Madam Secretary – The Things We Get to Say

By starrymag | May 12, 2018

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

A reporter from The Washington Chronicle named Neal Shin (Tim Kang) watches as Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) gives an interview talking about how she’s determined to honor the nuclear deal President Javani gave his life for. He tells his wife Shauna (Kate Arrington) he’s frustrated that his supervisor gave him new guidelines as to what he’s allowed to ask Elizabeth for his cover profile, preventing him from getting to the hard-hitting questions.

 

Daisy (Patina Miller) greets Neal downstairs at the State Department. Daisy is irritated that Neal gets 48 hours worth of unlimited access so easily. He hasn’t sacrificed years of his life following Elizabeth around just to get a breadcrumb, and she’s suspicious that he has an agenda. She confiscates his phone and gives him the cold shoulder.

 

Elizabeth, on the other hand, is nice to Neal. She tells him she’s happy he’s here and that she’s excited they went with someone independent to pull back the curtain on what they do. She introduces him to Jay (Sebastian Arcelus), Kat (Sara Ramirez), and Matt (Geoffrey Arend) as well, who all compliment him on his work.

 

Jay goes announces that there’s a flood of young Honduran refugees at the Texas border. They’re barely three weeks into Fonseca’s first term and Honduras is already suffering. Mexico’s government is requesting monetary assistance for the detention centers and American asylum for the minors. Apparently, there is a video surfacing on social media of children in the detention centers planning their funerals before the Mexican government sends them back to Honduras to be killed.

 

Elizabeth talks to Zaragoza (Castulo Guerra), who tells her that they’re in the middle of a crisis. Though Elizabeth can’t change their immigration policies, she promises to talk to the Mexican embassy and see if they can’t secretly get the kids parole through USCIS. Kat worries that one bad press story about this, like the one Neal could be writing, could kill Dalton’s (Keith Carradine) Immigration Reform Bill that Congress is in the process of voting on. Neal promises everything is off the record, but Kat confiscates his notes just in case.

 

Elizabeth reads over her speech while in the car with Matt, Daisy, Jay, and Neal. Neal is bitter that nobody reads anything longer than tweets anymore, and Elizabeth is frustrated the White House cut key, slightly controversial statements about the Middle East from her latest Girls and Women’s Summit speech.

 

Neal sneakily inquires about things Elizabeth feels guilty about, and she opens up. She feels bad about the deal with the Taliban that took women like Amina (Anna Khaja) out of leadership positions. At the summit, Neal uses the opportunity to plan a meeting with Amina to discuss the changes in Afghanistan since she was forced to step down as Education Minister.

 

Elizabeth is asking Neal about his own regrets, like when he gave up trying to report things in Greece when the migrants started arriving in favor of grabbing children off sinking ships, when Kat tells her Senator Morejon (Jose Zuniga) is withdrawing his support from the immigration bill. Someone tipped him off about the Honduran children coming in under the radar.

 

Neal joins the McCords for dinner, and while they’re preparing, Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood) asks Elizabeth what’s going on with Morejon. Elizabeth tells Stevie she doesn’t want to think about Morejon and goes upstairs to change. While she’s gone, Stevie and Neal talk about Stevie’s internship with the White House. She gets offended when Neal slyly suggests she only got the internship because of her mom’s position.

 

Henry (Tim Daly) greets Neal, and Neal wastes no time interrogating him as well. Henry is slightly put off by this, too, asking Neal if he ever wonders if the reason he uncovers so much injustice is because he’s already decided that it’s there.

 

Neal meets with Amina, who doesn’t give him any infuriated quotes or mean gossip about Elizabeth. Instead, off the record she muses that perhaps her being forced to step down was a good thing since Afghanistan was war torn for so long. Since this decision started to end the conflict and occupation of the United States in the country, maybe it was worth it.

 

A woman named Jennifer (Emily Skinner) approaches Neal, offering him an attractive and lucrative book deal for him to expand his piece on Elizabeth into a book. Though he turns her down, she gives him a file with a contract and additional information on Elizabeth, enticing him by saying the American people deserve to know the truth about her.

 

Neal tells Shauna about the book deal, debating whether to read the information in the packet. Shauna encourage him not to even though they could really use the money from his book. Once Shauna goes to bed, Neal reads the information anyway.

 

Morejon goes on television and bashes Dalton’s immigration reform. Neal wants to listen in on Elizabeth and Morejon’s conversation, but his assistant Lisa (Rosal Colon) tells Neal that his baseless and negative reporting on Morejon a few years ago has lost him that privilege.

 

Elizabeth tells Neal and her staff that Morejon has agreed to continue backing the immigration bill if Dalton promises not to divest from private prisons. Elizabeth asks about the bad blood between Neal and Morejon, and Neal shares that he once exposed the fact that Morejon wrote his own letter of recommendation to a military academy and then was constantly heard bragging about his military experience to veterans.

 

Elizabeth tells Russell (Zeljko Ivanek) about Morejon’s reasons for not backing the immigration bill. She still wants to fight for the Honduran kids, but Russell thinks it’s too risky. He wants to bring up the fact that Morejon’s wife once worked illegally, but Elizabeth refuses to drag his family into their messy rivalry—using an oppo file against someone is the lowest of low. She begs Russell to let her try one more thing before taking any action, and Russell reluctantly permits it.

 

Elizabeth goes to talk to Bob Haverford (Thomas Kopache), a big donor to Morejon’s campaign and a private prison owner, much to his dismay. She blackmails him into turning his newly-empty prison buildings into places to house refugees. In the car ride on the way to the “What America Means to Me” essay contest celebration, Neal gets upset at Elizabeth for cutting a deal with a guy as slimy as Bob. After all, he blatantly targets refugees in order to make a quick buck and she saved him from completely going under.

 

Neal continues with his rant, telling Elizabeth that no matter what he writes, people are going to twist her words and actions into a villainous narrative since she’s practically handing them reasons to criticize her on a silver platter. Elizabeth says she doesn’t want to think about how every moves she makes is going to be perceived, but Neal says she has to. People don’t want the truth—they just want to believe in something and hope.

 

Elizabeth gives a moving speech to all of the kids being honored at the essay contest about how helping and welcoming people all over the world is so important and inspiring. What America means to Elizabeth is that everyone gets to form their own opinions on things.

 

Neal tells Shauna about how Elizabeth seems like a total contradiction. On one hand, she gives inspiring speeches and crosses party lines, but on the other hand, she allows herself to be played by a loser senator and has some pretty unflattering stuff in her file. Shauna tells Neal to just write the truth about what he saw. With only two hours before his article deadline, Neal’s wife starts having contractions. He rushes her to the hospital and finishes writing there.

 

A few days later, Elizabeth visits Neal and his new babies in the hospital, gifting him a wet/dry vacuum. The article had just come out that morning, and although some parts were a little brutal, it was fair, transparent, and offered all sides. She congratulates him on the birth of his kids and encourages him to continue seeking out a publisher for his book proposal since it’s a story worth telling. Once she leaves, Neal tells his child that Elizabeth is going to be their president one day.

 

Neal shows up to Elizabeth’s office to personally hand her the flash drive the publisher gave him. He admits they offered him a good chunk of money to write a book about her, and a different writer—one hungrier than he is—will eventually take their deal. He wants Elizabeth to be prepared for what’s coming.

 

Elizabeth thanks him for being honest but tells him he can keep the flash drive. She knows what’s on it, but she stands by her choices and will happily defend them to anybody who asks. Neal gives the flash drive to Blake, asking him to keep it somewhere safe. Neal tells him to tell Elizabeth that it’s for whenever she’s ready to go to battle with tyranny.