History Series / MadamSecretary

* ProductPlacement: There's a number of scenes in mid-season 1 of the [=McCords=] (even the adults) playing ''VideoGame/{{Titanfall}}'' on an UsefulNotes/XboxOne.

* CanadaEh: "Blame Canada" from top to bottom, mostly PlayedForLaughs. Liz gets into a standoff with her Canadian counterpart over an environmental report, which she resolves by [[CanadianEqualsHockeyFan threatening to cancel the visas of every Canadian in the NHL]]. [[spoiler:Also played more seriously when the Canadians provide a back room of their embassy as a TruceZone so Liz can meet privately with Iranian Foreign Minister Zahed Javani and save the nuclear talks.]]

* ChekhovsGun[=/=]ChekhovsGunman: Many episodes' problems are solved by Elizabeth remembering and then somehow leveraging a piece of information or a character introduced earlier in the episode, usually to the ultimate benefit of all involved.

** In one episode, Henry, a retired Marine officer, tells off a pair of Air Force lieutenants for badmouthing Liz while drunk in uniform. Unlike what he tells them, however, [[https://themilitarywallet.com/types-of-military-discharges/ officers cannot receive bad conduct discharges.]] A few episodes Later, when Jason is expelled from Quaker school, he and Henry recall the incident and misidentify the twoie-louies as Marines. The dress blues look nothing alike between the two services: Air Force (and Navy) blues [[https://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.199245.1354598736!/image/2005830506.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_900/2005830506.jpg resemble business suits]], [[https://www.marines.com/content/dam/marines-com/who-we-are/values/battle-worn/8th_I_Portraits_DressBlues_MultipleEthnic_00001_700x610.jpg.img.full.low.jpg/1545242003897.jpg Marine blues]] are the famous ceremonial uniform often seen in USMC recruiting ads (the appropriate uniform in context would have been [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Plate_I%2C_Officers%27_Service_Uniforms_-_U.S._Marine_Corps_Uniforms_1983_%281984%29%2C_by_Donna_J._Neary.jpg green-and-khaki Service "A"]]).

** Averted when Dalton prepares to order a nuclear strike. Rather than the fictional "football" which is a computer that can launch nukes easily, Dalton has to call up the Pentagon to recite a set of codes off a card which is confirmed by his Head of the Joint Cheifs and National Security Advisor. And then has to repeat the process when the general on the scene is forced to bow out due to a divorce creating a security clearance issue.

* HappilyMarried: The show makes it quite clear that Liz and Henry's marriage is passionate in ''every'' sense, even after three kids and decades of marriage.

* HappilyMarried: Liz and Henry are clearly established as this from the word "go".

* BuryYourGays: Averted with Blake, {{justified}} with [[spoiler:Capt. Ivan Kolashkov, an ArmoredClosetGay Russian Army officer. After Maria Ostrova becomes President of Russia, she enacts a {{Purge}} of "Western influences", and Kolashkov is recalled to Russia for trial. He shoots himself instead.]]

* EurekaMoment: After [[spoiler: losing the primaries for re-election in Season 3,]] Dalton is ready to [[spoiler: endorse the new nominee, who already promises to undo everything Dalton has accomplished in office.]] When Dalton muses that he's more popular with moderates and the general public than in his own party, Liz [[spoiler: hits on the idea of Dalton running for re-election as an independent.]]

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Numerous times, various politicians (both foreign and American) assume Liz is acting out to get her name out there and increase her clout in Washington. It doesn't occur to them she really is trying to do what's right and could not care less about her political standing.

* TheExtremistWasRight: TheConspiracy from season 1. [[spoiler: Events in season 3 prove that they were right about the nuclear treaty with Iran. It collapses, partly because a faction within Iran breaks the treaty and partially because of Israeli distrust of the Iranians. At the same time, it's made clear that their plan would have ''also'' destabilized the Middle East due to the leader they'd chosen being terminally ill and being the only one who could hold post-coup Iran together. If anything, their plan would've made it worse since he would die before he could even fully consolidate his power over the country]].

* HappilyMarried: Liz and Henry are clearly established as this from the word "go". Not only are they plainly crazy about each other, there's a wealth of trust between them and, though they do argue relatively frequently, they always work it out. They're estranged for a little while after the middle of season two because [[spoiler:Liz and Dalton gave up Henry's mole Dmitri Petrov to Russian intelligence as part of the Ukrainian peace deal]], but they make up in the end.

