Designated Survivor – In The Dark

By: Patience Kapfer

This week President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) finally answers the question I’ve personally had for the last few weeks: is there a Vice President, and if so, who is it? At the beginning of the episode we catch up with Kirkman interviewing a few potential candidates for the position, the first being a Senator that insists he has all of the qualities that would make him a great Vice President. Another candidate says she, of course, will champion Kirkman’s presidential agenda and will provide unconditional loyalty even if Kirkman is wrong. As I’m sure most of the audience knows, that’s exactly the opposite of what Kirkman is looking for in a VP; he would like to work with someone who feels comfortable being able to tell him when they think he’s wrong. Kirkman interviews a candidate who tells him he would be more than happy to tell him when he’s wrong and “tinker with an aspect or two of his tax plan and even tweak his Mideast policy.” This particular Congressman clearly is more interested into blowtorching Kirkman’s agenda rather than offering his assistance making the presidency more efficient. Kirkman’s staff tries to make the case for each individual that they may not be perfect, but they do all bring something unique to the table. However, Kirkman still thinks they don’t need to have a Vice President right now. He wants to make sure that this time around they’re going to get this right and take their time finding the perfect candidate. Emily (Italia Ricci) and Lyor (Paulo Costanzo) warn that The Journal has caught wind of how slow the process has been and is publishing an article the following day, which will make the president look reactive and weak if he picks a VP any later than that night.

While the president focuses on naming a VP, his staff is sent to the Department of State to deal with the issue of a forbearance of six months of 600 billion dollars of Treasury Bonds (T-Bonds) that have come due to Japan. Even though Lyor says that the United States has never defaulted, the country’s national debt clock is also never going to reverse. Lyor says that the US is requesting a courtesy from an ally that gladly accepts the United States’ military protection and help rebuilding following the war. It is clear that Lyor is very displeased with the way the Japanese Finance Minister – Takuzo (Clyde Kusatsu) – is responding to the request, but Emily is equally displeased with how Lyor spoke to the minister. However, Lyor is insistent that Takuzo is an old friend and they will have the deferral before midnight. But just as Lyor and Emily are in the elevator on their way out of the State Department, Emily loses cell phone service and all of a sudden the elevator comes to a halt and the lights go off.

While Lyor and Emily are trapped in an elevator, Hannah (Maggie Q) and Chuck (Jake Epstein) work on determining more about the code embedded in the hacks, but at that exact moment they lose all power and ability to track Damian’s (Ben Lawson) ankle bracelet. That means that Hannah has to make a mad dash to the safe house. At the same time as Hannah is rushing out the door to the safe house, Kirkman is enjoying a nice dinner with Trey (Breckin Meyer), only for the lights to go out in the entire White House as well. As the generators kick in at the White House and Kirkman looks out the window, all of the lights in the Washington DC metro area begin to go out, leaving the city in complete darkness.  When Hannah arrives at the safe house, she notices that the door’s ajar and there’s shattered glass in the parking lot. Hannah decides she’s going inside despite Chuck’s protestations to wait for backup. Once inside Hannah finds an agent down near the entry-way, but no sign of Damian other than his ankle bracelet on the floor.

Upon entering a meeting with Kirkman’s top advisors, Aaron (Adan Canto) tells him that it looks like a cyber attack with a signature embedded in the hack that’s similar to the space station and prison hack. Aaron says they are trying their best to solve the hack, but they worry this could be the prelude to a larger attack. While Emily and Lyor continue to be stuck in an elevator, Aaron is now acting Chief of Staff and still in charge of the investigation into the hacks and Damian. When Damian went missing, so did the car of the FBI agent that was guarding him at the safe house. Unfortunately, Chuck is unable to track the car’s beacon because the signal’s routed through satellite and without cell towers it’s impossible. Hannah comes up with the genius idea to check the traffic cameras since they are solar powered so Chuck can still access them. Chuck finds an image from fifteen minutes ago where the car was seen near the Russian Embassy and Hannah once again races off in search of Damian.

