Madam Secretary recap: On the Clock

There’s so much to talk about after this episode, it’s hard to choose where to begin! By the end of it, you almost forgot that Jane Pauley was even there. There’s two countries on the brink of war, progress with finding Jibral Disah and a lot of talk about washing machines and metaphorical and biological clocks.

First things first though, I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that no one should get on a plane in this show ever again. Over two seasons there have been countless issues revolving around aircrafts and their mishaps. I’m just saying, if you want to stay alive, it’s probably best to avoid air travel. Let’s begin with the Pakistan/India conflict before we get into everything else.

Everyone is in a pretty great mood in the beginning of the episode. The U.S. has brought together the prime ministers from both India and Pakistan to finally make a peace treaty after countless years of violence and aggression. Of course things intensify quickly and another war is narrowly avoided this episode.

Before the prime ministers even get into a room together, an unauthorized plane from Pakistan crashes in India’s territory. As it turns out the plane was carrying a hydrogen bomb and now without a proper team to inspect it, the bomb could go off at any moment.

Pakistani Prime Minister Khoosat says that because it’s their bomb, a Pakistan team needs to go in and fix it; he claims they are the only ones who know the design. Indian Prime Minister Verma wants a team from India to go in and defuse the bomb because it’s on their territory. Naturally Bess and the team propose that a US team goes in while the Pakistani team assists in defusing the bomb and an Indian team can oversee the whole process. That’s one argument they’re able to subdue, for now.

Luckily no one died trying to fix the hydrogen bomb, but now the talks center on who gets to keep the bomb. Pakistan wants their bomb back, and India refuses to hand it over because it’s literally handing a bomb back to your enemy. Bess finally convinces India to give the bomb to the U.S., but Pakistan is refusing accept that deal. Unfortunately for Pakistan, it’s that deal, or war.

The bomb sparked violent protests all over Islamabad — now it’s only a matter of days before the entire Pakistani government collapses. Pakistan sent troops to India’s border and they’re responding by preparing for war. As usual Bess has a plan to stop the war. She and Dalton go to Verma and tell her she needs to give the bomb back to Pakistan and there’s no negotiation here. The U.S. will fly it back to them. When Verma threatens to shoot down the U.S. plane, Dalton’s pretty much like, Yeah, f— with America and see what happens.

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Bess next goes to Khoosat and says the U.S. will give back the bomb as long as they have complete access to Pakistan’s weapon arsenal; they want to know what they have and where their bombs are at all times. Using her awesome threat voice, Bess finally gets Pakistan to agree to the terms.

Suffice it to say, no peace agreement was made this episode.

I know Jibral Disah is important, but I want to talk about Daisy and her panic attack over children and the doomsday drama first.

We hardly get personal story lines from the staffers, so this episode was pretty special considering we learned a lot about Daisy’s life. Think back to last season, she was engaged to be married, but she was having an affair with Matt. Her relationship ended, and so did her hook up. Then we met Oliver. We know that she’s been not all in with him, but he’s cute and nerdy and not to mention has an awesome job.

So with all that in mind, let’s talk about the Doomsday Clock.

NEXT: Tick, Tock

Bess is meant to have a “friendly” interview with Jane Pauley, but when has Jane Pauley ever gone soft during a news interview? She asks her a bunch of questions about the peace summit and finally asks her about the Doomsday Clock and says that they’re moving it from four minutes to three minutes to midnight.

In case you need a refresher, it’s a metaphorical clock representing a countdown to a possible global nuclear war or climate change. The closer the clock is to midnight, the more the world is in danger essentially. Just to give you an idea, in real life, the clock is currently set at three minutes.

Bess doesn’t really take the question seriously, but when she gets to the office Russell Jackson tells her that with the election coming up (again referencing this election that we haven’t seen any campaigning for), she needs to go to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and convince them not to bump up the time. Bess puts Nadine and Daisy on the job, thus leading to Daisy’s freak out.

Daisy starts flipping out because she realizes that she wants to have children, but she’s not sure if Oliver is the right guy for her. She likes him, but she doesn’t want to be with someone so predictable. Nadine points out that if his biggest flaw is that he’s not spontaneous enough, then that’s not a bad guy to have around, but I think we all understand why Daisy is unsure, right? Predictable relationships aren’t super fun.

Anyway they failed at convincing the physicists to keep the clock where it is, but Oliver shows up at the party and dances, surprising Daisy. I guess dancing means Oliver is fun after all? Then they dance together, and she blurts out “Will you have a baby with me?” A cringe-worthy moment for pretty much all of us. Oliver, being the good guy he is, says yes before Daisy clarified she meant eventually, not now. Are we looking at a Madam Secretary wedding in our future? Can Blake and Nadine duet at it? We can dream right?

Onto Jibral Disah.

Oliver designed a root kit, so if they can get the teacher, Laila Ayyad, to send Hijriyyah another email with an attachment, they can track her physical location. When Henry and Jane go to talk to her, Jane immediately brings up Laila’s citizenship test… not technically threatening to deny her, but pretty much. I’m not sure why they let Jane go with Henry, clearly she sucks at talking to assets.

After their talk, Laila attempts to send a warning email to Hijriyyah. The US government intercepts the email, but Russell Jackson is pissed. He tells Jose to go to her house, arrest her, ransack her place, and deny her citizenship. Henry attempts to explain that Laila has no idea that Hijriyyah is married to Jibral Disah and she is just trying to look out for her former student. Henry heads to her place before Jose gets there and decides to tell her the truth and why they are trying to reach Hijriyyah. She gives Henry a photo to send with an email and at the very end, Hijriyyah opens it, finally giving them her exact location.

There are only three episodes left in the season, and the Jibral Disah plotline is heating up. I expect it will all come to a head in the season finale.

I saved the best news for last though! In case you hadn’t heard yet, CBS has renewed Madam Secretary for season 3 — which means there’s so much more Bess and Henry to come.

Minor Debriefings:

• I don’t know about you, but I had to look up the difference between a bath sheet and a towel.
• They kept bringing up the broken washing machine and I think it’s because Henry was feeling like nothing was in his control this episode and that was something he could do to prove himself useful.
• To be honest, Oliver’s app to find time to hang out is genius. Is it real? If not, someone should really get on that.
• Line of the night: “I’m already in the sad underwear.”