Let’s get this straight. In an effort to ignore the noise, reach across the aisle, and Get Stuff Done in order to Save Our Country, a bipartisan group of legislators — not that the Democratic or Republican parties are ever mentioned by name even once — join forces with a tech overlord and a hedge fund guy. They commit a cyberattack that shuts down transportation, communication, and power across America, killing thousands. The scapegoats are meant to be “the political fringes, on both sides,” defined by Dreyer as conspiracy-crazed lunatics on one side and people who care about pronoun usage on the other, since as we know these are equally bad things. I seem to remember Russia getting thrown to the wolves for a while there too, not sure how that fits into the plan to blame both the Proud Boys and the bloodthirsty radicals of your local high school’s nefarious Gay-Straight Alliance, but okay.
The conspirators’ hope is to use the chaos to usher in an unconstitutional power grab in the form of the commission assigned to catch the conspirators; the commission, like the conspiracy itself, was to be headed by Speaker of the House Richard Dreyer. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling Mullens!
It’s Alex Mullen, congresswoman gone bad, as much as her dutiful father George who brings the conspiracy down, though she, of course, does so from within. She confesses her crime to her dad in a scene straight out of Boomer daydreams, in which the headstrong child collapses into her father’s arms and literally says “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” It takes him a while to figure out what that should be, though, primarily because damn near everyone else on the show — President Mitchell, Speaker Dreyer, his own wife — tells him to keep the truth about the conspiracy quiet, for the good of both the country and his family. After all, treason is a capital offense. (Lol. Lmao.)
A gold star for you if you correctly guessed that he does the right thing, again with his daughter’s help. By leaving behind a letter confessing her guilt and announcing her intention to turn herself in, she gives George the political cover he needs to get on national television and name names. Maybe the Proteus neurological weapon was real, or maybe it was just a weird bit of debris he found in his bird feeder, but ultimately it’s telling the truth that quiets the “Who Killed Bambi?” noises in his head. He realizes it’s what his late son would have wanted him to do.
The series ends on an ambiguous note, though I’m not sure if it’s meant to. On the one hand, the final shot is of George alone (albeit with his dog), looking out over the water, his face an inscrutable mask of steely De Niroishness. But the music is all heroic horns and strings, and the sun shines gold upon him. I suppose the idea is he’s suffered terrible losses, and, you know, tortured someone for hosting a tv show he disliked, but in the end he did he right thing, and this is the kind of man America needs.
This is not the kind of show America needs. It does an active disservice to the body politic to misdiagnose its problems and their architects as badly as Zero Day does, even if in the end it’s just a classier Olympus Has Fallen. I’m sorry, but fascism and trans people are not equivalent threats. Neither are the Oathkeepers and the DSA. Neither are unaccountable billionaires and people protesting outside the homes of government officials. And at no point are Mike Johnson and Ayanna Pressley going to team up to do anything, let alone collude with Tim Cook to install a centrist dictatorship under Mike Johnson’s control for some reason. You hear how stupid this all sounds? Please tell me you hear how stupid this all sounds!
But even if you think demanding a political thriller have a brain in its head is too much to ask, calling a show out for assembling an incredible cast and then squandering it is certainly fair play. Joan Allen and Connie Britton, relegated to playing not one but two Concerned Wife types for Robert De Niro’s grandfatherly Dudley Do-Right. Angela Bassett and Bill Camp stranded in thankless supporting roles. Matthew Modine giving the kind of supervillain speeches Alan Moore dunked on in Watchmen almost forty years ago. Gaby Hoffman? Blink and you’ll miss her. Dan Stevens seemed to be having fun, at least, but he always does.
And as ferociously watchable as Lizzy Caplan is, I couldn’t help but wish, when she had her big screaming match with De Niro in this episode, they were screaming about literally anything else than Zero Day. About the only actor who got material worth their time on set is Jesse Plemons, whose character was both compromised and complex; Plemons invested him with the squirrelly, Coen Brothers energy of a man in way over his head and only just beginning to realize he can’t swim.
But that is very thin gruel for a political thriller that fails as both a political text and — oh, right, I almost forgot — as a thriller. Were you thrilled at any point after the opening episode, when the closing sequence re-ran the opening sequence to reveal George’s mental condition? Or were you just kind of watching a bunch of terrific actors be tense in rooms with TVs with Wolf Blitzer on them? An astonishing array of actors, assembled for the equivalent of a bad 1970s all-star disaster movie about which people will say “It wasn’t as good as The Towering Inferno.” The American people, as they do in so very many ways, deserve better.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
The post ‘Zero Day’ Episode 6 Recap: The Bipartisan Liberation Front appeared first on Decider.
