Madam Secretary – Night Watch

By starrymag | May 27, 2018

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

The McCord family visits the Lincoln Memorial together. Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood) is complaining about Russell (Zeljko Ivanek) not answering her texts about needing a Monday off work for a destination wedding. Henry (Tim Daly) wants to do some fun historical trivia on their first DC tour as a family, but the kids are all too occupied on their phones.

 

They decide to hit up an arcade before the next monument to get some food and have some fun. When the kids stop getting reception, they give in and decide to play skee-ball with Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) and Henry.

 

Blake (Erich Bergen) is at the office doing some spring cleaning and Kat (Sara Ramirez) is there to work on a binder about Southeast Asia that’s keeping her up at night. Blake offers to help so he can dip his toe into another department and hopefully find his calling.

 

Matt (Geoffrey Arend) and Jay (Sebastian Arcelus) play tennis together. Daisy (Patina Miller) walks her dog and pushes her baby in a stroller when she runs into a man named Thomas (Curt Hansen). Dalton (Keith Carradine) goes golfing with Russell, Ellen (Johanna Day), and Gordon (Mike Pniewski).

 

A strategy command center in Nebraska sees dozens of missiles being launched across Russia set to hit he United States coast-to-coast, and Ellen gets a call informing her of this. They are officially in Code Night Watch. They get the NFC plus five on the line and tell them that the attack is in fact real and expected to hit in around twenty minutes. There are no signs of a system hack. Dalton orders his security members to open the football.

 

Dalton and his team quickly talk about the best plan of attack—should they try and limit civilian casualties and play it safe or go all-in and make sure Russia’s entire military is compromised? A helicopter comes and picks up Dalton and his essential personnel. Ellen urges him to act quickly or else things could be much worse. Ellen and Gordon tell him he should go with the most severe option, but Russell disagrees, thinking it would lead to a nuclear winter which would kill the entire planet.

 

Dalton calls the center in Nebraska and orders the launch of the missiles. David Nelson (John Dossett) attempts to carry out the orders, but his password doesn’t work due to being served divorce papers that morning. Officers come in and tell him his access has been revoked. Dalton must repeat these orders, this time to Colonel Fredric McPherson (Jamie Jackson), which he sadly does.

 

Elizabeth’s security team rushes into the arcade and informs her of Night Watch, telling her she must exit the premises immediately. Elizabeth goes outside to talk to Russell, who tells her about Russia’s nuclear attack and Dalton already ordering countermeasures. Her security detail wants to rush her to the helicopter and keep her safe, but Elizabeth decides to stay with her family. She and Henry hug while watching their kids play air hockey. Russell debates calling his wife one last time, but Dalton tells him there’s no point.

 

The missiles are getting ready to be fired out of South Dakota, but someone comes in and aborts it at the last second. Although a sense of relief floods over everyone, they also have to get to the bottom of how something like this could have happened.

 

Gordon tells a furious Dalton that General Paul Bradley (Murphy Guyer) wanted to run a stress-test simulation to see how his team would react if this was a real nuclear attack. He installed this on the backup system and then went out of town for the weekend. While he was gone, the primary system failed, the backup kicked in simultaneously, and nobody but Bradley knew that the installation on the backup was meant to be a test. Though these kinds of simulations were outlawed after ’79, some people still run them against the rules.

 

The staff reflects on the fact that if Nelson wouldn’t have had security issues Bradley wouldn’t have arrived in time and they would currently be in a nuclear war. Elizabeth thinks this shows the entire problem with their policy of ready-alert ICBMs, wanting to de-verify it.

 

Ellen and Gordon disagree, thinking that even if they got Russia to go along with this, they would have no way of knowing they were actually keeping their word. Elizabeth argues that forcing leaders to make snap decisions with limited and hasty information is untenable. Gordon condescends Elizabeth, saying she’s getting too emotional, but Elizabeth owns it—after thinking she was seeing her kids for the very last time, she absolutely is emotion. She says that maybe emotion is what’s missing from their stupid, so-called “logical” policy.

