The Unicorn Scale: Madam Secretary

For years and years, people implored me to watch the celebrated political drama The West Wing (1999–2006), assuring me that I’d love it. I always gave my usual answer when folks get a little too pushy with recommendations: “I’ll get around to it.” Well, I finally did get around to it, and I’m not above admitting when I’m wrong. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that it sent me spiraling into a political drama bender, searching out and devouring every series I could find. I binged the pulse-pounding but increasingly ridiculous Designated Survivor (2016–2019). 

I rewatched the classic House of Cards (2013–2018) and its tragically nonsensical final season. I even watched historical political mini-series like the brilliant John Adams (2008) and the underwhelming Franklin (2024). Eventually, like some cursed character out of mythology, I found myself running out of things to consume in my supernaturally insatiable hunger. Then I stumbled onto the mid-2010s series Madam Secretary (2014–2019).

At first, I was unsure if the show would suit my appetite. It’s not about a president, or an administration, or a famous and influential figure. Rather, the show follows the career of Elizabeth McCord (played by Téa Leoni), an ex-CIA analyst plucked from obscurity by President Conrad Dalton (Keith Carradine) — her former CIA boss — to be secretary of state after the previous secretary died in a mysterious plane crash. The show focuses less on palace intrigue, political scheming, and legislative sausage-making, and more on diplomacy, spycraft, and high-stakes negotiations, balanced with Elizabeth’s family life. But despite being a bit removed from the kinds of political dramas I’d been churning through, Madam Secretary hooked me. And as the series unfolded, it unexpectedly developed into an impressively bi show too.

Before we go further, please note that this review will contain some SPOILERS for the series (I’ll keep them relatively minor). If this is your first time reading a Unicorn Scale, the rating system is explained here, and the Bi.org Media Entry on the series is here.

What I Liked:

Purely as a television show, the series is remarkably well-balanced. The audience gets a very distinct front-row seat to the highest level of the US State Department, something most political shows only gloss over, while also giving us enough presidential politics and White House screen time to slake our West Wing thirst. Interwoven with Elizabeth’s work-related storylines is the McCord family, with husband Henry (Tim Daly), a religious scholar and sometimes-spy, the ambitious but impulsive eldest daughter Stevie (Wallis Currie-Wood), middle kid and burgeoning fashionista Alison (Kathrine Herzer), and the rebellious nonconformist Jason (Evan Roe). Some series or films try to be everything to everybody and end up pleasing no one. Madam Secretary manages to pull off being a political show, spy thriller, and family drama all in one package.

Where the show’s unicorn colors truly shine is with its bi representation. From the very first episode, Elizabeth is flanked by her ever-reliable, tirelessly loyal, and impeccably prepared assistant Blake Moran (Erich Bergen). The series initially coded his character in a way most will read as gay. It was all the Hollywood clichés: too coiffed, meticulously neat, even a bit of the stereotypical “gay” accent. And yet the show curiously held back from embracing his seeming homosexuality. He did not call himself gay, we did not see him in any relationships, and his character consistently made a concerted effort to obfuscate the sex of the people he dated, a fact remarked upon by his peers. In time, we learn that this was a deliberate choice made by the writers, not to perpetuate the cowardly trope of having a queer character whose queerness exists only by inference, but to turn common sexuality assumptions on their head.

In season three, we finally see Blake meet an ex-boyfriend at a bar, and the two get into an argument that at first appears to be over the fact that Blake refuses to own his sexuality as a gay man. But it turns out that Blake is actually bi, which his former lover rejects. The encounter upsets Blake so much that the usually private and even-keeled assistant holds up Secretary McCord’s motorcade to come out as bi. In a bi speech for the ages, he voices the pent-up frustrations so many bi people feel about being erased or misunderstood for not fitting neatly into a “straight” or “gay” binary. He says the words so many shows and films avoid: “I’m bisexual.” He even calls out “biphobia” by name. There’s a moment of uncertainty where he — and the audience — hold their breath to see how Elizabeth will react. She wordlessly steps out of the car and embraces him. Throughout the rest of the series, we see Blake for who he is: an openly bi man.

In season four, Kat Sandoval, one of Elizabeth’s top policy advisers (played by the bi actor Sara Ramirez), is also revealed to be bi — again saying the B-word out loud — and later goes on to have interactions with other characters who had assumed she was lesbian and setting the record straight. As the kids say, I didn’t have two major characters being loudly bi on my Madam Secretary bingo card when I watched the pilot episode. What’s as noteworthy as the fact that the show turned out to be so bi was the fact that, unlike most bi characters in media, who come off to most people as superficially straight at a glance, they chose two characters who instead set off most folks’ gaydars, showing perhaps the most underrepresented kind of bi characters in fiction.

What I Didn’t Like:

In contrast with so much of the content we watch these days, including most of the shows reviewed here on The Unicorn Scale, Madam Secretary isn’t a streaming series, but good old-fashioned network TV, 20+-episode seasons and all. While I take major issue with the ways in which streaming has gradually transformed American television into British-style TV, with criminally short seasons and multi-year gaps between them, the old network model has its drawbacks too. With so many hour-long episodes to fill, second-rate material ends up making its way into some episodes and arcs. It’s a good show — and it gets even better as it develops, but sadly not every political series can be The West Wing.

The Rating:

From a bi representation standpoint, there’s not much to complain about. Sure, we could ask for Blake’s bisexuality to be introduced earlier in the series, or for Blake and Kat’s love lives to get more screen time. But honestly, for a show that no one would ever watch with expectations of LGBT representation besides the odd token gay, and given how often bisexuality goes erased or unnamed in media, I don’t know how anyone can give Madam Secretary less than four unicorns.