An all-star cast fails to elevate this lackluster conspiracy drama with no point of view
What made "Mr. Robot" such a captivating hacker drama when it aired in the mid-2010s was its incisive perspective. We followed an individual fed up with the greed of the 1%, the monopoly of corporations in American life and corruption at every level. The show had its gimmicks -- twists and turns aimed to pull the rug from under the viewer, but it always felt like it had a lot to say about the status quo.
"Zero Day," Netflix's latest six-episode thriller, is another hacker show. Rather than being immersed in the hacker's philosophy and point of view, we follow a government commission trying to get to the bottom of what happened. It is devoid of that rich point of view -- the reasons for the hack, once eventually revealed, are unearned stakes deflated by an entire season of repetitive dead-end plotting and muted performances that don't do much to elevate the script beyond clichés.
An eye-popping cast is assembled for this lackluster series (recession indicator). "Zero Day" stars Robert De Niro as the humbly retired one-term President George Mullen. De Niro is our lead into this new entry to Dad TV: A well-respected, decorated actor whose competent character is charged with re-establishing trust in the government after a catastrophic national cyber attack.
He's pulled out of his book-writing retirement when Zero Day occurs, a cyber attack that hits the United States and shuts down all critical networks for long enough to cause subways to collide and planes to crash leading to thousands of casualties. With an ominous message communicated by the hackers that this could happen again, the current sitting President (played by Angela Bassett, who sadly barely gets any screen time) assigns Mullen as the nonpartisan lead of a task force given unparalleled resources to track down who's responsible.
De Niro is fine -- but his stoic, muted performance doesn't fully sell everything his character is saddled with: Grief, unfinished business from his past and mysterious dementia-like neurological symptoms (Biden parallels? Perhaps). This critique can be applied to most performances on the show. A bloated cast with little to give any one player leaves everyone short, including Mullen's wife played by three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen, his right-hand man Roger Carlson (Jesse Plemons), who's fighting demons from his past and ex-Chief of Staff Valerie Whitesell (Connie Britton).
"Zero Day" is sleek and expensive-looking with the help of veteran director Lesli Linka Glatter's keen eye through its six episodes -- although the show is significantly too dark to watch in a well-lit room. It starts off with a decently exciting disaster premise, but quickly starts to feel dull and repetitive in its red tape bureaucracy and political machinations. Tense conversations between government officials on who is hacking and why get old quickly when there's little new information to convey.
Every episode is very "we got 'em!" with someone getting arrested, maybe tortured, only to find out they're predictably not involved in the conspiracy at all. Meanwhile, patience for answers runs thin at the White House while they try to manage the public's unrest (queue many generic angry protests and violent mob scenes). Some characters get rudely disposed of to little consequence to the story. And that's mostly it, until an unearned "twist" is revealed in the finale.
Entire swaths of episodes are dedicated to Mullen watching the news, including a program by a conspiracy theorist talking head played by Dan Stevens, who critiques the Zero Day Commission for going after American citizens instead of Russians for the attack. There's quite a bit of news-watching throughout the season, although rarely do these newscasts provide any new information. There are also committees and roundtable discussions that continue to provide no plot momentum, except ask dumblingly obvious questions like "Who actually hacked us?" and grand statements like "We're Americans, what are we doing?"
A subplot involves Mullen's daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), a congresswoman who leads the oversight committee to her father's investigation despite the obvious conflict of interest. There are lots of press conferences that are aimed at capturing the antagonism between "sides" in government, despite the show being vague about party affiliations. In this way, "Zero Day" feels like it wants to be a juicy political drama rather than a conspiracy thriller, but won't fully commit to even the President (Bassett) getting any character development.
There is a heaviness to "Zero Day" that is hard to trudge through. Real-time politics are challenging enough to witness these days, and may in fact have contributed to the lack of political dramas in the television landscape in the years following "House of Cards." Monologues about how conspiracy has taken over politics while the left fights for pronouns land poorly, and there is no buoyancy, humor or lightness to the show whatsoever -- something Netflix's "The Diplomat" is able to capture so well despite spinning multiple plates. Even worse, it feels dumbed down for an audience who may be watching while scrolling Instagram. This is a decidedly serious show with intentions to reflect the current political climate -- which could've worked, theoretically, if there was enough plot to explore and if its cast had been allowed to fully dig their heels into well-written characters.
"Zero Day" feels as confused as America itself, stumbling in the dark looking for "enemies" and unable to look inwards until it's too late. At six episodes, "Zero Day" still feels too long, a sign it probably should have just been a Netflix movie.