Zero Day

Summary

Pop Culture Happy Hour – Episode: Zero Day

Hosts: Linda Holmes & Guest: Eric Deggans
Release Date: February 25, 2025

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In this episode of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, arts journalist Linda Holmes is joined by NPR’s TV critic, Eric Deggans, to discuss the recently released Netflix series Zero Day. The conversation delves into the show's narrative, character development, thematic elements, and overall execution, providing listeners with a comprehensive critique of the series.

Introduction to Zero Day

Linda Holmes opens the discussion by introducing Zero Day, a Netflix series described as a paranoid political thriller tailored for contemporary audiences. The plot centers around a catastrophic cyber-attack that temporarily cripples the United States’ infrastructure, leading to widespread chaos and loss of life. The government forms the Zero Day Commission to investigate the attack and prevent future occurrences. The series features a star-studded cast including Robert De Niro as former President George Mullen, Angela Bassett as the current President Lizzy Kaplan, Jesse Plemons, Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Matthew Modine, and Dan Stevens.

Linda Holmes [00:33]: "The Netflix series Zero Day begins with a terrifying moment in which everything in the United States goes briefly offline. [...] With a cast headed by Robert De Niro and Angela Bassett, the show hopes to be a paranoid political thriller for our times."

Initial Impressions

Eric Deggans shares his initial expectations and subsequent reactions to the series, expressing disappointment despite appreciating certain elements.

Eric Deggans [04:25]: "I have to say I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. And there were elements of it that I really did like."

He highlights his interest in political thrillers and the unique angle of centering the story around an older, retired president grappling with mental challenges.

Plot Elements: Mind Control vs. Dementia vs. Stress

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the ambiguity surrounding the protagonist’s motivations and mental state. The series hints at various explanations for former President George Mullen’s actions post-attack, leaving viewers uncertain whether his behavior is due to mind control, cognitive decline, or overwhelming stress.

Robert De Niro as George Mullen [03:30]: "I do not render judgment on the extent of the powers I have been granted. They are unprecedented, as is this danger. But I do offer you my solemn vow we will only employ them insofar as they are absolutely necessary."

Eric and Linda debate whether the series effectively explores these themes or leaves them unresolved, impacting the show's overall coherence.

Eric Deggans [05:14]: "You know, he's having problems with perhaps his cognition, and it's hard to tell if he has access to something that is communicating to him, special information on what is actually happening here or whether he's slowly losing his mind."

Linda Holmes [05:45]: "Is it mind control? Is it dementia? [...] They're trying so hard to avoid any actual political relevance."

Critique of Political Depth and Partisanship

Linda Holmes critiques the series for its handling of political themes, noting a lack of substantive political positions among characters. She argues that the show’s reluctance to assign clear political identities to its characters results in a phony and inauthentic portrayal of political dynamics.

Linda Holmes [06:19]: "I don't know that you can make a political thriller that is about political acts like signing laws, holding commissions, making reports, and be as resolute as these people are about never suggesting what the substantive politics of any of these people are."

Eric draws parallels to earlier political dramas, such as The West Wing, highlighting a trend of avoiding deep political conflict, which diminishes the series' tension and realism.

Eric Deggans [08:11]: "I have to say that was the one thing that always brought me up short when I would watch the West Wing, [...] And I was just gonna say we're seeing that here to the nth degree."

Pacing and Structure: The “Streameritis” Phenomenon

The hosts discuss the show’s pacing, attributing flaws to what Eric terms “streameritis”—a tendency of streaming platforms to stretch narratives across multiple episodes to maximize viewer engagement. This results in episodes that feel padded with irrelevant scenes and red herrings, detracting from the main storyline and leading to viewer frustration.

Eric Deggans [10:25]: "They felt like there was a lot of stuff in there sort of designed to stretch out the story and keep people engaged over multiple episodes when they could have done this in maybe three episodes."

