“Commander in Chief” (Season-1;Episode-14;aired-03/29/17)
POTUS
Former Pres. Moss shows up and POTUS is willing to listen to him and is opened to his advice. Pres. Moss gives him a “passing grade” and then trashed him for the bad move with the US coach and Russian mess, the bad move on MacLeish’s running the operation to kill Catalan, and that he’s ultimately “reacting and not leading”. Ouch! But, he’s willing to stay around and offer advice.
Red flag alert! I still think this is suspicious. I think his goal is to cause POTUS to doubt himself, so that he can reinsert himself into politics and do more damage while Kirkman takes the fall.
And for further proof of this, it turns out that the reason that Tom Kirkman was selected to be ‘designated survivor’ was because as POTUS he’d be the least likely to present any obstacles.
Well, if he were ONLY Tom Kirkman, that would be true. But the enemy doesn’t realize that he’s really Jack-Bauer-gone-into-deep-cover-as-Tom-Kirkman-turned-POTUS. That’s their mistake.
Langdon
It was Langdon who coughed up the “least likely obstacle” info about Kirkman after he was apprehended.
The deal he wants for his information is immunity and witness protection.
We learn how Langdon got into this mess. Earlier he dated Claudine who worked for a government contractor. She asked for bits and pieces of information here and there until it was intelligence and a threat assessment on the capitol. She’s also the person who picked Tom Kirkman as the designated survivor.
Langdon helped but it began wearing on his conscience. The last straw was the day of the State of the Union at the capitol. Claudine called Langdon at work and told him to name Kirkman as D.S. She also threatened to kill Langdon and even mentioned the color of his tie. Scared and no dummy, he left to tell the authorities his car “lost control” and drove into a river. When he escaped and reached land, he saw the smoke from the capital.
She’s also the lady who kidnapped Jason Atwood’s son and presumably killed him as well.
Aaron
After helping bring Langdon in, Aaron realizes he is now a liability and won’t be able to go back to his position. As such, he resigns as Chief of Staff.
Pres. Moss
As promised, he’s giving his advice and that is his thought on a bunch of cabinet positions. He reminds the president that sometimes a “bad choice is better than no choice”.
Interestingly, he also arrives at another moment of convenience. Turns out Gen. Contreras is going to unleash genocide in the fictional African country Naruba. The U.S. decided to use missiles to stop the attack, but, hold on, turns out several American humanitarian workers are being held hostage in various convoys. Since they have no way to identify which convoy, a missile attack on any convoy is likely to result in American deaths. So it’s either 15 Americans die or 100K plus Narubians. Tough choice!
So, POTUS settles on giving in to the demands and promises some items for release of the hostages. Then, once the hostages are confirmed to be release, he has several bridges blown up. So now the insurgents can’t cross the river to invade the town, which buys the Good Guys more times (perhaps up to 4 days) time to decide the next plan.
Hannah
POTUS authorizes Hannah to take on the investigation into all things conspiracy.
NOTE: Interesting tidbit. The guy who plays Pres. Moss is Geoff Pierson, who happened to be President Keeler on 24. In that season, Pres. David Palmer dropped out of the election and Pres. Keeler was elected, only to be succeeded by Charles Logan, after an assassination attempt left him incapacitated.
So, looks like his “incapacitation” was a ruse to leave the presidency only to later become the president again. It’ll be interesting to see if he recognizes Jack first or if Jack recognizes him first and how that will play out.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Tony Almeida showed up here. He was on 24: Legacy and was last seen with a broken arm.
I wonder what will happen to Aaron now. At different points I’ve felt him to be a solid-good guy, a somewhat untrustworthy good guy, a possible player for both sides, and a bad guy. I wonder if he’ll leave and show up later on when we’ve almost forgot about him or disappear completely (which is unlikely since he came from a small town to change the world).
NOTE: In a recap by Ray Rahman, it was pointed out there was a brief exchange where FLOTUS mentions her mom is Russian and doesn’t like Tom.
http://ew.com/recap/designated-survivor-season-1-episode-14/