With the CBS political drama airing its sixth and final season in 2019, let’s take a look back at where it all began with a season 1 Madam Secretary recap. Madam Secretary stars Téa Leoni as former CIA analyst and college professor Elizabeth McCord. After Secretary of State Vincent Marsh dies in a suspicious plane crash, Elizabeth is recruited by her old CIA mentor and current POTUS Conrad Dalton (Keith Carradine) to take his place.
Being something of a maverick, Elizabeth starts ruffling feathers pretty much immediately with her unconventional way of getting things done, which often means circumventing the POTUS and his Chief of Staff Russell Jackson (Željko Ivanek). Just as she’s settling into her new role, Elizabeth gets the news her old CIA colleague George Peters (William Sadler, The Shawshank Redemption) has died in a car crash shortly after disclosing to her that Marsh’s death was no accident – two story arcs that would play out over the course of Madam Secretary season 1.
Despite the death of her friend and an apparent conspiracy on her hands, it was business as usual for Elizabeth as she juggled her professional and home life with husband Henry (Tim Daly) and their three kids. Throughout the first season of Madam Secretary, Elizabeth dealt with everything from the release of American hostages in Syria and an Edward Snowden type whistleblower to the Greek economical crisis and an American religious death cult in Bolivia.
One running plotline throughout Madam Secretary season 1 was Elizabeth’s dealings with Iran. Alongside negotiating peace talks between the U.S. and Iran regarding the former’s nuclear program, Elizabeth discovered that the situation in Iran was related to the deaths of both George Peters and Vincent Marsh, which would see the newly appointed Secretary of State face her biggest crisis yet.
Towards the end of Madam Secretary’s first season, Elizabeth learned that a CIA-backed coup involving the CIA director Andrew Munsey (Patrick Breen), the late Marsh and her old CIA colleague Juliet Humphrey (Nilaja Sun) was about to take place in Iran. Elizabeth was able to avert the coup, Munsey committed suicide and it was finally revealed that Marsh was killed after he got cold feet about the coup and that George was offed after he found out what was going on.
The main mystery of season 1 was solved, but the political drama didn’t end there. Still reeling from Juliet’s betrayal and hand in George’s death, Elizabeth was subpoenaed to appear before a Senate investigation committee looking into the administration’s involvement in the Iran coup. Although Elizabeth overcame that hurdle, the first season of Madam Secretary ended on a melancholy note with a flashback that showed her having a celebratory dinner in honor of her leaving the CIA with her old colleagues Juliet, George, Munsey, and Dalton and raising a glass to their friendship.
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