This past week’s episode went a long way towards speeding things up. With Atwood in custody, a FBI internal affairs investigation starting to explore what led Atwood to kill Majid Nassar. Of course, we know that he didn’t, but as of now, only Hannah knows the truth and she has to play her cards just right to make sure that the truth doesn’t get buried by Catalan and MacLeish. And with the new congress now formed, their first agenda is to hold a hearing that determines whether or not MacLeish is a viable candidate for becoming Vice-President. Due to a tip from an anonymous source, Hannah investigates the military mission that MacLeish has been celebrated as a hero for. She interviews the other soldiers on that mission and all of them say the same thing, MacLeish is a hero. That his until she visits the widow of one of those soldiers who grants Hannah access to a foot locker that was sent back from overseas. In it, Hannah finds a photo of the squad that MacLeish led, and in the background is Catalan.
A big moment for sure, at least for the audience, Hannah still needs to garner evidence that both MacLeish and Catalan are co-conspirators, not to mention linking both of them to the Capitol bombing attack, but the fact that they knew each other means she is on the right track. One more trip to her buddy in the CIA reveals an analysis of MacLeish’s mission that contradicts everything that keeps getting said about it. This CIA brief from an agent on the ground claims that MacLeish and his team raided and kill three presiding towns after losing three of their own men to sniper rounds. Wells has the proof she needs and contacts Hookstraten to say she is on her way to deliver the information that would prove damning to MacLeish. Unfortunately, Hannah gets caught in traffic on her way and is t-boned by a pickup truck.
This is the kind of drama I find so exhilarating. Investigative work, mixed with the little reveals here and there hooks me like nothing else in entertainment. It also doesn’t hurt that I’m a huge fan of Maggie Q from her work on Nikita. In that show it was her and her team against the worst of people, and here she is again in a similar scenario. She won’t be winning acting awards any time soon, but Maggie Q always makes me believe enough in her characters. When this show began, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Q was the right actor for this role. Thankfully that was only because she wasn’t given enough time to fully have us invest in her. Now that she has been given the time, I’m behind her 100%.
The President had another issue to deal with this week. A NSA analyst decided to copy a hard drive from the NSA servers and smuggle it out to reveal its secrets to the world. Obviously a mirror to Edward Snowden, this whistle-blower decided to take asylum in the Venezuelan consulate. The analyst smuggled the drive using a fake coin, with the drive being small enough to fit inside. In the end, the guy only wanted one thing, five minutes with the President. This was the big reveal left for the end of the episode along with Hannah’s car crash. During the five-minute meeting, the analyst gave the drive to Kirkman for his eyes only, naturally, and gave the President a specific file to look at. That file revealed a threat assessment done on the capitol building a couple of years ago that expressed exactly where it was most vulnerable for bomb attack. It showed exactly how the Capitol building did in fact get destroyed meaning only one thing, there is a traitor to the USA in Washington.
So now the President is getting closer to the truth. I’m getting really curious about what exactly is going to happen in next week’s mid-season finale. How much is Kirkman going to learn? As well, are we going to learn about why MacLeish, Catalan, and the mysterious woman decided to attack their country. Hookstraten has pegged MacLeish’s survival and subsequent interest in the Vice-Presidency as a potential ploy to get into the Presidency. As an opponent to Kirkman, I don’t like Hookstraten, but as an opponent to MacLeish, I love her. I hope that when all is revealed about MacLeish, Hookstraten and Kirkland can remove their differences for the greater good.
Til next week folks!
Episode 9 Rating: 8.5/10
Advertisement
Advertisement
