Designated Survivor – Lazarus

By: Patience Kapfer

“Designated Survivor” doesn’t seem to give us any time in between last week’s episode and this week’s as our opening scene takes us right back to the field where Agent Hannah Wells (Maggie Q) and Jason Atwood (Malik Yoba) are watching what appears to be the real Nestor Lozano (George Tchortov) disembark from a helicopter. As they watch in confusion, they are spotted by some of the members of this mysterious cult-like group who begin shooting at them and chasing them through the forest. Once they’ve made it back to their vehicle, Hannah wonders aloud how Lozano is still alive, but at that moment also notices that Atwood has been shot and rushes to get him to a hospital.

Abe Leonard (Rob Morrow) continues his chase to discover more lucrative information concerning the Capitol bombing, but after waiting three hours he decides the mysterious caller is never going to show up. However, as he starts to leave the mystery man calls him again to tell him he was testing Leonard’s resolve. The caller tells Leonard that he needs to be able to trust him, but he also informs him that the White House is covering up the truth about the Capitol bombing and that Jason Atwood was the last person to see Majid Nassar (Nicholas Massouh) alive. As the caller hangs up a strange car drives away and Leonard memorizes the license plate. Unfortunately, the only information Abe can obtain about the plates is that they belong to the White House, but hundreds of people work there and it’s impossible to determine who drove it.

President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) receives a massive win at the beginning of this episode when Speaker Hookstraten (Virginia Madsen) helps him pass the gun bill through the House and he is able to sign it into law. This shows enormous bipartisan cooperation and indicates the potential for more bills like this to be passed in the future. The media speculates that Kirkman and Hookstraten make a great team, and Aaron (Adan Canto) continues to push for Kirkman to consider Hookstraten as his Vice President. Seth (Kal Penn) even says that not only did the cooperation between President Kirkman and Speaker Hookstraten serve as a tri-partisan alliance, but that the people want the relationship between Kirkman and Hookstraten to continue. Emily (Italia Ricci) tells Aaron and Seth that she is still skeptical of pushing their relationship too far, as Hookstraten is a “bulldog” and she’s a consensus builder.

President Kirkman tells Hookstraten they have a lot of momentum right now and that he was really impressed. He then tells her that he would like his daughter to see a woman become Vice President of the United States, and when Hookstraten agrees, he tells her they will begin the formal vetting process immediately!

Meanwhile, Senator Bowman (Mark Deklin) is paid a visit by a gentleman who provides him with some information serious enough to make Bowman tell him to close the door. We learn more about this secret information when one of the White House press staffers rushes in to tell Seth to check Politico. It turns out they ran a story titled “Hookstraten’s Turkish Delights” about her trip to Turkey and then later cosigned a bill that provided them with military assistance.  Even though Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952, the problem is that is appears that she is accepting gifts for military favors in the form of surveillance technology that the Pentagon had been advising against. As usual President Kirkman chooses to see the best in everyone, not caring about how it appears, and opts for a meeting with her to discuss the issue. Hookstraten assures Kirkman that the trip was purely agricultural that she thought would be helpful for her constituents. She cosponsored the bill with the former chair of the armed services committee who believed the aid package was necessary to protect American personnel. Even if Hookstraten tries to defend herself and explain what the happened on the trip, she faces a Congress full of newly elected representatives that have new ideas and are itching to get rid of her and her older ideas.

President Kirkman is insistent that he will stick by Hookstraten and tells Emily that maybe they should have announced publically that he chose her for VP. Emily, on the other hand, is adamant that he should cut his ties with her and says that if he nominates her now that they will destroy all of the political capital they have managed to develop. Kirkman says that Kimble is the right choice and he will stick with her. They decide to have Seth author an op-ed and find someone to put their name on it to show support for Hookstraten.

Senator Hookstraten is determined to figure out who gave this story to Politico so she starts with Bowman who denies any involvement to Aaron. But once she is sure Bowman played no part in this news story, she is certain she knows who really is responsible. Later in the episode she brings in an ex-staffer from her first year in Congress – Liam Price (David Lafontaine). He has held a vendetta against Hookstraten because she fired him (or, as she says, gave him the chance to resign) when she found out he was taking money from lobbyists. He stands tall and thinks he is now in a position of power over her, making moves to secure his path to the White House with Senator Bowman, but she didn’t just call Price in for a quick chat. Hookstraten has something up her sleeve, and counters with blackmail of her own. She still has the evidence against him from his money-taking shenanigans, and she gave it to Senator Bowman, making Liam undesirable to take along with him on his hunt for the White House.

Hannah goes to the morgue to learn all she can about the dead “Lozano.” She takes her own set of finger prints from the body to determine his true identity. When she runs the prints, they once again come back positive for Lozano, but the face is enough to tell that it definitely isn’t him. The only answer is that someone hacked the database and switched the fingerprints and dental records of Lozano with the dead man’s. Mike Ritter (LaMonica Garrett) reminds Hannah that this is indicative of someone with an extremely high security clearance and she tells him that they’ve suspected for a long time that someone intentionally made Kirkman the designated survivor.

Hannah and her impeccable detective skills discovers how Lozano and the unidentified man switched places: Lozano waited 20 hours to leave the building, long after it had been cleared and after the other man had been shot. After more digging, Agent Forstell (Reed Diamond) determines the unidentified man’s real identity and traces it back to a loan taken out on his mother’s house which was cosigned by the CEO of Browning-Reed-Patrick Lloyd (Terry Serpico). Lloyd is one scary fellow who was in Special Forces for years and not only has the skills, but also the power and money to back him up. Hannah and Forstell pay Lloyd a visit and he happens to quote Pax Americana while discussing his old business and taking care of veterans who were forgotten by the nation that was supposed to support them. Hannah struggles late into the night to put the pieces together, finally calling Jason to ask for help looking into Lloyd.

The episode concludes with one of my favorite scenes: President Kirkman taking to his daughter Penny (Mckenna Grace). Penny says she saw her dad on TV and that he was thinking of making Kimble his VP. She then asks, “Did you know she would be the first girl Vice President?” Kirkman asks if she thinks that’s cool, to which she responds “Yeah!” But the episode takes a dramatic turn when we see Hannah return to her motel, only to realize someone else has been there. As she’s making her moves to leave, someone grabs her from behind and injects her with some form of sedative while three other people carry her into the back of an unmarked van. In the final scene we finally learn who the White House mole really is. Leonard meets his mystery caller in a parking garage who instructs him to check the White House log from the day after Nassar was killed. Even though the mole tells Leonard not to follow him, he obviously does and in this moment the audience learns that the mole is none other than Jay Whitaker! The Homeland Security Advisor! Then, we see him make a phone call to Lozano himself therefore proving he is also a true believer!