'Zero Day' Recap, Episode 3: Dark Mode

Zero Day

Episode 3

Season 1 Episode 3

Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

Photo: Jojo Whilden/Netflix

Up until this episode, George’s public and private selves have been equally self-possessed. His equanimity is the basis of his whole character. His visual and hearing disturbances, which he has mostly kept to himself, are out of his control, and even those he attempts to mitigate by choosing not to take his daily Lipitor on the 13th morning after Zero Day, on the chance his confusion is a side effect from the medicine. Whatever he can control, he does — the indiscretions of his past have been apparently overcome, as his relationship with Sheila is still affectionate, if slightly remote. He even enjoys an easy rapport with Valerie herself. George is not a saint; like everyone else, he’s made mistakes. His appeal comes from his seemingly unshakeable ability to rise above them.

But the emergence of the Reapers rattles him. The fact that the threat is domestic rather than Russian overtly serves the narrative’s logic: If the Kremlin were responsible for Zero Day, the powers of the commission wouldn’t matter for George’s moral dilemma. He has the gun — will he shoot it? In their pursuit of the Reapers, the commission is arresting people right, left, and center. In an echo of the last episode’s “history is watching” refrain, George insists on obtaining search warrants, much to Carl’s annoyance, not that the warrants mean much in the presence of the baton. We see the police seizing people and raiding homes as Evan Green frames the Reaper line as a “tall tale,” a made-up “scapegoat being sold to shut us up.”

Some new faces appear in the commission headquarters, including Valerie, who pushes Roger out of his office with the exacting coolness of a first-rate bitch. I love her already. Jeremy Lasch is also there this morning, on a mission to find out what the hell George is doing. Whatever it is, it’s not what they had planned. George holds fast — he’s the one in charge of the investigation, not the CIA or anyone else. About Proteus, all Jeremy has to say is: “If it’s a threat, it won’t work.” This thing with Proteus is actually going to drive me crazy. What is it?! Even when, much later in this episode, Valerie and Jeremy debrief, we still don’t know what Proteus is, only that George himself had ordered the CIA to shut it down and that neither of them has any idea why George brought it up in public.

From his mansion in Oyster Bay, Evan Green is happy to throw fuel to the fire. He breaks the news of the arrest of Paul Moore, a minor wrongfully convicted in connection with the Reapers. Green has Paul’s bewildered mother on the show, and she talks about how the police dragged him, unarmed and harmless, from his bed. It looks really bad. The “lamestream” outlets, as Green calls them, all pick up the story, and it’s quickly confirmed that the item isn’t just conspiracy slosh but an actual mistake on the part of the authorities, which gives Green plenty of ammunition. What he wants to know, not unreasonably, is why the commission isn’t looking into the likes of Bob Lyndon instead.

In between errands like refilling George’s prescriptions and exhuming the body of Anna Sindler to make sure she is really, completely, absolutely dead, Roger is firing off desperate “please let me explain” texts to Lyndon, who replies with a screenshot of a wire transfer receipt: $10,000 from Bob to Roger, only oneof a few successive transfers. After having Anna’s DNA confirmed (verdict: she’s dead), Roger meets Lyndon on his yacht, which seems like a terrible idea. You’re going to get on a boat with a guy who is threatening you? Having failed to blame the Russians, what Lyndon wants this time is for Evan Green to disappear off the face of the earth. Lyndon resents Green’s implication that he has a “rumored interest in children” and is freaked out by the fact that Green knows where he lives, so he needs Roger to get rid of him. If he doesn’t, Lyndon will go public with those screenshots. He sets up the blackmail by giving Roger an envelope of pictures depicting Anna Sindler at an Evan Green rally, along with a Reaper called Erik Hayes. “You said [George] suspected this girl, I wanted him after Green. I figured this ought to do it,” he explains matter of factly. Roger protests, but Lyndon knows as well as we do that, ultimately, he is unlikely to sacrifice himself for anyone, even George.

Meanwhile, the commission’s aggressive approach is scaring everyone, and people are out on the streets demanding answers. It’s the job of the oversight committee to make sure the commission will provide said answers. Richard Dreyer, the Speaker of the House, doesn’t waste one second in reminding Alex Mullen of that responsibility. When Alex predicts that George will never agree to testify in front of the committee, Richard appeals to her urge to find a way out of her father’s shadow: If she can pull this off, “no one will ever question” her merit ever again. Well, she tries, but to no avail. George promises to be “nimble” in case he’s wrong about the Reapers but refuses to testify. Looks like Alex’s accomplishments will continue to be doubted.