Linda Holmes [16:23]: "You want everything to matter. [...] at the end to go chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, and kind of fall into place together."

Character Performances and Utilization of Cast

While acknowledging the impressive ensemble cast, both Linda and Eric critique the underutilization of characters, particularly Angela Bassett’s role as President Lizzy Kaplan. They argue that despite her acting prowess, her character lacks depth and meaningful interaction, limiting her impact on the narrative.

Eric Deggans [10:04]: "Angela Bassett's playing the President. She doesn't get to do much except [...] Occasionally say stern things to Robert De Niro."

They also discuss how star power may lead to character inclusion without sufficient narrative purpose, exemplified by Dan Stevens’ character, which adds unnecessary subplots that do not contribute significantly to the main plot.

Linda Holmes [09:11]: "You don't need it. You could have made this whole thing a movie, I think, and probably retained most of what is potentially fun about it."

Behind the Scenes: Show Business Realities

Eric provides insight into the challenges faced by showrunners in the streaming landscape. He explains that the pressure to engage viewers over multiple episodes often leads to compromised storytelling, where plotlines are artificially extended to fit episode counts rather than serving the story’s natural progression.

Eric Deggans [15:22]: "They're constantly pushing them to delay payoff moments in episodes [...] And the result for the viewer is that you're watching episodes where nothing of real import happens."

This behind-the-scenes perspective sheds light on why Zero Day may suffer from narrative inefficiencies and lack of resolution.

Conclusion and Overall Impressions

Despite the promising premise and high-caliber cast, both hosts express disappointment with Zero Day. Linda critiques the series for its lack of political authenticity and unresolved plot elements, while Eric highlights the detrimental effects of poor pacing and overstuffed character arcs. They concur that the show fails to deliver a satisfying thriller experience, leaving much to be desired in its execution.

Linda Holmes [16:37]: "Neither one of us, big fan of Zero day, but Robert De Niro remains Robert De Niro."

Linda invites listeners to share their thoughts on the series, signaling an open-ended ending to their critique.

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Notable Quotes:

• Robert De Niro as George Mullen [03:30]: "I do not render judgment on the extent of the powers I have been granted. They are unprecedented, as is this danger. But I do offer you my solemn vow we will only employ them insofar as they are absolutely necessary."

• Linda Holmes [05:41]: "Like, is it part of his makeup that he wanted to do this to people and have these powers and flex these powers? Or was it because of mind control?"

• Joan Allen as George’s Wife [13:57]: "It causes memory loss, temporary confusion. How about a sudden affinity for fascism? Is that on the list?"

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Production Credits:

• Produced by: Hafsa Fathoma and Liz Metzger
• Edited by: Mike Katsif
• Supervising Producer: Jessica Reedy
• Theme Music: Provided by Come In

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Join the Conversation:
What are your thoughts on Zero Day? Share your opinions with us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH.

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Note: This summary focuses solely on the content discussed in the podcast, omitting advertisements, intros, and outros to provide a clear and comprehensive overview for those who haven’t listened to the episode.

Transcript

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[Linda Holmes]

The Netflix series Zero Day begins with a terrifying moment in which everything in the United States goes briefly offline. Power, Internet, banking systems, transportation systems, everything. Thousands of people die, and even after everything is restored, a widespread panic leads to a government investigation of who did it. With a cast headed by Robert De Niro and Angela Bassett, the show hopes to be a paranoid political thriller for our times. I'm Linda Holmes and today we're talking about Zero Day on Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr.

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[Linda Holmes]

Joining me today is NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans. Hello, Eric. I'm so glad I have you here to go over this with me.

[Eric Deggans]

I know, I know it's super complicated, but hopefully we'll, we'll figure it out together.

[Linda Holmes]

Yeah, we'll figure it out together. We'll figure it out. So in Zero Day, Robert De Niro plays beloved former president George Mullen. He's appointed the head of the Zero Day Commission after a deadly cyber attack, and he must find out who did it and prevent it from happening again.

