Madam Secretary – North to the Future

By starrymag | November 25, 2017

By: Taylor Gates

 

Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) rushes Jay (Sebastian Arcelus) out of the office. He has to pick up Chloe and Elizabeth has to get home—Jason (Evan Roe) and his girlfriend Piper (Salena Qureshi) are cooking dinner together. Elizabeth loves that Jason is suddenly kind and considerate, but she’s worried the sudden personality change won’t last longer than his relationship. She almost makes it out of the office, but Blake (Erich Bergen) tells her she’s needed at the White House.

 

Russell (Zjelko Ivanek) and Dalton (Keith Carradine) tell her they found Russian dissident Artem Markevich (Jonathan Kells Phillips) hiding onboard a US plane heading to Moscow. Elizabeth says he more of an eco-activist, having released shocking pictures of oil spills on the coast of Siberia the previous week. The Russians want to charge him with trespassing since the oil spills were near government land. Elizabeth wants to help Markevich since she knows he’ll die the second the Kremlin gets ahold of him, but Russell doesn’t want to risk stirring the pot even more with Russia over one guy. However, Elizabeth thinks granting him asylum could be a way to push back at Russia for working with Afghanistan.

 

Henry catches Elizabeth up, telling her the dinner went great and that Piper is the daughter of aid workers, having lived in Kenya until she was seven. Piper is nervous but thrilled to meet Elizabeth. She even saved Elizabeth a plate and helps wash the dishes. Elizabeth is extremely impressed at her manners and cooking abilities.

 

Elizabeth and Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood) watch an interview with the former Chief of Staff to the Ambassador of the UN Kat Sandoval (Sara Ramirez). Stevie says Russell was ranting about how she went off-the-rails and is trying to cash in on it. Elizabeth confirms Kat did once throw a chair at someone, but she’s flattered when Kat calls whoever convinced Dalton to run as an independent ballsy. Elizabeth is also mesmerized when Kat talks about how she’s currently retired on an avocado farm, wanting to do the same thing once she leaves DC.

 

During his meeting asking for funding, Henry tells the senators that the location of the safe house was obtained by Russia when they hacked the Afghan embassy, which led to the bombing. Nafisa’s kidnapping and their asset’s death, however, was not obtained this same way. Senator Carpenter (John Cullum) is frustrated they still haven’t found the sources of the other two attacks. He and Morejon (José Zúñiga) deny Henry’s request for more resources, telling him to work with what he has. Henry tells Dylan (Sam Breslin Wright) they’re going to try the asset he and Molly picked out. It’s going to be a challenge to turn anyone after what happened to their previous asset, but they’re going to give it a shot.

 

Elizabeth asks Blake to try and get her a meeting with Kat. When Matt (Geoffrey Arend) makes a snide comment about her having a breakdown, Elizabeth points out that when a man throws something he’s passionate but when a woman does it she’s labeled hysterical. Markevich’s plane just landed in the US, but he’s being driven to the hospital right away. He has smallpox, a disease which only exists in a few Russian and US laboratories now.

 

Elizabeth is informed that none of the flight crew or passengers are showing signs of smallpox and Markevich was already symptomatic before boarding the plane. All they can do is make him comfortable and hope his immune system can fight the virus. Though Elizabeth doesn’t think this was a calculated attack from Russia, Dalton is adamant about going to the UN so they can get international sanctions. Elizabeth disagrees—Russia would have to have known this would have been a declaration of war against the world. She promises to reach out to Foreign Minister Avdonin (Yasen Peyankov) before they make any major decisions.

 

Henry calls Elizabeth. Apparently Jason’s guidance counselor is worried that Jason is distracted, as he failed his last math exam and took an incomplete on his history project. Henry confronts Jason about it, and Jason says that since meeting Piper he feels like his life has meaning and he’s been transformed to another, happier universe that doesn’t include math or tests. Although Henry understands how great love is, he tells Jason he has limited time with Piper on weeknights until his grades improve. Every great love has obstacles—this is his.

 

Elizabeth video chats with Avdonin, and he truly seems shocked by the smallpox news. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean Russia’s not behind it. Elizabeth is on her way to an emergency smallpox protocol meeting at the White House when Kat comes up and introduces herself. They talk about Kat’s discomfort in the spotlight on her book tour and Elizabeth’s jealousy that she’s retired on a farm. Kat hopes that Elizabeth isn’t thinking of checking out anytime soon, as she’s doing great work Kat and her coworkers have wanted to do for years. While signing a book, Kat casually makes a comment about how Markevich got smallpox. The permafrost is melting in Siberia, resurrecting many diseases inside the earth people thought were long gone. Markevich likely contracted it while documenting the oil spills. Elizabeth is shocked at Kat’s knowledge and logic—nobody else thought of this obvious answer.

