Madam Secretary – News Cycle

By starrymag | October 14, 2017

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

Dmitri (Chris Petrovsky) is interrogated about his time being tortured in Russia and his feelings about the US government while Henry (Tim Daly) looks on. Henry’s coworker informs him they have many recruits with far less baggage, warning him not to let his past with Dmitri cloud his judgement. Henry doesn’t back down on his stance that Dmitri is a valuable asset, claiming full responsibility for Dmitri’s actions. The director reluctantly gives Dmitri his stamp of approval.

 

Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) and Alison (Kathrine Herzer) have just gotten done dorm room shopping. Elizabeth is crushed she won’t be able to help move her in because of a UN meeting, but Alison assures her it’s okay. Jason (Evan Roe) petitions to make Alison’s bedroom into a game room and Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood) won’t be there to guard it since she’s going to the meeting too as a White House intern.

 

That night, Elizabeth tells Henry they need to get a hobby they can do together in order to prepare for being empty nesters in two years. She doesn’t want to be a couple who doesn’t know how to talk to each other. Henry assures her they’re not going to have that problem, and Elizabeth reiterates how guilty she feels about not taking Alison to school.

 

In the car the next day, Elizabeth’s staff goes over her itinerary. One of the things on the agenda is having lunch with her brother Will (Eric Stoltz), who will be at the conference to guest speak about cholera vaccinations in third world countries. At the conference, Dalton (Keith Carradine) and Russell (Zeljko Ivanek) inform Elizabeth that China has pulled out of the free speech resolution. Russell thinks they were never really serious about coming to the table and instead just wanted to humiliate the US. Elizabeth decides to one-up them on gamesmanship by not attending her meeting with Foreign Minister Chen (Francis Jue).

 

Instead she goes to talk with Foreign Minister Bento (Raul Aranas), who desperately wanted to speak with her earlier that day. However, only moments after they meet, Bento suddenly drops to the ground. Later, her staff informs her that Bento has died, possibly form an aneurism or other cardiac issue.

 

Elizabeth meets with President Da Silva (Tzi Ma) to pay her respects. Da Silva says he had been friends with Bento since primary school. Although he wasn’t aware of any health problems, he was under a considerable amount of stress due to his daughter’s recent death in a car accident. Nadine (Bebe Neuwirth) tells Elizabeth that Da Silva has ordered Bento’s body to be brought back to his own country without the US doing an autopsy, which confuses Elizabeth—why wouldn’t he want to know how Bento died?

 

During Elizabeth’s lunch with Will, she asks him to run a test with the blood on her blouse. She’s concerned someone might have murdered Bento considering the urgency with which he wanted to talk to her. Will thinks Elizabeth is sublimating and inventing this murder mystery in her head because she’s stressed about not taking Alison to college but agrees to take the blood sample to the lab.

 

Jay (Sebastian Arcelus) drops two bombs on Elizabeth. One: Bento was trying to get political asylum in Australia. Two: he had been sending hundreds of messages trying to meet with Elizabeth for months, but they never made their way up to her office. She asks Jay to get in contact with Bento’s wife to see if she can provide any clarity.

 

Will tells Elizabeth that Bento’s blood tested positive for some kind of tetrasulfate, meaning he was poisoned. Will says he’ll test for more specific makers to see where the poison came from.

 

Elizabeth tells Dalton and Russell that Bento and Da Silva’s friendship seemed strained after Bento argued against selling their islands to the Chinese. Da Silva quietly demoted him and sold off the islands to a shadowy buyer anyway. Elizabeth’s theory is that Bento was about to blow the whistle on Da Silva so he had him murdered. Dalton vows he won’t get away with committing murder on American soil. Russell asks Dalton’s permission to go public with the fact they suspect foul play in order to send a message to Timor-Leste and the Chinese.

 

Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at Alison’s move-in day. She, Henry, and Alison eat at the dining hall before Blake (Erich Bergen) tells Elizabeth it’s time for her interview. Elizabeth is irritated that Blake rushed her out so fast, but points out all the people following her and taking pictures. There’s a story trending that Elizabeth murdered Bento.

