Review: The Event "For the Good of Our Country"

Non Spoiler Review:

We get a conspiracy-focused episode, revealing some further aspects of the assassination attempt, but it ultimately amounts to a lot of people sitting down and piecing things together. Except, of course, Leila and Sean, who manage to get into even more ridiculous trouble.

For the Good of Our Country comes across as filler. While we do get a revelation, it's one that can be seen coming a mile away and lacks any punch at all. Leila and Sean continue to be nothing more than  a wasted twenty minutes each episode. Unless they are building up to a heck of a lot of excitement in coming episodes, The Event could easily be skipped at this point and recapped in a couple of sentences.

Spoilers Now!

Martinez, Vice President Ray Jarvis and Sterling are having a meeting to discuss their next move—namely retrieving Sophia and tracking down the sleeper aliens in their midst. Martinez wants to interview Buchanan personally to see if he can get some answers. 

Michael continues to be very sorry for trying to kill the president and two hundred passengers, but he wasn't thinking straight at the time. But he does remember that he heard a call to go ahead with the assassination at 1:08 PM, about an hour prior to the attack. That is very helpful to Martinez, who seems to know exactly what that means.

And so do we, as VP Ray is very antsy about what Martinez learned in the interview, and when he's shut out of the transcript he flashes back to an hour before the attack when he and Sterling were trying to convince Martinez not to close down the Alaska facility. When Martinez refuses, Ray gets in his car and phones James (Hal Holbrook), who seems to be in control of the situation, and realizes the assassination must go ahead. Ray's been a good public servant, but releasing so many unknown people into their society is unacceptable.

We get to relive Leila's tantrum again, only this time one of the attackers jumps off the roof and manages to shoot Sean. They flee, she steals a car, and they get to a hospital where she proceeds to kidnap a doctor and bring him with them.

Martinez meets with Sterling, advising him that someone in their meeting in Miami gave the go ahead four minutes after the meeting ended. He assures Sterling he knows it isn't him, but they need to go through the transcript records of phone calls from that time.

Ray phones Hal Holbrook in a panic, threatening to bring him down if he's exposed. James assures him nothing bad will happen, but wants to continue the conversation in person.

Two years earlier, James Dempsey meets with Raymond during his campaign. Martinez is proposing a bipartisan ticket and suggests Raymond could reach across the aisle and be his running mate. He wants him to provide balance to Martinez's idealism.

Sterling realizes it's Ray who made the call. Unfortunately, even if they unscramble the call, they've covered up the assassination attempt already, so they can't prosecute Jarvis for that. Martinez and Sterling storm in to confront him, but Jarvis is gone. 

Meanwhile, charm school graduate Leila is taking the doctor to the pharmacy, because drugs, coupled with his Hippocratic oath, will save Sean where a hospital cannot. She takes him inside, leaving Sean in the car. Doctor Hostage orders up a shitload of stuff at the pharmacy, but Leila starts to panic when the cops come in to buy water. Leila couldn't be acting more suspicious if she tried. They leave and return to the car, but Sean's gone. Oops.

Fortunately they can follow his trail of blood to a back alley where they perform emergency surgery next  to the dumpster. Leila need only apply pressure and Dr. Hostage does the rest and sews him up (Applying pressure seems to be the one thing Leila is good at, as poor whipped Sean can likely attest). 

Dempsey meets with Vicky, who wonders how Sean and Leila got away without inside help. He asks if she's ready to resume her work and help him solve a problem—Jarvis. Jarvis arrives for a medical appointment, which is the cover story for his meeting with Dempsey.

Sterling and Martinez are moving to have the Vice President retrieved immediately. When they to the doctor's office they find him gone, having left through another door in the office. Jarvis runs into Vicky, but instead of killing him she kills her assistant. She wants out as Dempsey has played them both. She wants Jarvis to bury him, so both of them can get out alive.

Jarvis returns to his security detail and calls the president to tell him he's on his way to turn himself in. He believed he was working for the good of the country, but he's working for a powerful man. Who? Before he can say anything the van his security detail neglected to notice blows up. 

Dempsey gets an update that it's done, but he knows Vicky didn't come through for him. Dempsey is taking something out of an eyedropper, and for a moment, as he walks in front of the mirror, he goes from old Hal Holbrook to CGI young Hal Holbrook, and then back again!

Are they stretching this out for a midseason cliffhanger? We really learned nothing here, except that the aliens' longevity may be tied to extending life and rejuvenating humans. Is that the source of the conspiracy to keep the aliens secret?