Fox) who has recently been hired to represent Matthew Jennings, much to Kirkman’s dismay.

Later in the reception the Bultani Ambassador tells President Kirkman that he appreciates the compromise – a compromise that it is clear Kirkman knew nothing about. The Ambassador says agreeing on the offshore exploration of the Pulu Islands allows his country to share billions in revenue and that he believes Matthew Jennings will soon be home. When asked who approached the Ambassador with the compromise, it is no surprise that it was none other than Ethan West. Kirkman quickly brings West into his office to let him know misrepresenting himself as an agent of the U.S. government is a federal crime, to which West clearly says he didn’t do. He says that he might have simply implied that Kirkman would consider a deal which is also a crime, according to Kirkman. While Kirkman is dealing with West, Emily and Aaron (Adan Canto) are responsible for getting the notion of a quid pro quo out of the Ambassador’s head; the release of Matthew Jennings must be unconditional. But on their way over to speak to the Ambassador, he collapses, and they rush over to help. Unfortunately, the Ambassador has no pulse.

Following the Ambassador’s death, the Bultani Prime Minister accuses the United States of foul play. Lyor (Paulo Costanzo) says they’re using his death for a diplomatic advantage while Mike (LaMonica Garrett) tells them that the preliminary indications are that the Ambassador was poisoned. Now, it is imperative that they solve the murder as fast as possible, as Matthew Jennings’s hearing is that day, and the murder of a Bultani Ambassador on American soil is only going to make matters worse. Since they need help from the FBI and Hannah is no longer available to assist, it is finally time for Chuck (Jake Epstein) to do more than sit in the basement on a computer! Mike and Chuck go to the Ambassador’s horse farm, which is very lavish for the life of an Ambassador. When they arrive, a man is coming out of one of the horse barns with a horse, and he says he’s getting his money back since the Ambassador owned him about two million dollars that he invested in horses. He tells them that he’d been trying to collect the money for about a year and the Ambassador had been trying to sell the farm but had no buyers.

Unfortunately, there is no time to solve the murder and keep Bultani from sentencing Matthew Jennings. While Kirkman and Mike begin the investigation the Bultani government sentences Jennings to twenty years of hard labor. Kirkman is given the option of a compromise in which Bultani is allowed to use the Pulu Islands for oil, which would provide billions of dollars to a country that is drowning in debt and in exchange they will release Jennings. Despite Emily and Aaron’s insistence that they shouldn’t succumb to blackmail for one individual, Kirkman says if there’s something they can do to help him he’s going to damn well do it. Kirkman is able to speak with Jennings and during the call the boy says that he knows Bultani is blackmailing them and as he’s starting to say he doesn’t want the President to yield to the blackmail his call is cut off. Following the call, the Kirkman decides to draw up sanctions on Bultani instead of work towards an oil deal so that they can find a way to bring him home without rolling over.

Mike gets the full tox report back from the medical examiner. It shows that the Ambassador was poisoned with ricin, which takes six to eight hours to kill. This means that he wasn’t poisoned at the White House. Now it is imperative to find out where the Ambassador was to figure out the murderer. Chuck traces the Ambassador’s steps over the twenty-four hours before his death to discover that he had been at a café in which the head of ClimateKind switched out the Ambassador’s drink. The only proof they have that it’s ClimateKind’s CEO is the ring on his finger, which he says is an Eastlake University ring so many people have one. Interestingly enough, Chuck points out that no one else is currently involved in protracted litigation over the removal of a giant oak tree that straddles the property line between his house and the Ambassador’s.

After solving the murder, the Prime Minister is in a place to begin working on a compromise, but he won’t compromise because Ethan West is on a rampage saying that the PM is Stalin and both the United States and Bultani are corrupt. Finally, Kirkman and West find a way to work together when the PM says that now the only deal that will exist involves unrestricted access to the Pulu Islands and if they refuse Jennings will get twenty years hard labor. Kirkman says that West plans to file a lawsuit against Bultani in every international tribunal, which will cost the country billions and billions of dollars for potential destruction of precious minerals on the islands. The only thing the US wants in exchange is Matthew Jennings.