[Robert De Niro Character]

I do not render judgment on the extent of the powers I have been granted. They are unprecedented, as is this danger. But I do offer you my solemn vow we will only employ them insofar as they are absolutely necessary.

[Linda Holmes]

Also in the cast, which is large and impressive, Angela Bassett as the current president, Lizzy Kaplan as George's daughter who's also a member of Congress Jesse Plemons as George's longtime right hand man, Connie Britton as George's aide and former paramour, Joan Allen as his faithful wife, Matthew Modine as the speaker of the House, and Gabby Hoffman as a shadowy tech mogul. What they're going for here is a political thriller where you're not sure who to trust out of all these people. Zero Day is streaming now on Netflix. Eric, I think you like I come into a political thriller thinking I want this. How did this work for you?

[Eric Deggans]

I have to say I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. And there were elements of it that I really did like. There were parts of the story that I thought were interesting. I'm a sucker for political thrillers. So I was really hoping to see more, I guess, political thriller here. And I was intrigued by the idea of centering the whole story on Robert De Niro's character, who's a retired president and is an older character than we see in a lot of these thrillers. And, you know, most of his challenges are mental. You know, he's having problems with perhaps his cognition, and it's hard to tell if he has access to something that is communicating to him, special information on what is actually happening here or whether he's slowly losing his mind.

[Linda Holmes]

I guess I would call it a flirtation with mind control.

[NPR Sponsor]

Yes.

[Linda Holmes]

Similar to kind of what you see in Winter Soldier and that strand of the Marvel movies of, like, is someone controlling him remotely with triggering of some kind? But my sense is, like, they don't really decide what they want to do about that. So you get this, like, is it mind control? Is it dementia?

[Eric Deggans]

Is it just that he was under some serious stress?

[Linda Holmes]

Yeah. And they don't seem to want to decide about that.

[Eric Deggans]

You always wonder if some of this is sort of the result of our current streaming universe where when people write these things, they have no idea whether there'll be another one.

[Linda Holmes]

Yeah.

[Eric Deggans]

You know, maybe that's their way of leaving the door open. If we leave the door open with some questions about what happened to George Mullen, maybe there's a way to keep the story going. That's what I was wondering every time I ran into a situation where they didn't resolve things. And there are several situations here where they don't resolve things.

[Linda Holmes]

Yeah. You know, I have seen things on television that I liked less than this, but not in a while.

[Eric Deggans]

So this is where Linda is less nice than Eric.

[Linda Holmes]

I really thought this was very bad. And I thought it was bad in two primary ways, one of which is, I don't know that you can make a political thriller that is about political acts like signing laws, holding commissions, making reports, and be as resolute as these people are about never suggesting what the substantive politics of any of these people are. It's not just that they don't say who's a Republican and who's a Democrat. They don't really give anybody any substantive politics about anything other than we all want to save the country and solve zero day. It is not that I need it to be a partisan piece. That's not what I'm saying. But it is so phony to me because they are so carefully going around and making sure that nobody can ever be identified with any particular political position that it all feels incredibly fake. And that includes, you know, one of the people that I didn't mention in the intro is Dan Stevens, who plays what I would call a wing podcaster. You cannot really tell whether he is a left wing podcaster or a right wing podcaster. He is just a wing.

[Eric Deggans]

He seems pretty much in the Alex Jones, Glenn Beck kind of.

[Linda Holmes]

I don't know, man. I think they want you not to know. And so.

[Eric Deggans]

Well, they're not explicitly identifying what party he aligns with, but everything about visually, about how they present him agree with you.

[Linda Holmes]

But I think there are places where they try to make it possible that he's kind of a left wing guy who just operates with similar signifiers. My point is, this is what I mean when I say it all gets very labored to me because they're trying so hard to avoid any actual political relevance.

