Madam Secretary – Revelation

By starrymag | May 20, 2017

By: Taylor Gates

Covenant of John members visit the scientist they’re working with. Syrian soldiers are being held in the lab and tested on, handcuffed to examination tables. The scientist says the virus has an 80% kill rate when airborne.

 

Elizabeth (Tea Leoni) plans to go to Rome the next day for a G20 conference. Their biggest goal while there is to make a deal with Russia about tax avoidance. Unfortunately, there are rumors floating around that Russian leaders are going to reject the deal outright—they welcome the money American billionaires hide in their fake corporations. They’re willing to look the other way if terrorists hide their money as long as the ultra-rich remain happy.

 

Elizabeth is called to the White House. Ephraim Ware (Clifton Davis) shares photos of the cult members and says they are likely going to try and reach Israel via a tunnel system because border security has been increased. He wants to send a task force including Henry (Tim Daly) to intercept their biological weapon. The thought of Henry overseeing this operation terrifies Elizabeth and she calls him out for ambushing her. She reminds him that he was shot multiple times a mere two months ago. Their fight is interrupted by a call from Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The two leaders begin arguing as well, but Elizabeth warns them that if they don’t cooperate they could both be in grave danger.

 

Elizabeth tells Henry that her threat worked and Israel and Palestine are both on board with preventing the weapon. They begin kissing—trying to resolve their earlier fight—but Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood) interrupts. Henry asks Stevie to take over for the next few days, being in charge of Alison (Kathrine Herzer) and Jason (Evan Roe.) Elizabeth is worried at how quickly Stevie agrees to this. She finds it suspicious that she and Jareth don’t live together and is worried they have clipped Stevie’s wings and forced her to grow up too fast. The next day, she secretly asks Russell (Zeljko Ivanek) to pull some strings at Harvard, realizing that going to school in another state would be good for her.

 

In the tunnels, Al-Qaeda gets word of the increased security. They bail on their joint attack with the cult members, shooting them and stealing their weapons. Henry and Mo (Arian Moayed) discover the lab soon after arriving in Jerusalem and recommend an operation. They decide to team up with Russia, and Russell optimistically thinks a successful mission could even pave the way for a tax avoidance deal.

 

Blake (Erich Bergen) asks Nadine (Bebe Neuwirth) if Elizabeth was still planning on going to the banking conference. He’s disappointed when the answer is affirmative. Blake spent one year in financial analytics and isn’t excited about seeing his former coworkers greedily suck up more profit and pretend they’re helping people. He knows that his insanely competitive former colleagues are going to think of him as a failure for quitting to go into public service.

 

The White House watches as troops raid the lab and take samples. It’s going well until they start getting shot at from a rooftop. The Americans try to counteract this with a bomb, but it malfunctions and hits the Russian position instead. All the news outlets are saying that the US did it on purpose.

 

Ephraim and Oliver (Kobi Libii) tell them that it’s likely Al-Qaeda picked a new target in an EU country. One of the cult members, Reverend Slattery (Patrick Page) survived his gunshot injury and Henry and Mo are going to interview him to see if they can get any intel.

 

Russell tells Stevie that he’s set up a lunch meeting between her and person in charge of Harvard admissions the next day. Stevie is confused, as he wanted him to stand down. She also doesn’t understand how he can care about her law school prospects when so much crazy stuff is going on in the world. He tells her something his mother told him during Nixon’s final days—things are always much worse than they seem, but someday you may get out of it and you will never get the time back you spent not caring. That’s when he learned to compartmentalize.

 

Henry and Mo go to talk to Slattery. Slattery immediately demands Mo leave his room because he is a Muslim. Henry shows Slattery pictures of the Covenant of John compound he worked with years earlier, after everyone committed suicide by drinking poison. Henry tells Slattery that the bullet that blew through his chest missed his heart by a millimeter and suggests that God’s grace let him live so he could work with them and stop the killing of millions.

