Netflix is famous for reimagining things to impress the wokeosphere. No, it’s not just them, but no one gets ribbed on about it quite as much. Therefore, it seems natural for the streaming giant to deliver more programming with that stamp on it.
Zero Day is not just a fantasy but a true political reimaging. The six-episode limited series,
is about a single-term former President of the United States (whose political career was shaped by the death of his son and now may be facing dementia) who is called on to save the world from a nightmare that appears to have emerged from the tech sector. It’s like someone shoveled news stories from the last five years into ChatGPT, blended them with the three most ridiculous seasons of “Homeland,” and asked it to write a show.
If you haven’t seen it yet (I watched episodes one and two on Friday), it parallels the world the way Hollywood would have wanted it. Dreambuilding, if you like. The actual president is a black woman in a pantsuit with Kamala-esque hair, but that is where the similarity ends. This one seems sharp and articulate. She speaks well and with conviction, unlike the word salad candidate from our world. This is the version of Kamala they fantasised about. Much like the cogent, capable Joe Biden doll, before he was frog-marched out with no one to pull his string in that disastrous debate
The public implosion took many experts by surprise, while the knuckle-dragging conservatives were only surprised they let it happen, and then, only briefly. It almost immediately became apparent this was deliberate. Obama Inc. set poor old Uncle Joe up to fail, complete with orchestrated media talking points to preach from atop the rubble.
As for Zero Day, the premise is interesting. There is a nationwide ransomware attack whose ransom is that it will happen again. The cyber attack results in a 60-second shutdown of everything electronic, resulting in transportation failures (among other things) and a not insignificant loss of life.
In the interest of getting things done, Congress authorizes a commission with Stasi-like powers to stomp all over any rights protected by the Constitution in the name of preventing another attack. The abusive permissions in the Patriot Act are children’s toys compared to the weapons provided; to be led by a guy they think they can trust (the single-term former president) who may also be suffering from dementia.
I’m no fan of Roger Ebert, but he has issues with this thing (not the ones I mentioned).
…“Zero Day” feels like 10 episodes of plot in a 6-episode box. Major plot points feel hurried, the passage of time gets wonky, and it almost feels like some things weren’t even filmed that should have been (echoes of “The Snowman”). It’s just a guess, but it’s hard to believe that this was the exact production that drew so many excellent performers.
Then again, we’re going to see a lot of TV shows and movies in the next few years about the imbalance of power in this country, and maybe “Zero Day” just wanted to be first. It’s a show that never reconciles its ridiculous character choices with its political commentary, a soap opera that wants to be “important” too. This is not to say that a show can’t be a conversation starter and a thriller at the same time, only that “Zero Day” is neither.
Ebert’s assumption that liberal Hollywood is going to project its political masters’ past abuses onto the current President (over and over) is spot on, even though that’s not what he says. There will be plenty of those, while Zero Day appears to be promoting Obama’s diversity fail (the way Madam president was meant to ride on Hillary’s never-to-be presidential coattails) with the expectation that Kamala would, when this finally hit the screen, be the Democrats’ latest potted plant in the Oval Office.
Say what you want about Hillary Clinton, she’s no potted plant.
I have to wonder if they wanted Kamala over Joe the whole time. Were there cracks in the he’s not demented armor before the debate failure? We may never know, but we can see it without effort. The pieces are too obvious to be a coincidence – this was to be filmed in 2023, with production delayed by the writers’ strike until 2024—a one-term president with dementia and a brown-skinned, pant-suited lady president.
As for Zero Day, Ebert says the cast is the show’s only saving grace. My wife and I started it because it was recommended by people who can typically be trusted to make decent recommendations. I’ll watch a few more installments and maybe the entire thing (they implicate Russia in episode one), or if we are victims of some more devious bit of misdirection from within—a domestic hiccup to create another star chamber with extra-constitutional powers.
Maybe the CIA did it.
I’m not recommending it exactly because Robert De Niro is one of douchiest of Dems so that may make it unwatchable for many, but the dude can act and the cast is good—your call.
