Designated Survivor – Grief

By: Patience Kapfer

At the heart wrenching conclusion of the mid-season finale, the audience was left watching President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) learn about the death of his wife, Alex (Natascha McElhone). To add to the cliff-hanger, we were also left wondering what happened to Damian (Ben Lawson); is he really dead? And if not, should Hannah (Maggie Q) be worried for her safety and that of the President? Before Alex’s death, Kirkman was starting to come into his own, truly embodying the office of the President. He was successfully connecting with the American people and making strides to establish a semblance of peace in the Middle East. But all of that changed with the death of Alex.

The mid-season premiere picks up 10 weeks after Alex’s tragic car accident. We learn that President Kirkman has been seeing a psychologist (Timothy Busfield) to discuss the accident, but he seems to be uninterested in actually talking about his feelings. When asked at the opening of the episode if he’s had any reaction to the front-page profile in the Times on Evan Beeman (Joey Coleman), Kirkman says he didn’t read it, even though he did read the articles he is interested in in The Times. He was blatantly ignoring an article on the driver who ran a red light while texting and was responsible for his wife’s death. The psychologist also makes sure to note that Kirkman didn’t attend Beeman’s sentencing hearing, either, in order to get the President to address why he wouldn’t go. Kirkman begins by saying he didn’t go “because he is the President of the United States”, but then admits a more truthful response, “it wouldn’t have brought my wife back”. It’s obvious that the President hasn’t been coping with Alex’s death and is using his job as President to avoid addressing his feelings. Lucky for Kirkman, as soon as the psychologist asks the President to discuss his reaction to Alex’s death, he is called away to a meeting, leaving the psychologists question for another time. However, before Kirkman can leave, his therapist tells him that if he wishes to continue these sessions, he MUST finish his session today and answer his question.

While Seth (Kal Penn) and Emily (Italia Ricci) are entering the White House, Seth tells Emily that he is still receiving questions about why the First Lady doesn’t have a memorial yet, or even have a headstone. Emily assures him that it’s only been ten weeks, but Lyor (Paulo Costanzo) is quick to make note that while the President came straight back to work, he has accomplished nothing in these past weeks. The military spending bill is stuck on the president’s desk, judicial nominations are piling up, and he’s put the brakes on every major policy initiative. Not only has the President stalled any and all policies, but he has also cancelled all of his trips and bailed on a meeting with the IMF. Aaron (Adan Canto) says that this is turning into the “ghost presidency.” The male senior staffers are quick to assume that the president should be able to carry on with some sense of normalcy, but Emily jumps to Kirkman’s defense assuring them that the president will get through this, noting that the Cuban initiative is today and hopefully it’ll jump start the President.

As the presidency is always constant business, in this episode Kirkman is sending a trade delegation to Cuba to meet with the Cuban President, Ortega (Emiliano Diez). The goal is to discuss ways to improve the bilateral relations between the United States and Cuba. The trade delegation consists of various Congressmen, businessmen, and staffers, as well as Aaron and Hannah. While they are on a bus going through the Cuban countryside, it comes to a sudden halt at what appears to be a checkpoint of some sort. However, Hannah notices the guns that the men are carrying are not standard issue and advises Aaron to keep a low profile. As one of the men board the bus, he takes out his gun and fires it, while all of the men outside the bus also pull out there weapons. The man on the bus announces that his name is General Ramon Bravo (Miguel Perez) and now they are all prisoners of the Army for the Liberation of the People. After they are forced off the bus, the General finds Aaron’s badge and forces him to make a statement to President Kirkman saying “President Kirkman props up a brutal and corrupt regime and the price for this treachery is 500 million dollars” and if he refuses to pay the ransom by two o’clock the following day, the delegation will be executed. Phillip Cross (Jefferson Brown), a businessman in the delegation attempts to diffuse the situation by offering to make a monetary deal, but instead he is punched and has his fingers broken.

