Zero Day Recap: Confession Booth

Zero Day took the exit ramp off Act Two and hurled into Act Three at full speed. After Roger’s death, the action significantly escalates, particularly in the wake of the information he has left behind. Evan Green, who has been the focus of the commission’s investigation for days, is finally released after being tortured and battered for answers he doesn’t have. Before he can get back to Oyster Bay, the media is already reporting on the commission’s use of torture on detainees, most of whom are ultimately let go along with Green.

Before dawn breaks on the morning of Sheila’s testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee, George shakes his wife awake to share a memory of watching their son practice skateboard tricks outside his office window in Albany. When Nick finally landed the trick, George meant to congratulate him on his effort — but his duties swept him up, and he never got to. His regret constitutes one of the more real moments of pain shared between George and Sheila; he encourages her not to hold back in front of the committee. Not that he need have bothered. Sheila destroys Richard Dreyer’s arrogance with the nonchalance of someone swatting away an inconvenient fly. Her checkmate, beyond meeting every single one of Richard’s “trick” questions without as much as a tremble in her voice, is to point out that every member of the House sitting in front of her voted in favor of the commission’s expanded powers. Though she is George’s wife, they are his partners in the political unraveling of the country. She calls out their hypocrisy — they’re trying to get George out so they can get in — with the clarity of someone whose conscience is squeaky clean.

Though Sheila’s testimony resonates well with the public, there’s not much anyone can do to save George’s crumbling reputation. Richard Dreyer, that weasel, is counting not only on his looming resignation but on substituting him as the head of the commission. These disparate sources of pressure — Dreyer’s, Sheila’s testimony, the fact that Carl discovered that the pictures Roger had supplied them with were deep fakes, after all — all converge at Roger’s funeral. George remembers his own son’s struggles with drugs and asks to take one last look at Roger before his coffin is lowered into the ground, something he regrets not having done when he was burying Nick. It must be somewhere around here, talking with Alex on the porch and realizing he might truly be in over his head, that George decides to accept the hand he’s been dealt and fold.

But then the investigation takes another, much more decisive turn. Looking through his notebook for his resignation draft, he finds an envelope addressed to “boss,” containing a series of information prefaced simply by a note: “I just wanted you to know …” They are the notes Roger took as he picked up the communications broadcasted by Leon through the AM radio. They also illuminate the commission on Lyndon’s connection to the Reapers, particularly his funding of the group. Roger knew that his decision not to commit the ultimate betrayal against George was the end of him, so he gave his old boss a leg up. Through the information passed down by Roger, the commission is able not only to tie Lyndon to the Reapers but also to intercept their analog communications by tuning their own radio to their frequency.

Zero Day starts picking up speed again after a couple of episodes’ lull when the commission rallies to break the Reapers’ code. They get it eventually — I’m not even going to attempt to explain how, but they have enough to identify that there are two main communicators who go by the code names of Blue Hawk and Red Rooster. The fact that the team is under a time limit — George is expected to resign that night — only helps ramp up the tension: It’s fun to watch them try to figure it out. Valerie and George rush to the White House to report to Mitchell that they are on the verge of a breakthrough. Mitchell grants George another 24 hours to bring the case home. It’s not enough to know that the Reapers discussed the American Homestead attack in the days leading up to it or that they reported a setback at the Idaho farm location. They need to discover who is talking, and fast.

Back at headquarters, the team has procured a voice modulator through which they can attempt direct communication. George assumes Lyndon’s code name on the radio channel — a good time to do it since Lyndon has fallen off the face of the earth and is unlikely to be on air giving contradictory instructions — and arranges a rendezvous with Blue Hawk at Roger’s apartment, under the guise that Roger had left behind evidence that needed to be wiped out. By the time Blue Hawk, a.k.a Leon, has made it to Roger’s apartment, it’s two hours until Richard Dreyer gets sworn in. Facial recognition tells them that Leon’s real name is Blake Felton and that he works for a company owned by … Monica Kidder. As they arrest Felton, George sends Carl, with a warrant, to Kidder’s compound to arrest her: This time, they’ll “do it by the books.”

