Designated Survivor
Netflix, Season 3
So good it hurts (himself)
Best season to date.
The pretense for the series Designated Survivor is that an explosion claims the lives of the president, the entire succession, and most other important American politicians. The one exception is the almost unknown Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Thomas “Tom” Kirkman who steps in as president because he is the only one left standing.
Kirkman is not very politically savvy but an expert with a heart of gold. He never made it far in politics for these very reasons. He is so much a good guy that he is far too honest and unselfish to be taken seriously. So, what if someone like him became president?
It is a great idea for a series, and the cast is good too.
The latest season
Season three is the best so far. Being in power and campaigning to stay in the office slowly corrupts even goody-good Kirkman and the people around him, or does it? I liked his new campaign boss-lady (played by Julie White). Is she a traitor working for his opponent, his best friend, or what? A scary bio-threat might kill a lot of people. Could someone develop this for real? Use of documentary video sequences showing real Americans commenting on what they think needs to be changed in society is good at making the plots feel important and meaningful. Like the subplot around combatting the opioid addictions brought on by taking proscribed medications. This blending of documentary video, real issues, and fictitious events gives the series a nice kick. I hope they use it in the next season as well.
Throughout all the seasons the writers have spent many minutes on action "spy-plots" while being clearly more interested in the political questions and development of the characters. In this manner, the various plots revolving around the FBI and CIA played second fiddle to the political stories, and the “administrative” stories such as how to rebuild the administration, and the personal like Kirkman coming to terms with being thrust into the president’s chair.
The series is worth your time, but I suggest you watch it the fast way: Binge down the first few episodes then skips to season three. It’s only ten episodes long.
If you want to know what is wrong with the rest read on.
Why I did not review the first two seasons
As you may know, I only review stuff I really like, and while the first seasons were decent, there were several things bugging me too much to bother endorsing it.
I guess the writers are doing their best to make a "perfect president". In many ways, Kirkman is as good a guy as they come, but this often becomes boring. It would be nice if they made more things that translated towards the reality of who governs the US currently.
Give the man some flaws and make the public respect and adore him more for his obvious qualities instead of continually questioning if he is what he really is.
Then make them dislike him for other reasons. Political or emotional reasons for instance. Enough to make it a race to stay in power.
Kirkman has so many weak points you can exploit, most of them revolving around him being naive or such a good guy. He loves everyone and thinks everyone deserves a chance or respect or whatever. Even if many people say they do exactly that, they continue to vote for people who clearly don’t so surprise! Voters don’t either. Most of us hu-mans are selfish or care about some cause close to us or some cause we feel has been neglected, or just out of fear or spite. If not, the world would be a better place. Not to say everything is bad or anything, but it could be better.
Writers: Step on his week points one at a time.
The biggest issue I have with the series is however something completely different. It’s the not-so-interesting action scenes and investigations.
Non-action action
The writers treated the pretense of the story far less well than they could have. The series started off extremely well with you questioning everyone who was not dead. Which of them were in on it? What exactly were they in on? I want to know now!
This part of the plot had the potential to be extremely interesting and did make for some interesting FBI manhunts and action sequences.
Were there more bombings coming? Was the public safe? Why did the bombing happen in the first place? A prelude to a military coup, religious coup, or political coup? Was another country behind the attack? Perhaps wanting to invade or destabilize the USA. Was it one or more crooked corporations or perhaps foreign or local extremists?
Did the writers dare change the tone of the show by offering an explanation nobody expected? Just imagine if it was alien zombies from Mars with psionic powers who did it! Perhaps you like the transformers better or a secret society of occultists neo-Nazi from the dark side of the moon?
Not that I thought it was any of those things for a moment (ok, maybe for a moment I did. It could have been so much fun.) What I really wanted was a good plausible explanation though. Did I get it? Nope.
Instead, the president forced Hanna Wells to try and singlehandedly solve the whole thing with almost no help from any part of the government. What a complete disrespect for the hard work of all those US government agencies, police forces, and “hello”, the military. It’s like the biggest case of forever and they put this one agent on it. A cowboy who runs around killing people. That’s mature.
In the end, I had stopped caring who was responsible all together. The bad guys were that uninteresting, and it all seemed an excuse for Hanna Wells running around waving her gun or hitting someone.
For a while, I speculated that perhaps the real culprits had not been caught. That the ones they caught were just a smokescreen, but no, the plot was that lame. In hindsight, it would have been much better had they wrapped the action plot up early on with a bang or put some thought and/or feeling into it.
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