[Eric Deggans]

I have to say that was the one thing that always brought me up short when I would watch the West Wing, is that the partisanship that we are struggling with now was starting to emerge when that show was on the air. And they. The West Wing existed in a world where that partisanship was not distorting politics even to the extent that it was doing it in that moment. And so there were a lot of times when they had political crises that they would resolve that would never happen in real life and felt like a fairy tale.

[Linda Holmes]

Right.

[Eric Deggans]

And I was just gonna say we're seeing that here to the nth degree.

[Linda Holmes]

That's what I mean. I think you're absolutely right. And it's like, this is that. But more, however, yes, I have these issues with the way it handles politics. I also just think it's a bad show. You get through the first episode, which is pretty decent as a thriller opening where they set up this terrible situation and they. The guy's got to sort of answer the call from retirement and all that stuff. And then I think you don't really need to watch any of it until about the fifth episode.

[Eric Deggans]

That's what I was gonna say. It starts interesting and the ending was interesting. The middle part, I think the ending.

[Linda Holmes]

I didn't like the ending. I think the ending is very, very, very silly. And the resolution of what was the motivation for this attack is absurd. However, at least stuff starts to happen. And the entire middle part, maybe episodes two through four, ish, are really just a series, I think, of red herrings and a bunch of stuff that's not gonna be important, including that entire Dan Stevens thing, which is not really necessary. You don't need it. You could have made this whole thing a movie, I think, and probably retained most of what is potentially fun about it. I do want to ask you about this cast. How did you feel about the way they used this cast?

[Eric Deggans]

Well, you know, Angela Bassett's playing the President. She doesn't get to do much except. Except occasionally say stern things to Robert De Niro.

[Robert De Niro Character]

We have no clue here and no time to spare.

[Eric Deggans]

We need an entity with all the powers of every law enforcement and intelligence agency put together operating on American soil.

[Linda Holmes]

Well, she has, like, imported Angela Bassett authority that she brings to that part.

[Eric Deggans]

I think if anybody other than Robert De Niro were starring in this show, there's no way she would have played that part. They would have had to get somebody who's not as famous and not as accomplished. Jesse Plemons, we got then Jesse Plemons, which is, you know, he looks great in this role. But I think what you were talking about in terms of the pacing of the show is also what I have come to call streameritis. It is hard for people who are green lighting these shows for streamers to figure out how to pace series sometimes. And you'll be watching one and you'll get the sense, man, they could have told this in three episodes or four episodes. Why is it eight or why is it seven or whatever. And I definitely had that sense with this one is that they felt like there was a lot of stuff in there sort of designed to stretch out the story and keep people engaged over multiple episodes when they could have done this. You know, it would have been nice to see them do it in maybe three episodes. I wouldn't say that it was, you know, tight enough to be a movie.

[Linda Holmes]

Right.

[Eric Deggans]

And I'll also push back just a little bit and say, if you remember what the country was like in the wake of 9 11, I do get.

[Linda Holmes]

That, and I do think that's fair.

[Eric Deggans]

We were in a very different time, and I think just to fill in the holes a little bit. So Robert De Niro's character is a retired president who is still very beloved and has a lot of credibility with the American people. This awful cyber attack happens, and everyone's concerned that it can happen again. So they form a commission to try and get to the bottom of what happened. And they are given extraordinary investigative powers. They are allowed to imprison people without warrants, without any kind of due process, really, and press suspects until they get whatever information they want out of them using tort. And I think they try to justify that by positing that the nation is in the same place that it was in the wake of 9 11, where people were willing to sign off, you know, on something like the Patriot Act.