Hannah manages to escape from the building where they are being held by locking herself in the bathroom and pulling up the floorboards to scurry out. While under the building, she sees Phillip Cross having a rather pleasant conversation with the General and in her FBI way, becomes suspicious. Once in the forest she encounters two armed guards and fights them with ease. However, after picking up one of their guns and beginning to run she realizes she is surrounded by at least a dozen armed rebels who escort her back to the camp. As the rebels are discussing what to do with Hannah after witnessing what she did to the two armed guards, she tells Aaron what she saw transpire with Cross. Aaron is a little skeptical, but after throwing an orange at Cross who catches it with his “broken hand” he is firmly convinced that Cross is somehow involved in their kidnapping. Soon after, the General uses Hannah to threaten the president into wiring the ransom money. As the General threatens to kill her if he doesn’t see the money, Cross stands up and begins to fervently bargain with the General while Hannah makes the sign of the cross into the camera. Luckily as the transmission is cut off, Emily notices that Hannah is trying to send them a signal about Cross. Emily takes the matter to Chuck (Jake Epstein) who notices Cross called General Bravo 12 times within the last few months and hypothesizes that Cross was bargaining with the rebels for land rights for his companies. More interestingly and importantly, Chuck finds that President Ortega and Bravo were working together to frame the rebels for the kidnapping. Ortega was working with Bravo to provide Bravo with a financial legacy for his family and use America to destroy the rebel group once and for all. Instead of helping Ortega with the rebels, Kirkman released all of the information to the Cuban people to allow them to make their own judgments on their leader and country’s future.

Back in the United States the President’s top military advisors offer up their best options to save the hostages. Unfortunately, there are only two real options on the table: using force and potentially leading to a greater number of casualties, or paying the ransom which is considered negotiating with terrorists, which sends a negative signal to not only the America people, but to the Cuban leadership as well. President Kirkman doesn’t like either option and insists there must be something else they can do. Between Emily and the military advisors, they decide to do a recon mission using a single Black Hawk with an infrared camera that should be undetectable through the trees, but give them more knowledge of the situation at hand. Once the helicopter is able to pick up a heat signature, the feed is lost and so is the hope that they will gather any intel.

The President is determined not to do anything that will cause unnecessary casualties, which means use military force. He tells Congressional leadership that he plans to pay the ransom that the rebels requested and will take full responsibility if his plan goes south. Everything the president has done in the past ten weeks has been in an effort to keep people safe – he’s withdrawn 50% of the troops from overseas and increased the Homeland Security budget. After yet another meeting with his therapist, Kirkman seems to realize the choice he was making could put even more lives in harm’s way and using military force is the only way to secure the hostages.

Throughout the day, Kirkman makes time to meet with his therapist to continue working through his feelings and trying to process what happened. He clearly blames himself for Alex’s death, if he hadn’t become President, or even taken the job as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development she would still be alive. Dealing with the blame Kirkman places on himself is even harder as we see him remember telling Penny (Mckenna Grace) and Leo (Tanner Buchanan) about their mother’s accident. Leo clearly blamed his father for becoming president and bringing them to the White House. As the episode progresses, it seems that the therapist is making progress with Kirkman. After a while Kirkman is able to admit that his wife’s death did traumatize him and that he hasn’t been handling it well, or at all. The psychologist reminds him that in order to do his job successfully he needs to have a clear mind to make the necessary choices.

The mid-season finale was emotionally difficult, but this episode allowed us to see just how difficult this all has been for President Kirkman. Through various flashbacks from Alex’s death we see a man who is truly distraught and doing his very best to handle the weight of losing his wife, as well as the incredible commitment that is the presidency. When Kirkman is able to have a quiet moment alone, he returns to the last voicemail Alex left him on the night of her death and listens to it on replay. We are able to see the unbelievable sadness etched all over his face. The moment the psychologist makes note of how Kirkman is standing still with his inability to console himself, to pick her headstone, holding himself responsible, Kirkman is able to realize he hasn’t been dealing with anything. His psychologist tells him he needs to find a way to acknowledge his grief and move forward, leading him to confronting Beeman in prison. The Kirkman we see in this prison is not the Kirkman we have grown to love, it is the Kirkman who lost his wife too soon, a Kirkman that is full of grief and anger. He tells Beeman that his well-being is of paramount importance, as Beeman will remember what he did for the rest of his life, and have to live with that.

Through all of the twists and turns in Cuba, and President Kirkman working through his grief it seems as though we forgot about one key part to that mid-season cliff-hanger: what ever happened to Damian? We soon find the answer. As Hannah is getting ready for bed, she hears a gun cock behind her. She glances in the mirror and finds herself face-to-face with the man she thought she killed only ten weeks earlier.