‘Madam Secretary’ season 2, episode 13 reaction: Henry, Elizabeth cope with shocking loss

There’s little way around saying that Sunday night’s new episode of “Madam Secretary” was anything other than heartbreaking. It may be one of the most difficult episodes of the show, and to go along with that one of the most realistic.

For TV series, there is this sort of unnatural tendency to deal with death in a way that is almost unnatural and completely detached. They look at it almost as just one elongated “OMG” moment that doesn’t have any substance or gravity to it. When Henry’s father passed away before this episode, the show didn’t do that at all. It took its time, showing the process of how real people deal with loss, both the difficult and the uplifting. Henry’s speech at the funeral was powerful, and it gave us a window into who this man was. As a matter of fact, it may be one of the series’ best pieces of writing: We genuinely felt like this character could have been a real person.

Also with death at times come division. One of the other hardest parts of the episode to sit through was seeing Henry actually be blamed for some reason for what happened with his father taking his own life. There are probably few things more difficult to hear than this, and we’re not sure we would ever get over it in his shoes.

Yes, there were some moments of politics and Secretary matters for Elizabeth McCord, but to us we don’t really think of this episode as anything typical for the show. Instead, we look at it as a masterful character picture of how death can bring people together, tear them apart, and then also make you grateful for everything that you do have.

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