S1E16 "Party Lines"
Kirkman and his staff have to win over five Republican Senators in order to get the gun control bill passed. As Speaker of the House, Hookstraten is supposedly the leader of her party. So, she sits down with the Senator who is vocal about gun control. He is unwilling to listen to her, telling her to get on board with the way things are going. So, Hookstraten decides to help out Kirkman, and publicly announce that she will work with Kirkman to change the wording of the bill if it is passed by the Senate.
Trying to get enough people to vote for a bill can be very entertaining, and it is here, as they gain three Republicans but lose one Democrat with Hookstraten's announcement. Fifty yes votes are obtained, and potentially one more, setting up the suspense for when the vote occurs. The Senator they hoped would get them to fifty-one votes no, which was surprising, but the win ends up coming from an unexpected place. I loved the way that this win came, because they simply assumed a Senator would vote no because her husband did, but their assumption was wrong. The conversation that the Kirkmans have with this Senator after the vote is inspiring and heart-warming.
Hannah discovers that there is a property in North Dakota that the person she tracked down last week visited, so she and Jason head to North Dakota. They discover that there is no facility on this property, just an open field. More searching, however, leads to a discovery. Hannah and Jason end up finding a bunch of explosives, leaving the question what are these explosives planned on being used on? Hannah and Jason don't seem to be too far from all of the answers now.
I would have liked for more to happen with Hannah and Jason before the end of the episode, but otherwise this was a very strong episode that mostly embraced the show's political drama side, and did so well.
Score: 9.5/10
What did you think of "Party Lines"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!