* {{Hypocrite}}: [[StrawmanPolitical Carlos Morejon]], an anti-immigration senator from Arizona who attempts to stop Dalton from resettling a shipload of Libyan refugees. Liz calls him out on this, pointing out that Morejon's ''own'' parents were granted asylum when Castro took power in Cuba.

* InsaneTrollLogic: During Liz' impeachment hearings, Senator Canning argues that Henry convinced Liz to allow Dimitri to become a CIA asset and eventually date Liz's daughter to give herself a special agent in Russia and Henry pushing her to do it in order to further his own career by becoming First Gentleman and White House Ethics Counsel, all ''six years before'' Liz ever decided to run for office.
-->'''Henry''': Senator, if you were in my ethics class, I would give you an F because your "logic" is all over the map.
** Later, Canning accuses Liz of cooking up an entire conflict with China (which cost the lives of two dozen U.S. sailors) all as a huge distraction from the hearings. A fellow Senator who had kept quiet finally explodes as to how anyone with a brain can actually believe a President would sacrifice American soldiers and could convince China to risk World War III over her political survival when she could have easily invoked executive privilige to avoid the hearings altogether.

* NotHyperbole: A few times, Liz assumes one of her staff is using some metaphor on things going bad only to find they mean it literally.

* OnlyBadGuysCallTheirLawyers: In the season 1 finale Liz faces possible charges of violating the Espionage Act (for disclosing classified information to Henry so he could help her investigate Secretary Marsh's death). At the suggestion of getting a lawyer, she answers, "I don't want a lawyer. It'll make it look like I ''need'' a lawyer." Still legally wrong, but a {{justified}} attitude in this case due to the realities of politics: as she's the Secretary of State and a longtime friend and coworker of President Dalton, her looking guilty would reflect badly on him as well (and his standing has already been damaged by [[spoiler:the Tamerlane scandal]]).

-->"You ask an interesting question, Jeff. I'd like to start by making a distinction that I usually make on the very first day of my Morals and Ethics class. A lot of people say that morals are how we treat the people we know and ethics are how we treat the people we don't know. So morals are what make us a good parent, a good friend, a nice neighbor. But ethics are how we build a society. That's the true test of our higher self. But what happens, Jeff, when society is ruled by the subjective morals of, say, you and your family, and you choose to project that onto complete strangers is that we all end up with a society that's governed by self-aggrandizement. So, really, by calling in to make sure you're the first little pedant to jump off your chair and teach me a lesson with smug superiority about your own particular moral point of view when you know precisely ''nothing'' of the situation, you've done your part to contribute to the erosion of our entire social fabric. ''(SarcasticClapping)'' Pat yourself on the back. Bravo."
** In "The Race" Juliet delivers a subdued, but very effective one to Elizabeth [[spoiler: when she points out how obvious it was that the nuclear deal with Iran would inevitably lead to war between Iran and Israel.]]

** A deal to reopen relations with Cuba and lift the US trade embargo is nearly scuttled when a senator who had previously agreed to vote "yes" threatens to withdraw support over an escaped CopKiller living in Cuba (the cop's wife is from his state). [[spoiler:{{Justified}}: National Security Advisor Craig Sterling opposes the deal and went behind the President's back to the senator to try and sabotage it.]]

** When they're not using C-SPAN or giving one of CBS News's journalists a NewscasterCameo, all the cast seem to watch a cable news network dubbed "DWN" (probably meant to stand in for Creator/{{CNN}}).

--> Caption: [[spoiler:Day 97 of the McCord Presidency.]]

* AcceptablePoliticalTargets: The show has a noticeable bias towards center-right neoliberalism, especially in later seasons: far-right politicians like Sam Evans, Carlos Morejon, and Leon Perrin tend to be portrayed as venal, nationalistic {{hypocrite}}s, while left-wingers like Fred Reynolds (a UsefulNotes/BernieSanders stand-in) and Jason [=McCord=] are typically portrayed as [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids well-meaning but clueless ideologues]]. President Dalton, whom the show views generally favorably, runs essentially a "California Republican" administration[[note]]the show initially leans on NoPartyGiven, but the last season establishes Morejon, who is from Dalton's former party, as a Republican[[/note]]: moderately liberal on environmental and social issues but pursuing a lot of business-friendly domestic policies and bog-standard American foreign policy.

