'Designated Survivor' Recap: 'Backfire'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

There has been quite the shift in tone and design when it comes to Designated Survivor, in that the show seems to be slowly sliding into darker territory when it comes to its storytelling and well...it has to. After all, in the past few weeks there has been an attempt on the President's life, Jason's son is dead, as is the Vice President and his wife and judging from last night's episode, 'Backfire', it would seem that the dark cloud now hanging over this series is here to stay because this particular tale...while slowed down pacing wise, was extremely grim.

Because this was an episode that focused on the fallout of everything that has transpired over the past few weeks and let's be honest...there's little good that can come out of what we have recently witnessed. The attempt on Tom's life left his wife Alex nervous and jittery over what could happen to her family since Tom is clearly a target for the ongoing conspiracy, forcing her to beg Tom to let her and the kids go to Camp David to give her some sense of safety, something the president reluctantly agreed to, but that storyline gave us the first real sense of how dire the story is going to be going forward because wow, if the First Lady doesn't feel safe in the White House, then we should all be concerned about what dangers await the First Family going forward.

But the fallout didn't end there. There was still the matter of Peter MacLeish's death to deal with, and the aftermath of that, was messy to say the least. Despite Kirkman's best efforts to keep things calm with the press by informing them about the Vice President's death himself, a shady reporter had inside information about MacLeish's call to have Catalan put down, leading to a corner to corner search of the White House to find who leaked this intel, only for it to come right back around to Aaron. Because as it turns out, his conversation with the Speaker of the House is how it got leaked giving the president the idea to give Aaron a week off, and put Emily in his role and really, this is more or less an act of kindness when it comes to Aaron because Kirkman could have easily fired him for this and perhaps the time away will indeed accomplish what it is supposed to and help Aaron get his head on straight.

The best part of the night however, was the continued push to uncover all the details of the conspiracy and thanks to Hannah, we finally found out what the heck happened in Afghanistan all those years ago because she was able to break the man that MacLeish went to meet. As it turns out, Nestor 'Catalan' Lozano was a major who was sent with MacLeish's unit to make a shady, five million dollar deal to get another ally in the fight against the Taliban. But alas, things went south, MacLeish suspended the rules of engagement and everyone in the village they ventured to was slaughtered to keep the unit alive. Granted that doesn't answer why the former Vice President turned his against his country and it does take the air out of the revenge theory, but it does give us one piece of solid insight; that moment broke Peter MacLeish, and opened his mind to radical and horrible ideas that he was happy to support. 

In the end however, even though this episode slowed things down quite a bit pacing wise, it still took my breath away. There seems to be danger waiting for us at every turn, the fallout from the past couple of weeks was incredibly heavy and one has to truly wonder if the White House is safe at this point since the people still out there involved with the conspiracy, don't exist according to any records or databases, making them extremely dangerous and there is the matter of the surprise appearance by Charles Langdon, since he made a point to find Aaron and talk to him and unfortunately for the former Chief of Staff...the FBI and Hannah were watching his every step and judging from the teaser for next week's episode, it looks like Langdon will have plenty of answers for us as the conspiracy slowly comes to light. Until next time.

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