Political Animals - Season 1

After losing the Democratic primary race to Paul Garcetti, candidate and former First Lady Elaine Hammond asks her husband, Bud, for a divorce. Two years later, Elaine, now going by her maiden name Barrish, is the Secretary of State under Garcetti. When an enterprising reporter, Susan Berg, tries to reveal that her son T.J. attempted suicide due to personal problems, Elaine allows Berg to follow her for a week to silence the story. During that time, three journalists are taken hostage in Iran, disrupting her son Douglas's engagement party. Elaine tells Bud she plans to send him to Oman to negotiate. At the end of the episode, she privately tells her bodyguard that she plans to once again run for president.

Elaine convinces Garcetti to send Bud to negotiate for the hostages, but Vice President Collier remains unsure. Douglas discovers T.J. has begun taking drugs again. Collier announces on television that something will happen in Oman relating to the hostage crisis, causing Oman to pull out. Elaine makes a last-minute deal with the Turkish ambassador to hold the talks in Istanbul. Bud is successful and frees the hostages. Back home, T.J. attempts to steal money from his grandmother for his new nightclub after being denied money by her and his parents. He is unable to go through with it. Douglas ends up giving him the money. After Douglas's engagement party finally happens, he leaks to Berg that his mother will run again.

In an attempt to stop Elaine from running against him, Garcetti asks her longtime mentor, Justice Diane Nash (Vanessa Redgrave), to retire from the Supreme Court so he can appoint Barrish to take Nash's place. Nash considers taking the offer as her longtime partner is dying. However, someone in the White House leaks the details to The Washington Globe, allowing Susan to tip-off Elaine. Meanwhile, Elaine announces her candidacy to her family, drawing negative reactions from her mother. Bud, Douglas, and T.J. take a fishing trip and stay at the home of a pollster. The pollster predicts Elaine will win in the primary, but only if Bud remains out of the spotlight. Barrish convinces Nash not to accept Garcetti's offer, and Susan holds off her story on Elaine's candidacy on the condition that Douglas tells her everything that led up to it.

A flashback reveals that T.J.'s suicide attempt stemmed from an affair with a closeted Republican congressman, who was blackmailed by the White House. In the present, President Garcetti refuses to aid a sunken Chinese submarine off the West Coast. After an appeal to the Chinese fails, Elaine tells Garcetti that she will imminently announce her candidacy against him unless he rescues the Chinese crewmen. Georgia tricks Anne into confirming Elaine's presidential plans and leverages that knowledge into sharing a byline on the breaking story with Susan. T.J. opens his club despite the refusal of his parents to attend the opening as previously planned. T.J.'s dealer gives him cocaine at the club. Bud arrives at the opening and discovers T.J., unconscious following an overdose.

To deflect attention from T.J.'s overdose, Elaine asks Susan to write up a fake story in exchange for exclusive coverage of the submarine rescue. During the flight to San Diego, a drunken flirtation between Douglas and Susan leads to a sexual encounter. Meanwhile, Douglas' grandmother then reveals to Anne that she knows that she is bulimic. T.J. wakes up with Elaine lying next to him in a chair; he apologizes profusely and falls back asleep. After Bud arrives, Elaine leaves to confront Garcetti, who has learned that China's plans to scuttle the submarine will release a radioactive plume over San Diego. Elaine convinces Garcetti to ignore Chinese threats and successfully rescue the crewmen.

Garcetti refuses Elaine's resignation, asking her to run in the next election as his Vice President. Douglas comes clean about his betrayal to his mother after leaking out family secrets, including Elaine's resignation letter, to Susan. Air Force One crashes in France with President Garcetti aboard. Elaine helps avert a potential constitutional crisis by convincing Vice President Collier to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to become Acting President, rather than taking the presidential oath of office. Douglas and his fiancée Anne elope, but the Hammonds crash the wedding after T.J. figures out where they have gone. Bud tries to persuade Elaine to run against Collier.