[Linda Holmes]

I think you're right that there's something here that could feel effective. It's just, I think the show is very reluctant to have a point of view, and I don't necessarily mean a political, partisan point of view. I just mean, like, does Mullen have a point of view about these things? Cause I think there are times when he seems to want to take advantage of these Extraordinary powers. And then there are times when they suggest maybe he's taking advantage of these extraordinary powers because he's being mind controlled. And to me, that's, like, rather relevant to how I feel about the character. And to kind of chicken out of saying, like, yes or no to. Is it part of his makeup that he wanted to do this to people and have these powers and flex these powers? Or was it because of mind control? Like, to me, you can't kind of, like, maybe. Who can say? Like, you can say you wrote the show.

[Eric Deggans]

And another option is just that he was being. In some way. Either it was happening to him naturally or it was being induced to him from outside. That he was undergoing some sort of deterioration, leading him to make choices that he wouldn't normally make.

[Linda Holmes]

Right. And there's a moment where his wife, played by Joan Allen, who also, I think, gets not nearly enough to do. Here they're talking about, like, the potential for his mind to be affected by different things. Medication, maybe it's migratory, whatever. And she says something about makes you feel like you want to be a fascist.

[Robert De Niro Character]

It causes memory loss, temporary confusion. How about a sudden affinity for fascism? Is that on the list?

[Linda Holmes]

You can't just, like, throw that out and then kind of never deal again with the fact that his wife feels this way about what he's doing. I do think that I held this to a higher standard because this is the kind of thing I like. I like political thrillers. I think with a thriller, you gotta provide some resolution. There are a bunch of different things that they kind of throw out there and they don't do a lot with. And I thought, well, why is this even here?

[Eric Deggans]

The other thing is with a show like this, because there's so much a level talent in it, they all have to have something to do. And one reason why Dan Stevens part was probably as big as it was is because Dan Stevens was playing that character, right? And so you have to give him some stuff to do or he's not gonna wanna do this show. So he got a lot of stuff to do that ultimately didn't matter very much to the main storyline. And who knows, maybe there was some version of this where all that stuff he went through was much more integral. Who knows? But I do think that when you have Angela Bassett and Jesse Plemons and Connie Britton and Bill Camp and Dan Stevens and Gabby Hoffman and Clark Gregg, when you forgot all those people that you have to service, there's no way you can give them all great scenes and do that in three or four episodes. So I think there's a lot of show busy behind the scenes reasons.

[Linda Holmes]

I was gonna say Eric. Eric is always bringing the show business reality to bum me out about why I can't have what I want because.

[Eric Deggans]

I spend so much time talking to these people.

[Linda Holmes]

I know you do.

[Eric Deggans]

And I have a lot of friends who are writers who worked in broadcast and now are pitching to streamers. And what they constantly tell me is that the streaming services, the people in charge, don't necessarily have a great grasp of how to make television. And they are constantly pushing them to delay payoff moments in episodes from the first episode back to maybe the third or fourth episode, because their main goal is to get people to watch as many episodes in one sitting as possible. And the result for the viewer is that you're watching episodes where nothing of real import happens. And you're constantly wondering, should I be paying attention to that? I mean, especially in a thriller, you're paying attention to every little note because you don't know which detail is actually gonna mean something in the end.

[Linda Holmes]

You want everything to matter. That's the satisfaction is you want everything at the end to go chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, and kind of fall into place together.

[Eric Deggans]

Exactly. And so when there's padding and you're paying attention to a bunch of things that ultimately don't matter, you get towards the end of the season running and you start to feel like you wasted your time as a viewer. And I think that is a big problem for Zero day.

[Linda Holmes]

You know, neither one of us, big fan of Zero day, but Robert De Niro remains Robert De Niro. We want to know what you think about zero day. Find [e-mail] PCHH that brings us to the end of our show. Eric Deggans, thank you so much for being here. It is always a pleasure.

[Eric Deggans]

Oh, thank you so much. And you know, watch Day of the Jackal on Peacock. That's a much better thriller.

[Linda Holmes]

There you go. There you go. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fathoma and Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katsif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. Hello. Come in. Provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to pop culture Happy hour from npr. I'm Linda Holmes and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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