** In the season 4 premiere, Liz is in the room when a diplomat dies of a heart attack. It comes out he was poisoned and Liz suspects it was by his own people. But then a conspiracy site prints how ''Liz'' personally murdered the man. At first she brushes it off until, while interviewed, she's shown a senator saying it might be true and he wants her investigated. At the end of the peisode, Liz fires out a speech that gives us the episode's moral: that how "fake news" undermines real news, destrous public trust, and covers up real crimes

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: The show makes it quite clear that Liz and Henry's marriage is passionate in ''every'' sense, even after three kids and decades of marriage.

** In "Just Another Normal Day" Henry is writing a keynote address for a religious scholars' convention, starting with the joke "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas Thomas Aquinas]] walks into a bar," at which point he's interrupted by the kids. He later tries it on Liz over the phone, but the camera cuts to Liz's end and we just hear her reaction. Finally revealed in the series finale, the punch line is a gawdawful pun.[[note]]So Thomas Aquinas walks into a bar. Bartender pours him a big goblet of mead and says, "How you doing?" Aquinas says, "Oh, not so great. I've been working on this treatise for seminarians. Uh, basically explains all the major points of Catholicism. It could be the most important theological document of our time. I even thought of the perfect title. 'Summa Theologica.' So, I-I finish it, and I misplaced it. I can't find it anywhere, and I can't understand why God would inspire me to do this and then allow it to be taken away. What is God trying to tell me?" Bartender says, "Eh. You win summa, you lose summa."[[/note]]

* OrphanedSetup: In "Just Another Normal Day" Henry is writing a keynote address for a religious scholars' convention, starting with the joke "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas Thomas Aquinas]] walks into a bar," at which point he's interrupted by the kids. He later tries it on Liz over the phone, but the camera cuts to Liz's end and we just hear her reaction.

* NoodleIncident: Episode 18 of season 2, "On the Clock," gives a rather entertaining one over Elizabeth asking Henry to hire a repairman to fix their washing machine, rather than Henry fixing it himself.

* ANuclearError: The fear of nuclear war in ''Night Watch'', specifically the very short time the President has to make a decision about whether to launch a retaliatory strike [[spoiler: Once the ''Russian attack'' is revealed to be a hoax, and all out nuclear war avoided only because a General was coincidentally removed from duty as the strike was happening, Dalton is furious, and when Liz persuades Dalton and Russell to back her play to essentially remove all ICBM nukes from the US arsenal, her arguments are all based on the fear of such an error happening again.]]

* AlternateHistory: Starting at about the TurnOfTheMillennium. Conrad Dalton was high up in the CIA, possibly Director of Central Intelligence, under a preceding president (assumed to be UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush since the details about the Iraq War are basically consistent with real life), but is a first-term president in 2014 (UsefulNotes/BarackObama was in the middle of his second when the show premiered), implying there was another one-term president in between whom he replaced. UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan is also confirmed to have been president in the past.

* CIAEvilFBIGood: ZigZagged. On the one hand, Liz and President Dalton are both former CIA personnel, and they're definitely the good guys. On the other hand, [[spoiler:a RenegadeSplinterFaction in the CIA is the BigBad for season one]]. The FBI isn't really present in this series except as background characters.

* AdultFear: The fear of nuclear war in ''Night Watch'', specifically the very short time the President has to make a decision about whether to launch a retaliatory strike [[spoiler: Once the ''Russian attack'' is revealed to be a hoax, and all out nuclear war avoided only because a General was coincidentally removed from duty as the strike was happening, Dalton is furious, and when Liz persuades Dalton and Russell to back her play to essentially remove all ICBM nukes from the US arsenal, her arguments are all based on the fear of such an error happening again.]]

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: In a show mostly about political drama (with a little occasional espionage), the last several episodes of Season 2 feature considerably more physical action. Henry's anti-terrorism working group consists of highly-trained (though mostly {{retired|badass}}) military and intelligence operatives who [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything do much of their own field work]], culminating in [[spoiler:a sequence where they're trapped on the ground in hostile territory, and have to fight and sneak their way to an evac site.]] {{Downplayed|Trope}} in that these episodes still contain a lot of sequences in DC.

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