 

Nadine catches Elizabeth up as she gets ready for an interview with Marty Hawk (Karl Kenzler). The conspiracy theory started on a fringe website before quickly spreading on social media. The public is saying Elizabeth ignored his hundreds of phone calls because he had something on her and that she killed him in an unscheduled, closed-door meeting. Nadine tells her she can back out of the interview considering the circumstances, but Elizabeth wants to show there’s still a big difference between real journalism and fake websites.

 

Elizabeth’s appearance on Marty’s show starts out as expected, and he asks her run-of-the-mill questions. However, he quickly brings up the rumor about her murdering Da Silva, even playing a clip of Arizona senator Morejon (José Zúñiga) implying that he thinks she’s guilty. Elizabeth says that legitimizing this crackpot theory is dangerous, as reliable information is the bedrock of all aspects of society. She thinks maybe this theory is the work of a foreign power like China. She tells Marty that both he and Morejon are being unAmerican by spreading this claim.

 

Though her staff knows they’re going to have a busy night cleaning up her mess, they think she did the right thing on the talk show. Russell, however, is furious. He tells her that when something insane hits the news cycle, she’s supposed to lay low. Nadine loses it, yelling at Russell that just sitting there while being ambushed by Marty wouldn’t have helped anything either. She wants him to grow a spine and do something about Elizabeth being attacked instead of chastising her for her justified reaction. Russell is slightly taken aback but still warns Elizabeth not to comment anymore—her success and reputation impacts Dalton’s as well as her own. Once he leaves, Nadine says that Jay has found Bento’s wife and she is willing to talk. Hopefully the truth will help squash this rumor once and for all.

 

Bento’s wife Ana (Midori Nakamura) video chats with Elizabeth, saying she doesn’t know much about his work because he kept it private from her. All she knows is he was under a lot of stress after they sold the islands and their daughter died from a cocaine overdose. Elizabeth notes Da Silva told her she died from a car wreck, but Ana says Da Silva was always trying to protect their family. He even contacted her right after Bento’s death saying they weren’t safe in their country anymore and that he could use his connections to get them safely to Australia. He didn’t say why they weren’t safe, and Ana didn’t ask.

 

Will comes in, telling Elizabeth they got more specific results from the blood test. There are only two known actors to use this kind of rare poison: the Russians and a new Mexican drug cartel. Her staff theorizes that this cartel would have wanted a small island in Southeast Asia in order to have access to this poisonous substance and space to set up their drug operation. The cartel is perpetuating this fake news story in order to distract from and discredit anything Elizabeth might have heard from Bento.

 

Elizabeth tells Da Silva that her team has connected the dots and that his protecting Bento’s family says a lot about his character. Da Silva feels guilty that Bento managed to resist the cartels for longer than he was and even gave his life to the cause. Elizabeth says he can use Bento’s sacrifice to turn things around. If he speaks out publicly against the cartels, he will have the full backing of the United States. If they can get China on their side, she believes it will be safe for Ana and her family to return home.

 

Elizabeth meets with Foreign Minister Chen. She tells him that she knows his country has turned a blind eye to selling drug-making substances to cartels in other countries. In the middle of their talk, she sees news reporters and cameramen surrounding them, warning Chen that he’s now become part of the story. She tells him that everyone will be negatively affected by fake news unless they stand together and that China will be taken down by a drug epidemic unless they get ahead of it now.

 

Dmitri and Talia (Masha King) both thank Henry for helping Dmitri. Henry tells them they need to keep their undercover identities and a low profile so the Russians don’t catch wind of him working with American intelligence. It all seems to be fine, but later that night Talia brings home a bottle of pills to a shaky, unhinged Dmitri. Talia tells him that there are other ways to treat his injuries and that it’s dangerous to hide the fact he’s taking drugs. If he can’t go without them for one day, how will he do when he doesn’t have them for a week while he’s working? Dmitri yells that he’ll be fine.

 

Henry watches the news that night, seeing that a drug leader has been arrested in conjunction with Bento’s death. Elizabeth reflects that it’s scary how fast everyone jumped on her and even scarier how a small cartel can control the narrative and make people lose faith in their government officials with fake news.

 

Elizabeth bumps into Chief Justice Wilbourne (Morgan Freeman) on the way to confront Morejon at breakfast. She tells him he’s playing a dangerous game, but he shoots back she’s just as bad considering she pulled every string to get Dalton elected for a second term. Morejon threateningly vows to use this new way of news and media to chip away at Dalton’s approval ratings.