In other presidential business, the president must find someone to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Circuit court, so Kendra (Zoe McLellan) and Emily ask Kendra’s first boss – Steven Flannery (Michael B. Silver) – to accept the open chair. However, he insists that he is a teacher now and an activist. But after some smooth persuasion by Kendra, Flannery agrees to serve on the D.C Circuit court. During the vetting process they hit one fairly large issue, a 2008 sexual discrimination suit that was filed by a female associate. Emily says that the GOP will look for anything to disqualify a progressive icon like Flannery so they need to get in front of this. Seth invites Kaitlin Corday (Emily Coutts) who made the complaint against Flannery to meet and discuss the nature of the sexual discrimination case. She says she was passed over for a promotion and right before her review he asked her out and she said no. Kendra still stands up for Flannery saying he would be the right person for the job, but asks Lyor to look further into Flannery in the hopes that nothing similar comes up. Unfortunately, they find another case that was settled with a confidentiality agreement. Kendra’s gut tells her maybe Flannery isn’t the man for the job. When Kendra goes to meet with him she ends up pulling the offer saying that they didn’t have the votes due to the GOP.

Even after Hannah’s (Maggie Q) dismissal from the agency, she pays a visit to Dax Minter (Chris Butler). She tells him that she’s former FBI, as the president just terminated her, but she’s looking to protect him. She tells Dax that she believes Kirkman is being misled by Andrea Frost (Kim Raver) and that he has a blind spot where his friends are concerned, which is why she no longer has a job. Hannah asks Dax to have lunch with Andrea so that Hannah has time to break into Andrea’s house while she’s out to search for evidence. Dax is not keen on being an accomplice to burglary, but agrees to go along with the plan in order to help the president.

While Andrea is away at lunch, Hannah (with the help of Chuck) breaks into what we think is Andrea’s house and manages to find a false wall leading to a hidden room that is emitting enough power for a small city. The room is full of high powered computers and other fancy technology and Chuck says the hacking is done using satellite telemetry. Hannah manages to find a way into the computer so that Chuck can access the main hard drive and Hannah needs to access the source code herself because Chuck cannot get to it remotely. Hannah reaches ninety-eight percent as a car pulls into the driveway and manages to get to a hundred percent as someone enters the house. In a moment of extreme luck, Hannah manages to sneak out the backdoor while the homeowner enters through the front.

Kirkman brings Dax into the Oval Office for a meeting where there is a turn of events. Kirkman confronts Dax about his meeting with Hannah and tells Dax that after she accused Andrea of being responsible for the hacks he had the Oval Office swept for bugs. The only bug that was found was inside the model car Dax gave Kirkman as a gift and this is where things get crazy. We find out that Hannah’s firing was staged in an effort to ensure Dax believed Hannah when she came to him about Andrea. Hannah was not breaking into Andrea’s house when Dax took her to lunch, but into Dax’s house. All of those computers belonged to Dax, not Andrea. Kirkman staged her firing because he knew Dax would be listening and he knew when Hannah talked to Dax about Andrea that he would take the bait.

Chuck manages to find something else interesting on Dax’s drive; a large payment right after Damian was killed to a company called Smith & Johnson Holdings. The address given for the payment is an old abandoned building in DC, so Hannah has Chuck look at security footage to see who would have went to the building to pay the manager to use the address. Security footage shows Valeria Poreskova (Nora Zehetner) entering the building, which leads to the question how did Dax end up linking up with Valeria? Hannah determines that Dax knew Hannah was on the hacking investigation and so he hired Valeria to kill her and make it look like Andrea did it. The episode ends with Hannah meeting Aaron at a bar where she tells him there are things she needs to do now that she can’t do while working for the White House. Hannah takes out her badge and White House ID and lays them on the bar and makes her way to the exit.