 

Russell thinks it’s even stupider that they’ve been here before three decades ago and nothing has changed. He agrees with Elizabeth in thinking it’s an irrational process they need to learn from. Isn’t not trying to fix it reckless and borderline immoral? Dalton somberly says they’ll continue the discussion the next day.

 

That night at dinner, Elizabeth and Henry are struggling to get back to the everyday routine of Stevie talking about the wedding and Alison (Kathrine Herzer) obsessing about her blog. Henry tells Elizabeth that, while they were waiting for the missiles to hit, he was thinking about what a blessed life he had but also how sad he was his kids would never get to grow up.

 

Dalton comes over telling Elizabeth and Henry he thought about telling his wife of the mistake, but he stopped himself because she was washing her face and complaining about her crows feet. Instead, he just told her how beautiful she was. Dalton admits he kept trying to understand the situation before he got ready to launch the codes, but nothing seemed to make sense, and things still don’t make sense. What if the codes threaten more than they protect? If the policies don’t make sense, they should change them.

 

Dalton has decided he can’t sleep without doing something. He tells Elizabeth to back-channel with the Russians, thinking they probably got a whiff of what happened. If they can get mutual interest in de-alerting, they can potentially draft a new treaty.

 

Daisy meets up with the other staff members, saying there’s buzz about Air Force One going to the golf course for a drill. Blake, however, heard from a friend at the Pentagon it wasn’t a drill. Matt has a theory that it wasn’t a drill, which is why Jay got whisked away to go to Mount Weather—a small underground city where they keep a tiny population going for awhile.

 

They all good-naturedly pressure Jay to share if he’s on the list, and though he won’t confirm or deny, he gets sad and serious about its reality. He says, if you’re on the list, you don’t get to say goodbye to your friends and family and have to live in a bunker for years with other officials. After that time, you emerge, try and pick out the bones of your loved ones, and attempt to run the husk of what’s left of the government under martial law.

 

Elizabeth flies to Russia to meet with Foreign Minister Avdonin (Yasen Peyankov), asking if there’s any way they could de-alert the hair trigger and potentially reduce weapon stockpiles. She gives him an initial proposal with the framework of a new treaty.

 

Gordon storms into Elizabeth’s office, accusing her of playing the friend card with Dalton and infringing on national security. Elizabeth is insulted and reminds him she’s part of the National Security Council. He threatens to jam up her proposal by questioning its feasibility, telling her he’ll never get behind it and ordering her to drop it.

 

That night, Elizabeth snaps at Stevie when she complains that Russell hasn’t given her a response about the wedding. Henry ushers her out of the room and asks what’s wrong and Elizabeth tells him about Gordon and Ellen not backing her. Henry tells Elizabeth she needs the people backing her, and Elizabeth realizes she have to to declassify to get everyone’s support.

 

She pitches this to Russell and Dalton, saying they need the people to wake up and pressure their senators into backing her proposal. Russell thinks it’s too risky for Dalton’s reputation, but Elizabeth suggests they release all the close calls since the 50s for both the US and Russia to soften the blow, and Dalton agrees.

 

Dalton gives a televised speech telling the public what happened with the nuclear panic. One month later, it is announced that the US and Russia have both agreed to drop the hair trigger alert.

 

Blake has realized he loves working on policy things with Kat and has finally found his calling. Daisy meets another potential suitor at the park while walking her dog. Matt has finally gotten good enough to compete with Jay at tennis. The kids all play video games and make nachos with Henry.

 

Elizabeth hits the golf course with Dalton and Russell. Dalton and Ellen don’t join them, still bitter about de-alerting, but Dalton is optimistic that they’ll come around. Dalton is happy that the odds of nuclear war are now tilted in their favor.

 

That night, Elizabeth and Henry sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The whole experience has reminded Elizabeth of the significance of civil duty and reaffirmed her faith in the process. She feels a responsibility to see that their progress doesn’t get undone. She announces that, when the time comes, she wants to run for president. Henry; however, already knows and promises he’s with her all the way.