 

Sal (Galen Ryan Kane), one of Henry’s students at the war college, pitches an idea for his next paper. He wants to explore the effects of working deep undercover longterm and if it’s moral to ask someone to pretend to be bad for a greater good. He wants to examine a case he’s working on involving a guy who got his cover blown. Henry is impressed by the complexity and originality of his topic. He calls Dylan, asking to get details on Sal’s guy’s case. Dylan gets Henry the information along with a huge list of people who have had their covers blown recently. Either someone with high security clearance is betraying hundreds of people or there’s been a hack.

 

Elizabeth tells Dalton about their permafrost theory. If they don’t work with Russia to try and contain the disease, they could be looking at a worldwide pandemic. Elizabeth video chats with Avdonin again, apologizing for her implications earlier. She hopes that the US’ CDC team can quickly get the illness under control, but Avdonin said any health crisis can be handled by the Russian health administration alone. Plus, if they don’t return Markevich, all US personnel will be expelled from the country. Blake tells Elizabeth that Markevich’s health has taken a bad turn.

 

Elizabeth goes to talk to Markevich. He thinks it’s ironic that he dedicated his life to saving the earth and this is the thanks he gets from it. Elizabeth promises that after he rests up and gets better, she’s going to take him on an awesome DC tour. Markevich says all he wants to see is the blue sky again.

 

Henry tells Elizabeth about Jason saying he loves Piper. He’s convinced that this is way beyond just puppy love. Elizabeth panics, thinking sixteen is too young. She thinks they need to have the NC-17 version of the talk and make him fearful of sex so he waits. Henry promises to handle it, but Elizabeth wants to be involved and offer a woman’s perspective. Their conversation is interrupted by Jay calling Elizabeth and informing her Markevich died.

 

The next day in the conference room, Elizabeth tells her staff she wants to hear all of their crazy, out-of-the box ideas to save the permafrost. Matt and Blake both pitch insane suggestions, but Kat Sandoval swoops in and presents a brilliant idea. She explains that piles of snow are keeping cold air from reaching the permafrost, but in the old days wholly mammoths were there to trample the snow and allow the air to reach under the layer of topsoil and preserve the frost. Kat says that scientists are close to an elephant/mammoth hybrid, and the same concept could also work with bison, caribou, or reindeer. Though tanks might have the same effect, they want to reintroduce prehistoric plant life as well.

 

Though he’s slightly hesitant, Dalton approves a pilot program in Alaska to test this theory. Canada, Greenland, and more are already locks to launch their own programs, but they still need to get Russia on board. Elizabeth asks Dalton to hold off on responding to their expulsion of US diplomats, thinking she can negotiate and get them to agree to let the US help with the outbreaks. Dalton agrees.

 

Elizabeth is packing for Moscow and asks Henry how the talk with Jason went. Henry replies that he hasn’t done it yet, making Elizabeth anxious. She has numerous suggestions for what to include in the conversation, and Henry thinks that maybe Elizabeth should be involved. He thinks they can squeeze it in within the ten minutes before Elizabeth has to be out the door.

 

Once they sit Jason down, Elizabeth can’t help but still see Jason as a ten-year-old kid and panics, telling him that sex kills. Henry takes over, telling him about pregnancies, STDs, and the emotional risks of intercourse, but Jason stops them. He says that he and Piper aren’t having sex, Piper feeling that when a couple has a spiritual connection, sex isn’t necessary. Henry and Elizabeth are relieved.

 

Elizabeth tracks Kat down at a pita restaurant, apologizing for intruding on her with work questions again. She asks for suggestions on how to make Russia actually want to agree to this environmental initiative. Melting permafrost makes oil easier to drill, so Elizabeth is worried that Russia won’t follow through. Kat suggests pete moss, as it can act as insulation and keep the ground the same temperature.

 

Elizabeth asks Avdonin if they would be willing to avoid drilling the areas where there is pete moss, mentioning that Dalton promised not to expel their diplomats if they could come to an agreement. Avdonin reluctantly says he’ll get Russia to participate in the program but that they’re still expelling US diplomats from their country.

 

Kat meets with Elizabeth, admitting that she hates the farm. Even though it did save her, she doesn’t feel satisfied there. She tells Elizabeth the whole story about the chair throwing incident—she actually threw a table at a senator because he let himself get bribed in a dumb way and ruined an aid package she worked carefully on. Working with Elizabeth this week made sense to Kat, and she loved getting back in the game. She throws her hat in the ring for the policy advisor position, and Elizabeth hires her on the spot.

 

That night, Henry gives Elizabeth updates about the leak that got Nafisa taken. In order to have access to the information that could have blown that many operations, someone would have to be in the president’s cabinet or the congressional gang of eight. He hopes he’s wrong but has an inkling he’s not.