Zero Day

Ms. Hipster and I never call shows we watch by their real name. This one we called Confused President. Or sometimes Confused De Niro. They’re never creative titles. Just ones that pretty much describe what happens in the series. Simple, straight-forward titles that we both recognize easily. Because we too are old and confused. Just like President De Niro. In this absolute garbage heap of a “thriller” that I have to assume isn’t as-written-by-AI, cynical as it comes off. Truly a mash-up of the most basic ideas that threaten our nation in a series that is both poorly conceived and penned in a way that someone somewhere thought maybe sounded like Aaron Sorkin, but comes off more like Aaron Carter (yes, the dead former child pop star). Honestly, if you’ve ever watched Asian television, this looked like that and made about as much sense (if you had the captions turned off).

Zero Day is a pretty basic story. There is a cyberattack perpetrated on the US. Basically someone turns off the Internet for 60 seconds. It’s a little more broad than that, but not much. Planes crash, people get run over by trains. I feel like maybe someone falls from a bridge and possibly gets electrocuted. Or maybe it’s an elevator. Worse, at least 140 million teens had to sit in silence for one minute when their Tik Tok didn’t load. Bummer. But, anyway, thousands of people die and that’s bad. The government decides it has to get to the bottom of who did this, so they hire the last president, George Mullen (Robert De Niro), out of retirement to start the “Zero Day” commission to track down these hacktivists. Or cyberterrorists. Or whatever you want to call them. Look, De Niro is a lot of things. He’s a boxer. A taxi driver. A gangster. Even a goofy grandpa. But president? This mumbling Italian New Yorker? I’m not so sure. But, hey, are you gonna turn down De Niro if he’s willing to play the lead in your show? Probably not. But next time, make him a retired cop. Maybe FBI, even. But President? Nah.

Anyway, the dude is a lib. Which sounds like a cuss or a slur, but is Bobby’s true nature. But in his character, you figure he’s going to follow the straight and narrow in his endeavor. You know, get all the proper search warrants and stick to the Geneva Accords or whatever. But, no, he goes full Tom Homan and grabs this “libertarian,” conspiracy podcaster dude, Evan Green (Dan Stevens), and has him tortured for info. This guy is supposed to be an Alex Jones stand-in with the reach of a Tucker Carlson. And he disappears him for a while to beat the hell out of him — fulfilling absolutely every dumb conspiracy theory and panic-the-dummies, dangerous screed he spews. Good call, prez. So incredibly stupid and unrealistic. Also, Dan Stevens’ “American” accent (and the fact they gave him a very Jewish name for some reason?) is about as phony as this show. In the meantime, President Mullen continually gets confused. He loses time and spaces out, has auditory and visual hallucinations and generally stalls out in the middle of speeches a la Mitch McConnell. And keeps repeating something about Bambi. Though only his wife (Joan Allen) seems to notice. With people constantly around him, video and still cameras constantly snapping. And nobody is like, “Hey, maybe the old guy who pulled a Biden and didn’t run for a second term and has been clearly losing it in public shouldn’t be the face of this very important 911-like investigation? Maybe?”

Apparently Mullen gave way to President Mitchell (Angela Bassett). Every sentence she utters (always at full-throated volume) sounds like a Bill Pullman speech from Independence Day. But written by a person who has never actually heard a human being speak. Let alone a president. And acted by a person who has also been told she’s Caesar and not a thoughtful leader of a modern nation. I feel like perhaps Bassett is decent in very specific roles. This isn’t it. Which leads to Jesse Plemons and Lizzy Caplan. Generally two of our favorites. Just like shows Ms. Hipster and I watch, sometimes actors get names that are more descriptors than their actual names — because Ms. Hipster and I have Swiss cheese for brains. So Plemons was always “Fat” Matt Damon. Issue is, he’s lost a ton of weight. He almost looks like a completely different person. And, you know what, that’s a good thing for him. Because maybe people won’t remember he was actually in this train wreck. Caplan plays a congresswoman and the daughter of President Mullin. She lives in a loft in NYC, loves cocaine and apparently having sex with the newly skinny, formerly Fat Matt Damon. A relationship that feels all sorts of convoluted. And weirdly disconnected, considering her character’s complete lack of reaction after Plemon’s character ends up dead. I mean it feels like she’s upset for about 3.5 seconds, but is just kind of off of it in the next scene. Writing!

So Mullen and his team stumble around seemingly breaking all sorts of laws and suspending people’s rights in order to nail these damned hackers, accusing the wrong people, doing public harm and generally being inept asshats. All while they’re double-crossed by maybe, possibly some Russians, but also some home-grown dudes but also their own internal people? It’s real murky. I think it’s all in an attempt to hide the ball for a big “whoa!” at the end, but they also kind of give everything away several times by being too obvious. Obfuscation and confusion can only keep you off the scent for so long. Though being in the middle of a muddled miasma of nonsense is no fun either. Especially the whole Havana Syndrome feint with Mullen and his brain damage, or whatever’s going on. They only kind, sorta resolve that whole thing, despite it being at the heart of our series, Confused President. And the resolution is basically: grief. Yes, they tried to shoehorn the ultimate 2010s/2020s TV trope, grief, into a bad political thriller. Because everything is a metaphor for grief now. Even things that should theoretically have an actual explanation. Shit, Mullen had some poor girl’s corpse dug up for no reason because he thought maybe an advanced sound weapon was being used on him somehow, when in fact he was just distraught over his dead son? Which in and of itself means that you do, in fact, have dementia. Yes, dementia causes hallucinations and memory lapses, not sadness. Seems these writers consulted neither screenwriters nor doctors in the long road to the end of this forgettable / regrettable series full of stars, but very little else.