'Designated Survivor' Recap: 'Misalliance'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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​Good storytelling includes a great many things. Not only do the characters need to be vibrant, relatable and moved along by a strong, engrossing plotline, the story has to find a way to reach us and draw us in. We have to feel what the people in the story are feeling and last night’s episode of Designated Survivor managed to pull that off.
 
Because ‘Misalliance’ took us on quite the wild ride, one that combined every single story line and concept the show has explored in its freshman season and while that seems like a lot to throw at the audience, which could in turn create chaos when it comes to the story, that’s kind of the point. Because at its core, chaos and preventing it is one of the core concepts of this series and sadly, last night…chaos reigned supreme.
 
Because as President Kirkman and his wife worked to put their family back together at the White House, Tom had to deal with the whole mess surrounding Speaker Hookstraten and despite his best hopes to see a resolution come out of the controversy surrounding her, Kimble makes the tough call to step away from Congress and take on the role of Secretary of Education, leaving Tom without a strong ally on Capitol Hill. But, that was merely the beginning of the chaos last night because there is still the matter of the missing Hannah Wells and the show’s new villain in Patrick Lloyd.
 
I think it’s safe to declare Lloyd as such simply because of the fact he was in on all of the communication regarding Hannah’s capture, he’s regularly meeting with the White House Traitor and he more or less revealed his hand to take the country back by force while Jason was listening in on his conversation, something that led to the most stunning moment of the night where Lozano and Jason faced off, and well ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that Jason is dead barring some kind of miracle. To make matters worse, Hannah was whisked away to a ship at sea, something she was unable to discover until she freed herself from her handcuffs and well…suddenly things are looking quite grim.
 
With Jason gone and Hannah who knows where, the only two people that know every single thing about the conspiracy at this point are unable to share their knowledge of the horrors to come and that will no doubt make life extremely difficult for President Kirkman in the days ahead and when all is said done, at first, I really didn’t enjoy this episode. The scattered feel to it, the sense of chaos appeared to be a cop out until it hit me that well, it was all part of the show. We were supposed to feel blindsided and confused because that’s necessary when it comes to the experience and more than likely that feeling of confusion is a sign of things to come as Lloyd and his cronies make their move to re-shape America into their own twisted vision. Until next time.

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