But the oversight committee’s instinct is right: Though the commission has over 40 people in custody, they don’t have much. The Reapers don’t operate under any organized structure, which is seriously slowing down progress. They do have Erik Hayes, the man in the pictures, who is also “the closest link to the wire transfer.” George upholds his no “enhanced techniques” policy as Hayes stonewalls the interrogators and instead takes matters into his own hands, essentially turning into Mr. Hyde.

Having decided to speak to Hayes himself, “vet to vet,” George talks about his PTSD and delivers a story about having abandoned his Vietnamese interpreter as a way of appealing to Erik’s sense of superiority — Erik himself has remained in close contact with his Afghani interpreter, a man named Isar with whom he plays pool every week. Too bad, because George is deporting Isar. He’s also cutting off Erik’s father’s dialysis Medicare coverage and putting his son in foster care after arresting his ex-wife for using drugs; that is unless Erik tells him how the malware was modified and who controls it.

It’s not technically torture, but it sure isn’t not torture. Watching the interrogation from headquarters, Valerie orders the cameras to be cut when George begins talking about the pain of losing a son. She either doesn’t want to see George’s vicious side or doesn’t want the people now working under him to learn that he has one. As he recomposes in the bathroom, George can hear the Sex Pistols song again. The best part about this whole sequence is that it gives De Niro an opportunity to really work with the character, creating a crack in his purported incorruptible foundation. The same firmness, tone, and register that reassures the American people can turn malicious, threatening someone’s family — and both sides of him are utterly believable.

Erik obviously tells them what he knows: The mind, as well as the money, behind Zero Day is a guy named Leon, a “reset the economy and redistribute the wealth” kind of guy who requested the malware to be delivered in a thumb drive to a farm in Idaho, which, they will all soon discover, is in the business of computers. Erik uses a quote often repeated by Green himself: “True freedom is the right to say something others don’t want to hear.” The connection doesn’t mean much to Carl or Valerie: They know that people of Hayes’s ideological bent are usually Green fans.

But the Hayes-Green link means something to George, who hates Green with every ounce of his being. More than that, he even has the impression that Green can see and hear him from his office. Throughout this episode, George’s mysterious symptoms have continued to worsen. He searches for the source of the music, which he can’t stop hearing. He double-checks his prescription list. By now, we know these “symptoms” are likely a part of the conspiracy: Earlier in the episode, at the cemetery where he was checking on Anna Sindler’s body, Roger was approached by Natan (!), who announced that he was vanishing and advised George to do the same, stat. He asked whether George was seeing and hearing things — if so, it might mean that “they” had already gotten to him.

From his secretive work confirming Anna Sindler’s death, Roger knows there’s something wrong with George, so it’s pretty slimy that he chooses not to tell George what Natan said. The thin link between Anna Sindler, Evan Green, and Erik Hayes created by photos is enough to convince George that “she has a hand in this.” It’s maddening to Carl and Valerie that, while they have just scored a goldmine at the farm in Idaho, George is hung up on circumstantial evidence. Having so far refused to arrest with a warrant, George finally decides to waive his need for one to arrest Evan Green against Valerie and Carl’s advice. They’re not the only people unhappy about this, either — Alex and Richard immediately see red flags.

Alone in George’s office, Roger commits the unpardonable offense of reading his notebook. In its pages, George has been wondering where the music is coming from and whether the pharmacy is lying to him. He is, in effect, deep in conspiratorial thinking, perhaps deeper even than Green himself. When the episode ends, we see George at his most menacing yet. Looking down at a cowering Evan Green in a dark cell, he asks, “Who’s the idiot now?” The main problem with arresting Green is that it’ll give legitimacy to his tinfoil-hat theories, of course. It might just also announce to the world that George Mullen has lost his mind.

• I’m a bit disappointed with the writing of Jeremy’s character, which feels like a missed opportunity. He pushes envelopes and says ominous things, but he’s clearly only there as an expositional tool. Wouldn’t it make sense for the CIA to have and push its own agenda in more insidious terms than just politely asking George to keep to the plan?

• I’m a little unclear on whether Valerie is simply being snarky or pointing us to a deeper layer in Roger and George’s relationship when she refers to George as Roger’s “AA sponsor.” Roger corrects her — he’s in Narcotics Anonymous, not Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m keeping my eye out for clarification on this point in the next few episodes …