Zero Day‘s Pitiful Engagement With Politics Isn’t What Audiences Need or Deserve

At first glance, Netflix’s new political thriller Zero Day has all the ingredients of a bingeable series: a star studded cast featuring some of this century’s best actors, a tight six episode run, and a timely backdrop of an America in crisis. However, the series wastes the talents of its ensemble cast with a tedious story, one where the politics are contrarian at the best of times, and dangerous at the worst.

This series inevitably lands differently now than it would have a few months ago, and perhaps this political thriller would be more apt in a year where America’s political climate isn’t as skewed as it is today. The show is styled as a conspiracy thriller along the lines of Netflix’s own The Night Agent, but it lacks the intrigue that genre requires. The plot meanders with each episode and it quickly becomes clear that not only is this show unsure of what it wants to say, the writers behind it may not have anything of value to say at all. 

Zero Day begins with an unknown party seizing control of every connected device in the United States and turning all of them off briefly, but long enough to cost thousands of lives. In the wake of this catastrophe, the hackers leave behind an ominous message on each cellphone in the country: “This Will Happen Again.” But even as the nation is seized in the grip of panic, they turn for reassurance to a universally beloved former president, George Mullen (Robert De Niro), whose peaceful retirement is halted amongst the chaos.

The country Mullen loves is under attack, and though he and everyone around him believes it’s being carried out by outside forces, it is revealed that the computer virus used in the attack was manufactured on U.S soil. This could open the series up to become an introspective examination of a country that is always at war with itself, but instead this thread is not explored as thoroughly as it should be. In Zero Day, everyone is a suspect, but we never actually get to know anybody well enough for their suspicious nature to actually matter.

Despite the finger being pointed at various characters, the show remains adamant that Mullen, a full blooded American patriot, is a person in power that the audience should trust. Though he’s displaying a waning memory that becomes more fractured with each day, Zero Day is adamant that the only one who can unite the people of the United States is Mullen. Along the way he makes his own mistakes, some so severe that they feel cataclysmic. Although far-right talking heads want him punished for these acts, the series itself quickly absolves him of any of his sins. 

Instead the show is determined to showcase that although Mullen’s hasty actions may have led to mistakes, his allegiance to the American people means these acts don’t make him a bad person. No matter how grotesque his misdeeds, he’s framed as a man struggling to be good. The same can be said for how the series sees the country he formerly ran as well. In Zero Day, there is no such thing as an America that makes mistakes. Rather, this is an America that perpetuates physical and psychological violence that is excused by the show’s characters and writers. If violence needs to be committed in the best interest of the American people, Zero Day claims that these characters should be able to enact these horrific tactics. 

In an age where people on each side of the political spectrum are attempting to reckon with America’s legacy, this series unfortunately has no interest in tackling these ideas that the real citizens of this very real country are engaging with every day. It takes a certain amount of courage to not only toe the line of politics, but actually place your foot over it. Zero Day is incapable of this courage, which in itself feels like a more poignant examination of American politics than the ones the show actually attempts to engage with.

The series ends with Mullen reading out a list of names of government officials who were directly involved in the blackout, while citizens around the country watch the news on their televisions. We watch as they smile and nod at their screens, pumping their fists in support of Mullen’s revelations. What they don’t know is that Mullen was directly responsible for the arrest of various citizens who were suspected to be involved, and the torture of right-wing television host Evan Green (Dan Stevens). In exposing those around him, our protagonist buries anyone who could expose his own sins, warping his reputation behind the backs of the American people. 

It’s here that the show could boldly take a stand against its protagonist, showcasing him as the villain of his own story. Instead, the series closes out with an eye-rolling shot of Mullen settling back into retirement, which in our current political climate, feels like an annoying cop out. This political thriller sheds any pretense of engaging with actual politics, relegating itself to the confines of a post-election piece of art that is neither courageous enough to take a stand, nor bold enough to withstand the black hole that is television in the streaming era.

Kaiya Shunyata is a freelance pop culture writer and academic based in Toronto. They have written for Rogerebert.com, Xtra, The Daily Dot, and more. You can follow them on Twitter, where they gab about film, queer subtext, and television.

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