'Designated Survivor' Recap: 'Grief'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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​When we last left President Tom Kirkman on Designated Survivor, the situation was grim. After all, he had just received a phone call informing him that his beloved wife Alex had been killed in a car crash and well, this unfortunate and harrowing twist brought about all kinds of questions in our minds. After all, there’s a chance such an act was orchestrated by Patrick Lloyd from beyond the grave. But more importantly, I think we were all left wondering exactly how the tough-as-nails President was going to handle Alex’s loss in both his personal and professional life and thankfully, last night’s midseason premiere of the show, ‘Grief’, took the time to answer all of our burning questions.
 
The first one on our minds, revolving around conspiracy, was cleared up in a matter of minutes when we came to learn that the man responsible for killing Alex was simply texting while driving and by removing anything suspicious from the circumstances surrounding her death, it freed the story up to explore far greater things when it comes to death and grief and loss, and it even allowed for the plot to set up the perfect crisis for Kirkman to deal with in order to overcome the pain surging through his veins and in all honesty, we’re going to spend little time talking about the Cuba portion of the story today. Because what this episode accomplished when it comes to Tom Kirkman, made for some powerful storytelling.
 
This episode truly turned out to be a character study for the ages and one that quite frankly I believe made Kirkman one of the most relatable characters on the small screen right now simply because, the man is going through hell when it comes to losing his wife and what we saw on display in this episode, is stuff that we have all done when we’ve lost someone incredibly important to us. I mean come on, the guy was literally using the powers of his office to put people out of harm’s way, and that’s something we see often when it comes to grief and loss, the need to play it safe so that we can have some sense of security and safety to heal our ailing hearts.
 
But the show didn’t end there when it came to exploring Tom’s battle with grief. Since he outright blamed himself for Alex’s death, he began to second guess just about every single decision placed in front him and that kind of uncertainty more or less crippled his Administration and well, all of this stemmed from the fact that Tom outright refused to own up to his pain or his grief. He did everything within his power to bury it down and project a strong image to his staff and the nation because that’s what he believed the country needed, and it took a tense crisis for him to realize that what really needed to happen was the opposite. He needed to face the pain in his heart head on and when he finally did, lives were saved, and problems were solved.
 
When all is said and done however, I have to admit, this episode blew me away. Because not only did Kiefer Sutherland deliver a performance for the ages, it’s just rare to see a political drama deal with matters such as these, and it was just so refreshing to see Tom go on a journey as realistic as this, and I’m honestly hoping that in having Tom deal with his internal pain that somehow he inspired and helped members of the audience going through something similar right now. Either way, it just goes to show that this series will go to whatever places necessary to tell an incredible story, and now that it seems that Kirkman is on the mend, I have no doubt that greater challenges await him on the horizon, and it should be interesting to see how Tom will utilize everything he learned in this episode when the next crisis arrives. Until next time. 

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