Kidder is already waiting for them by the time they show up. She refuses to let them into the house and livestreams the raid, framing it as an attack that could just as easily happen to any other civilian. In the meantime, one of her subordinates tries and fails to communicate with the others on the radio. She realizes that the Reapers have “cut her loose,” and George knows that she has no option but to talk, but she delusionally demands immunity. When George refuses, she threatens to go public with the fact that George is the father to Valerie’s 12-year-old daughter Lily, who has recently submitted for genealogical data on Kidder’s DNA app. Going for a kid is a low blow, even for Kidder. It rattles Valerie, who regrets ever coming back to George’s orbit. Finding out who her father is in this way would not only ruin Lily’s relationship with Valerie and Valerie’s with George, but it would also shatter George’s reputation beyond repair.

While Valerie and George discuss what to do next, Carl awaits further instructions. He just barely notices a presence on the roof before Kidder’s security goes rogue and starts shooting at the commission’s troops. They get Carl on the neck — by the end of the shoot-out, multiple fatalities are reported. Carl’s wound puts him in critical condition, but he’s stable, and before the end of the episode, Valerie reassures George that he is going to be fine.

Not so for Kidder or Alex Mullen, for that matter. George addresses the press with the latest developments: They have found evidence at Kidder’s compound that directly links her with Zero Day and paints her as the attack’s mastermind, having been the one to acquire and deploy the malware that caused the power outages; although they couldn’t find anything to do with Proteus at her place. With Kidder away, George goes home. He sits with Sheila and congratulates her on her testimony, but before they can have even one second of a nice moment, Valerie calls with news: Kidder was found dead and hanging in her cell. The camera’s feedback was looped, so security doesn’t know what happened.

Will we find out in the next episode what Kidder knew about Richard Dreyer and Alex Mullen? The revelation of their involvement in the conspiracy is, I think, the show’s most unpredictable turn. I’d become suspicious of Alex and Richard’s relationship when, at the beginning of the episode, he called her again to ask her to do something about the fact that George wasn’t going to resign as planned. Though at that point, she had called commission headquarters believably outraged that they hadn’t briefed the committee at all “since they started torturing people,” it was already clear that she owed Richard something. She doesn’t seem to have trouble telling everyone else to go to hell, so why is it that she acquiesces to Richard’s every demand? At the end of the episode, shortly before we learn of Kidder’s death, Alex calls Richard, desperately demanding he “call it off.” It was all a terrible mistake, she pleads with him. But he won’t hear of it on the phone: If she wants to talk about it, he reminds her, she knows what she has to do. What do you know — Alex pulls a long-range AM radio from one of her desk drawers and begins tuning. It goes all the way to the top, people.

Knowing that Alex might be part of Zero Day changes the tune of the conversation she had with George earlier, on their porch, shortly after Roger’s funeral. They disagree on Nick’s death: While Alex thinks her brother died by suicide, George is convinced it was drugs. At that moment, George half-assedly apologizes for “disappointing her.” Alex tells him that she only wishes he had listened to her and kept out of all of this — that he’d stayed home writing his memoir instead of undertaking the commission. Without us knowing better, it seems like the point of the scene is to show that father and daughter are utterly unable to reach each other: It’s as if an insurmountable brick wall stood in between their vulnerabilities. But now that we know what we do, it leaves us wondering: Did she tell him not to do it because she knew whoever did it would be targeted by Proteus?

President’s Daily Brief 

• What on God’s green earth was Monica Kidder wearing? I can’t get past the fact that she was in leggings. I can see how they were going for an equivalent of tech-bros’ sweatshirt-and-flip-flops dress code, but I don’t see how leggings are the appropriate equivalent. I think the baseball cap and long sweater are right on; they could have had her in jeans, instead …

• Looking ahead to the final episode of the series, some of the questions I have pending include: If Alex has been a part of it, how deep into the conspiracy was Roger, besides his corruption ties to Lyndon? Did he know about her and Richard’s involvement with Kidder and the Reapers? Does Richard Dreyer control Proteus? If so, does he have any personal vendetta against George, or is it just a matter of taking out whatever obstacle is standing in the way of installing himself as dictator? How much does President Mitchell know? What about Jeremy Lasch? How much of all of this did George’s Deep Throat, Natan, always know — and how much did he tell George that fateful night?