Hannah is unable to find Valeria, even though she waited outside the Russian Embassy for two hours and then walked up to the guard shack and asked for her, to which they responded with what Hannah thinks was “Russian for ‘drop dead.’” While she is recounting the events to Chuck he says he found the stolen FBI car heading north. By the time Hannah finds the car, it has been driven into a pole. Hannah hears gunshots nearby, only to find Damian standing over a body and holding a gun. Hannah assumes the worst and cuffs Damian before searching the man’s pockets only to find that he had her address. When she asks Damian why this man has her address, he says because the man was going to kill Hannah and he had to stop him.  Once Hannah brings Damian back he tells her that the man he shot was a contract killer named Ray Kinney and was hired by Valeria Poreskova of the Russian Embassy.

The President brings the Mayor of DC – Mayor Darby – (Aunjanue Ellis) to discuss the situation outside of the White House. She says it’s not good and their Public Service Commissioner has no idea what caused the outage. Kirkman is more interested in how she is with essential services, to which she tells him they’re passing out blankets and putting the elderly and infirm in the few places with backup power as it’s only supposed to be 30 degrees overnight. She says they have police on the job attempting to quell unrest, but they are a city already on the edge with a sanitation strike, a public hiring freeze, an unemployment rate that is fifty percent above the national average. All the mayor requests is a place to set up as her command center that has power and President Kirkman is more than happy to set her up in the White House so that his people can coordinate with hers, monitor her progress and chip in where they can. When it appears that things can’t get much worse at the White House, Kendra (Zoe McLellan) informs the President that the Japanese Finance Minister messengered over a demand letter that says they want the T-Bonds paid on schedule with no extension. However; with the blackout, it is impossible to do a wire transfer from the Treasury department and if they fail to pay the United States’ credit rating will take a nosedive. Then while then walking through the hall of the White House, the lights flicker, which isn’t supposed to happen while they’re on the backup generators.

As Chuck works tirelessly to figure out a way to break the hack and restore power to DC, he finally determines that the code he found could unlock a binary polynomial in the power grid’s operating system, which would allow them to extract the polluted code that shut down the system, and then reboot the system completely.

As time goes on, they are no closer to restoring power throughout the city but are now experiencing sporadic acts of violence. Aaron recommends both allowing the Mayor to do her job and get a handle on the situation and to start mobilizing the National Guard to keep things from getting completely out of hand and turning into full blown riots. When Kirkman tells Mayor Darby that he is going to send out the National Guard, she says it’s a bad idea because he will alienate the public and she insists she will get a handle on the situation. However; Kirkman says she’s run out of time and he needs to control the situation. Mayor Darby’s answer is to pull the metro police back, which infuriates Kirkman who is trying his best to police the situation and keep it from getting out of control despite her protests that it will only make the situation much worse. She tells him that if he invokes martial law and suspends habeas corpus he will be a dictator, but this doesn’t make the president see how his actions will impact this community at a local level. Instead, all he sees is a way to control the violence in his own backyard and doesn’t see any other way to handle the situation. Finally, Kirkman acquiesces and allows Darby to have one hour to pull together all of her police force and firemen to establish some type of control.

Unfortunately, Mayor Darby’s solution doesn’t work and instead violence continues to increase. When she tells Kirkman this, he isn’t angry, but instead finds out she is from the community undergoing so much violence and says perhaps the way to restore trust and help the people is to remind them that it is HER community. Kirkman takes Darby back out into the community to the shelters and help to hand out water and blankets and tell the people that they need to support each other and that they are working hard to turn the lights back on. They give a joint speech and tell the people of the community that they promise to roll up their sleeves and work if the members of the community promise to do the same. During their thoughtful speech, the lights finally come back on, much to the cheers of all the residents and to Kirkman and Darby’s relief.

Following the terrible events of the blackout, the President makes a statement to the press in which he finally picks his nomination for Vice President of the United States – none other than Mayor Ellenor Darby! But, of course no episode of “Designated Survivor” can end on only a happy note. Hannah summons Poreskova (Nora Zehetner) to tell her she will find out why Damian went to see her and that she is responsible for trying to have her killed. Poreskova tells Hannah that Damian came to see her in regards to Hannah. He asked her not to kill Hannah, but she doesn’t listen to Damian. In response, Hannah tells her that if she ever tries to take her out again, she better not miss because Hannah won’t.