‘Madam Secretary’ season 3, episode 10 review: The election results (and Sam Evans’ revenge)
Was Russell going to be okay? That was one of the biggest questions that we had coming out of last week’s “Madam Secretary” episode, and it’s something that we got a little bit of an update fairly early on as we saw him being taken to the hospital. The show was fairly nice as to not drag this out very much, given that we figured out not too long over the course of the episode that he turned out to be okay. He loved the work and the stress of it, but he had some other bad habits, including his diet, that were getting in the way.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth McCord didn’t really have much time at all to focus on his condition in the first place, as it became clear that there were some other factors that she would have to concern herself over. Namely, we’re talking here about the escalating Iranian threat after the attach by the Israeli terrorist group on this past episode. This led to political turmoil, the capture of a key Israeli official, and a hostage situation that could’ve led to all-out war that would leave a mark on the world for centuries to come.
For Elizabeth, this meant having to focus in enough on what was going on with Iran to figure out what the future would be. Unfortunately, what this meant was recognize potentially her own mistakes, and realize that lifting any sanctions on Iran would have led to issues with Israel. The only thing that she could do potentially was try to bring Israel to the table and negotiate and see if all parties involved can figure out a reasonable solution to everything that’s been going on.
While we’re not going to say is that nothing is altogether peaceful between the countries moving forward, there’s progress in the form of a cease-fire, a meeting, and a handshake agreement in Geneva. Ultimately, we had more progress here than we’ve had almost at any other point in the show with these countries, which should be a feather in Dalton’s cap.
The state of the election – With Congress opting to move up the date of their vote, that meant a greater amount of trouble for Dalton since the Iran deal was weighing heavily on the election. While they had some information on Sam Evans that could give them an easy win (him having signs of Alzheimer’s), he didn’t want to do it — and ironically, Russell further pushed him away from that. After nearly dying from the heart attack, he realized that trying to destroy Evans wasn’t the right way to go about things.
The vote finally came in at the end of the episode, and it was positive news. Dalton remains in charge! He did it, and he did it without having to get dirty. However, things are about to get dirty given that Evans is about to file suit over a rule in Ohio, one that he thinks could change the course of the election and give him back the 270 electoral votes he needs.
Personal drama – We learned through the arrival of Henry’s family for a holiday-themed dinner and stay that his niece Sarah was enlisting in order to get a new start on her life. At first, it just felt like she was doing it in order to get a new start; however, we learned not too long after this that she really wanted to do it to get away from problems at home. Her father had lost his job months ago, and tried to get her not to tell Henry — which she obviously did, since it wouldn’t be an interesting show otherwise.
Eventually, we had a heated confrontation between Henry and his brother, but it was interrupted with the election results.
Overall – A very solid episode that gave us progress between countries and a pretty good cliffhanger. For the final episode of the year, what more could you want? Grade: B+.
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