'Designated Survivor' Recap: 'The Confession'

​Written by John Edward Betancourt

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

As the old saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer and that ancient proverb is one that President Tom Kirkman is going to have to live by going forward on Designated Survivor because last night's episode, 'The Confession' made us fully aware of the fact that there are lots of people out there ready to see the new President fail, and fail miserably, and he is going to need people around him with a 'less than perfect' moral core and code if he expects to see any remote success as President of the United States of America.

After all, Tom Kirkman is a stand up guy, a family man, and a person who will never stab you in the back. He firmly believes in truth and honesty and doing right by people and folks with ugly agendas and machinations of enjoying the power of his position...are outright coming after him because of that moral code. They see him as a pushover and it made for one uncomfortable episode, where chaos reigned supreme and it seemed in many ways that Tom simply couldn't get a break last night as one incredible challenge after another fell into his lap, leaving us with more questions than answers as to who this newly minted President can trust, and who exactly was responsible for the attack, while at the same time playing into the nature of morality and what it means to maintain one's purity in a time of crisis. 

Let's talk about that purity first, since Kirkman battled the moral high ground throughout the entire episode. First he had to deal with keeping everyone honest when it came to a potential strike on Al-Sakar since the military is still out for blood. Then he had to deal with a direct challenge to the legitimacy of his Presidency when it leaked to the news networks that he was asked to step down the day of the attacks. He had to deal with Senator Hookstraten and President Richmond's son embarrass him at the funeral, the hits just kept on coming. Yet despite it all, Kirkman stayed classy. He reached out to Richmond's son to make peace, found a common ground with Hookstraten, and while it's noble and refreshing to see a character maintain that moral high ground...it's simply not enough to get by in this story. Tom seems to know deep down that at some point he's going to have to compromise but in the meantime, he found a way to adapt...by letting Aaron handle the uglier side of things.

After all, there was the matter of the Al-Sakar video being leaked to the press...and the fact that Aaron was the one who made the conscious choice to do it. It was a stunning act of direct insubordination since hey, the President himself told everyone to keep it under wraps, but Aaron's decision also made sense since it took the focus off of all of Kirkman's 'shortcomings' and gave the nation the name and the face of their new enemy. The bold decision led to Aaron earning the Chief of Staff position since Kirkman now knows he can delegate some of the nastier decisions his way, but there is still much to be concerned about when it comes to Aaron, since the closing moments of the show featured Aaron getting every bit of intelligence he could about the new Commander In Chief. Regardless, the two men need one another right now...but for how long this unwholesome symbiotic relationship will continue remains a mystery.

If anything, Aaron represents the beginning of a new fold to the series, one that is dire and disturbing, but it is a possibility that we have all considered; that Americans were the ones to perpetrate this horrific act, because between Aaron's actions, and constant conferring with the intrepid general, and the fact that the sole survivor of the bombing was out of his seat 34 seconds before the explosion happened...it's starting to look like this whole thing was designed to alter the course of the country and the government and that means that there is potentially a grand conspiracy coming together and Kirkman is about to be in for the fight of his life on both a professional and personal level. Either way, this series continues to impress, to push Kirkman in such a manner as this is outright brilliant because it is truly testing what kind of a leader he is and is going to be and the series is giving us just enough to keep us hooked and I cannot wait to see what challenges await Tom next week, since it looks like even more difficult decisions are about to be made. Until next time.

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