Commentaty Review: I watch the show, I scribble some notes as I watch. It’ll be fun. Today, Madam Secretary: Season 1, Episode 2. Every network 2nd episode is the series first real episode as a series (since the pilot was made months before show are given the greenlight), so I’m expecting some subtle changes. Let’s see if this show holds up or collapses.

• Very interesting storyline this week, I really like it: ambassador under siege, yet the government won’t deploy troops (b/c it cost a lot of taxpayer money, oh no!) and POTUS said resolve it somehow. So The Madam hires a private firm troop, which goes against her strong academic opinion against their use. And she might have called the devil. But don’t tell her that.
• Subtle Change #1: The show inserts a third child “mystery child” into the family in clever fashion: have the staff bring up her college protests and how they’ll handle it. Oh, and how The Madam never mentioned her before (due to the agreement that the daughter didn’t want her mom’s new position to affect her own life…obviously didn’t work) and is perceived as hiding her.

• Daughter felt her life was being decided by her mom’s new position as The Madam (friends being friendlier, people randomly hating her b/c they hate her mom), and knew her mom couldn’t quit. So she quit school instead. Firstly, Secretary of States quit ALL of the time. Seriously. They do one term and leave, even when the president is reelected. Secondly, you learn something new everyday: your decision-making part of the brain isn’t fully developed until 25. Learned more in that one sentence than I did the whole pilot of Scorpion.
• Private army CEO is kind of a prick, but should be when someone calls your work the devil publicly. But I like him.
• Subtle Change #2: Anyone else see this family dynamic? The Madam maybe the nation’s Secretary of State. But within the household, Mr. Madam is the household Secretary of State. I like that they did this to his role. He actually has importance in this series, beside the typical “supportive dad” role of the pilot and other similar shows.
• Okay, I get it, we have to get to know the older sister. But twice in this episode, the younger two kids were sent to bed or to their room b/c of it. Kind of made me feel like we’re shoving them aside this episode.
  • Side Note: Future episodes are going to be that son going into foreign soil and getting kidnapped for his strong opinions, isn’t he?
• When the ambassador started talking about coffee, we all could tell instantly that something was going to go wrong.
• As I said, interesting storyline; I like how this whole situation went down and how it eventually worked out
• Daughter looks for job, doesn’t get job, tell them she’s the daughter of The Madam, becomes reconsidered, and then rejects the reconsideration. Indecisive, this one.
• Wait, wait, wait, wait: this CEO guy saves your ambassador and The President pretty much says “thanks for saving him, but you’re unprofessional with your protocol”. He saves your guy and you insult him? Really?
• CEO admits to The Madam that her academic paper hating on private armies actually helped improve the way they operate. Which begs the question: shouldn’t she have already known that, from her academic days or from someone who vetted them?
• In his last appearance, The Madam appreciatively scorns the CEO for making the president look not-so-good and won 9 million cool points in my book
  

   Madam: “You can’t address him that way, that’s the President of the United States”
  CEO (unapologetic): “I didn’t vote for him.”
  Exits stage right
  

• I don’t care what y’all say, I really like the Chief of Staff. He’s got moxie with a little white swag. His relationship with The Madam will be fun to observe over the season.
• The Madam’s press team was supposed to come up with a way to 1) introduce the older daughter to the world without it seeming eerie, and 2) make the army decision sound not hypocritical. It was never brought up if they succeeded in doing that or not. A ball was dropped there.
• This long-story arc with the The Madam’s friend’s death somehow being connected to the previous Secretary of State’s death is just silly now. If you’re going to bring it up, you need to progress the story. All this episode did was say, “hey, remember that this is still a thing?”
• By all accounts a fun episode; I just hope next time the stories go full circle  like its pilot did.