 

At the conference in Rome, Blake runs into an old coworker, Trevor (Roe Hartrampf). It’s highly uncomfortable as Trevor clearly looks down on Blake’s choice to leave finance to become an assistant. Nadine stands up for him, throwing shade at Trevor by informing him that Blake is actually the gatekeeper of American diplomacy.

 

Stevie calls Elizabeth asking why Russell is back to knocking heads at Harvard. She quickly realizes Elizabeth is the one who put him up to it and Elizabeth apologizes, promising to stop meddling in her life. Stevie says she’s restricted the house chaos to just dirty dishes and unmonitored social media. Jason wants to stay home from school not feeling well, but Stevie refuses to let him as she writes him off as faking. However, as Stevie is on her way to her Harvard lunch, she gets a call from Jason’s school nurse saying he threw up in gym class and has been having stomach pain. It might be appendicitis and he may need surgery.

 

Henry and Mo discuss Slattery and decide that, though he would be willing to send his cult members to die, he likely wouldn’t sacrifice himself. It’s all about self-preservation for men like that. They play on this, telling him if he cooperates they will recommend minimum security prison. If he doesn’t, though, he will be put in a super-maximum security jail. This gets him talking, and he mentions them speaking in broken English, saying something about a fee for a room. Mo realizes it likely wasn’t broken English, but Arabic that translates to “in Rome.”

 

Henry and the president’s team determine that the drone is heading for the Vatican, as they’re trying to take out the pope. There are disagreements on how to take control of the drone—they can’t hijack it until it’s in a certain, close range; if they shoot it down, they run the risk of a biological weapon being on board and a pandemic occurring. They cut it close but manage to take control of it and crash it into an isolated area instead of the city.

 

Stevie arrives at the hospital, relieved that Jason will not need surgery. She calls Henry and Elizabeth who assure her they are both okay after Stevie panics, having seen breaking news about Rome. She breaks her own news about having to skip the Harvard meeting to get to the hospital, which makes Elizabeth feel guilty for not being home.

 

Blake sees Trevor at a bar and Trevor calls him out on still being in the closet. Blake says he just didn’t feel the need to tell his coworkers about someone he dated for nine months seven years ago. Blake says he’s out to his family, but chooses to be more private at work. Trevor doesn’t understand why he won’t admit he’s gay, but Blake corrects him—he’s bisexual. Trevor doesn’t believe him so Blake fires back about him abandoning his nonprofit music dreams to sell out. Blake immediately apologizes and Trevor softens, too. He just wants Blake to be happy and have people get to know the real him; he’s lucky he got to.

 

Dalton makes a speech at the G20 dinner, both mourning and thanking the fallen Russian soldiers for giving their lives for a noble cause. Jay (Sebastian Arcelus) tells Dalton and Elizabeth that no biological weapon was found on the drone. Elizabeth realizes that the “head of the infidels” wasn’t the pope after all, but Dalton and all of the other leaders. They immediately evacuate the premises. The Al-Qaeda members dress up like waiters and pump the virus into the vents of the venue, but luckily everyone makes it out in the nick of time.

 

Russell visits the McCord house the next day, telling Stevie he’s rescheduled her Harvard meeting over breakfast in twenty minutes. Stevie realizes she doesn’t want to go to law school at all. Instead, she wants to stay and help her family. Law school can wait—she’s happy where she is.

 

At the end of the day, Henry and Mo shake hands on an operation well done. They also talk about faith and their respective religions. Henry tells Mo he struggles too but thinks the yearning for God and knowledge might be enough.

 

Elizabeth’s car drops off Blake at his house first. He hesitates before finally blurting out that he’s bi. He gives a long speech about how he now realizes he was trying to hide because he has experienced biphobia from many different groups. He apologizes if he crossed a line, but tells Elizabeth he just really likes her and wants to be honest. At the end of his nervous rant, Elizabeth gets out of the car and hugs him.