'Designated Survivor' Season 2, Episode 2 'Sting of the Tail' Recap: Playing It By Ear

Here’s a little fun fact from Designated Survivor Season 2 Episode 2. Did you know that ears make even a unique identifying marks than fingerprints? We definitely didn’t. And apparently neither did our conspiracy mastermind Patrick Lloyd (Terry Serpico), who finally meets his end in “Sting of the Tail.” And yes, ear recognition software, of all things, did play a small part in it. Sort of. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The End Of Patrick Lloyd?

In “Sting of the Tail,” we get a whole lot of hullabaloo ultimately culminating in a whole lot of nothing. First off, FBI Agent Hannah Wells (Maggie Q) and MI6 rival Agent Damian Rennett (Ben Lawson) use ear recognition software to track Lloyd’s arrival stateside. Told you the ear was important.

Anyway, the agents follow Lloyd to Washington, D.C., where they discover his estranged son Travis. While Wells and Rennett interrogate Travis, Lloyd breaks into the home of the President’s mother-in-law Eva Booker (Bonnie Bedelia). Which, what? Don’t target the grandma! Never target the grandma! But Lloyd makes a scene at grandma’s place anyway, ostensibly as a message to President Tom Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) not to mess with him. Then Lloyd flees.
Dynamic duo Wells and Rennett get a tip that Lloyd is in Rockville, Maryland. Spoiler alert: he’s there. After a short gunfight injures Rennett, Lloyd holes himself inside a bunker. He sends an ultimatum to the President during the Correspondent’s Dinner: either Lloyd gets amnesty or his drone will release sarin gas on everyone in D.C. The President tries to reason with Lloyd and learns his sad backstory. But Lloyd can’t be reasoned with. Ultimately, the President decides to use a drone to drop a bomb on Lloyd’s bunker. Later, they find Lloyd’s remains, so the mastermind’s almost definitely dead.
But – plot twist – it seems that Lloyd had a trick up his sleeve. Before he died, he managed to upload something to the cloud. The mastermind’s not done masterminding just yet.

In Conclusion

Honestly, the recap sounds a lot more entertaining than this episode actually was. That’s because not much actually happened. We meet the mother-in-law. President Kirkman hires a new White House Counsel. Lloyd gets a bomb dropped on top of him. Before he presumably kicks the bucket, he manages to upload something to the cloud. The “sting of the tail,” as it were. And that’s about the extent of the important plot development in this hour of sadly underwhelming payoff.
Despite the huge buildup from Season 1, Lloyd’s death felt rushed and flat. He came in, delivered his threats, went out via bomb, and – that’s it. If it weren’t for the mysterious upload at the end, his arc would have amounted to a huge waste of time, development-wise. Also, for a mastermind, Lloyd made a lot of illogical moves in the episode – see: breaking into grandma’s house. Apart from the shock factor, there wasn’t much point to his play. Even his death brought about by drone felt off-key and unnecessary as if giving him a violent end would erase his Season 1 conspiracy and usher in the real plot of Season 2. Whatever that might be.