Madam Secretary, which ironically began at an unscheduled time due to football, took a swipe at the ol’ pigskin on Sunday night. In an episode titled “The Rusalka,” Secretary McCord’s (Tea Leoni) self-described “anarchist weirdo” son uses his stellar report card to bribe his parents to let him play football.
The move sparks this late night debate between the Secretary and her husband Henry (Tim Daly):
Secretary: He totally rope-a-doped us with that report card, didn't he?
Henry: Well, if his long con was getting great grades all summer so he could try out for the football team, that's fine with me.
Secretary: Well, are you also fine with him potentially ruining his knees or his brain?
Henry: Oh, come on, babe. That's...
Secretary: Do I need to show you the studies?
Henry: I'm just saying that it might be good for him to be part of a team.
Secretary: That's another thing. How is it that our proud little anarchist weirdo wants to play football of all things?
Of course, if the real “studies” were to be made known they would show that there is no definitive link between football in particular, and contact sports in general, with the kind of serious brain damage that Madam Secretary is hinting at here. But hey, later in the episode Henry and Elizabeth decide to let their little anarchist try out for the team anyway out of fear that he won’t make any friends. So, friendship > concussions/certain death, apparently.
Moving right along, Madam Secretary normally spends its one hour of air time insulating Hillary Clinton from any potential attack. This week however, they may have set her up for one.
The major plot of this episode is that the Russian president, who was a hardliner, has died leaving his foreign minister, who is an ally of the West, in position as a major power broker. True to liberal form, Secretary McCord sees an opportunity in the President’s death to broker a peace between Russia and the Ukraine by essentially having the Ukrainians give up the Eastern half of their country (which Russia has invaded) with the promise that the Ukrainians in the east would be able to hold free and fair elections to decide whether to go with the Ukraine or Russia. In other words, rewarding Russia for invading a foreign country by having that country surrender itself.
The only problem with this, other than the fact it’s dumb, is that Secretary McCord fails to correctly read the intentions of the dead Russian president’s widow and is duped by her lies saying she wants peace. The whole thing blows-up on her at an internationally televised funeral:
That this show, which is essentially dedicated to mythologizing and lionizing the brief and terrible stint of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, should air an episode detailing our top diplomat’s complete inability to read the Russians on the same day that Mitt Romney reminded us all of Hillary’s abject failure to read Vladimir Putin, is art imitating life.
For once, Madam Secretary got it right.
