ZERO DAY

By armen pandola

For those of you who remember a little math, you will recall that any number multiplied by zero equals zero. So 1,000,000,000,000 x 0 = 0.

Why the math lesson? Because Zero Day, the new Netflix limited series starring Robert DeNiro is packed with great actors all doing their best to boost Zero Day into something like a real thriller. But all those great actors no matter how many there are, times a zero script equals zero.

And Zero Day's script is about as lame as it gets.

Why? Lame choices. It starts out with a nice premise - a cyber attack on the USA that in just one minute kills thousands and sends the country into a cyber-spin of panic. No phone, no internet, no TV, no nothing, for a full minute. The gods help us!

OK, let's say you want to write a political thriller about our troubled times, do you strip the script of any reference to actual issues, actual political parties, actual problems and just count on the audience to crayon in the colorless characters and settings? That's what the show's writer-producers decided to do.

Co-creator, co-showrunner and executive producer Eric Newman and co-creator/executive producer Noah Oppenheim, the former president of NBC News, who created the series with New York Times journalist Michael S. Schmidt, agree that “the mechanism for which we determine truth is collectively broken,” so Zero Day intentionally does not identify political parties, "so as to not distract from the series."

So it's as if Trump's fascist rhetoric is equal to Bernie Sanders' populist rants. Really? Zero Day actually has a left-wing TV pundit (Dan Stevens) who promotes conspiracy theories and is a thorn in the side of billionaires. As if it is just chance that all the powerful pundits in the US are right-wing apologists for those billionaires.

OK, back to the actual show. DeNiro is an ex-president Geroge Mullen who lives alone and seems to be starting down the road to dementia. Or not. He never ran for a second term because his son died from an overdose or killed himself - you don't really care because the son is just there for the plot; you never get to even see him except in a couple of clumsy 'hallucinations?' in Mullen's (demented?) mind.

Joan Allen pops up as his wife (ex-wife?) who wants to get on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals - yeah, that'll get the audiences juices flowing. Why not say a Supreme Court seat? Who knows - the creators have picked every undramatic choice possible. It seems the Mullens are split because he had an affair with his Chief of Staff, Valerie Whitesell (Connie Britton) while President. The idea of this never smiling - and I mean never ever smiling - DeNiro warming up to a woman is about as realistic as his being so heart-broken he gives up the Presidency.

Lizzie Caplan plays his daughter who is a shadow Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but without the pizazz. I felt sorry for Caplan who has a lot of explaining to deliver in the show and very little actual acting.

Jesse Plemons plays his 'fixer' who fixes nothing. Mathew Modine plays an ambitious Speaker of the House who wants to be President - just a quick reality check, the last Speaker of the House to become President was James Polk in 1845. Angela Bassett is the President - you think the creators had a vision? She has even less to do than Caplan until the end of the show when she gives a speech to a scowling DeNiro about how the truth isn't always the most important thing.

The series is elongated by a lot of nonsense about whether Mullen is suffering from dementia or by a new weapon called Proteus that can destabilize a person's mind. And just to show you how fair the creators are or try to be, the conclusion to this question is - we don't know. That's right, the creators of the show decided that either way works for them.

There is nothing even remotely exciting about this show - except how crazy it is. For example, at one point, Mullen and his wife (ex-wife) are attacked by a mob who kill their Secret Service driver and guards. OK, unlikely but possible. Except that when they are rescued, suddenly, they pretend that Mullen was killed. Why? It's not clear. And when it is revealed that he is actually alive, no one seems to be shocked.

I have some advice for showrunners of political shows like this set in the USA, watch some British or European TV political thrillers. Those shows actually are political and not afraid of it. The characters are real and so are the plots. And the creators of those shows make decisions - a bad decision is still better than no decision.

Zero Day is zero times zero - it tries to 'say something' but what it says is so much drivel that you cannot believe it took them 6 hours to say it. I'll give it to you here in one sentence: Let's all be nicer to each other.