Designated Survivor (ABC)

I'm going with the Military-Industrial Complex. Either them, or the Illuminati. No way will the terrorists be somebody as simple as middle-eastern radicals.

The moment he said that, I thought, "oh, damn -- now he'll shoot her in the back of the head." Except that Maggie Q is one of the major stars in the show, no doubt making big money and with a hefty contract. She ain't gonna get bumped off anytime soon.

 

remember '24' they killed regulars quite often.

 

Maggie Q is pretty far down the cast line for a major star. I thought she would be higher up the list.

 

Designated Survivor is back.

Would any President be so unable to accept the ultimate sacrifice? Kirkman seems to be overboard with his concern for this or that potential loss.

Anyway, good to have some good escapism from contemporary reality. Or is it?

 

I really don't care who the father of his son is. Please don't go into soap opera territory! Otherwise, I like this show.

 

I agree. Unfortunately the questionable paternity plot point had already been raised and the fact that they have now followed up means that they certainly will be going there. This is unbelievably stupid given the richness of 'real' plot threads to explore under the given circumstances.

 

Show keeps you interested.

 

i said it earlier in this thread and i feared this would happen. the question is, when?

the ratings for this are very very good, so they will have to stretch it out, hopefully this plot point will not become a major storyline. and , in the real world, it most likely would not be given the political climate of the US today.

i really hope however, that they just leave the little girl totally out of it. like having her cease to exist would be just fine by me.

 

Just saw the episode with the Coach who is a double agent. Couldn't keep the Saudi and Russian exchange straight. It keeps getting worse. No wonder Tom Kirkman spits when he talks.

 

This show is like Murphy's Law.

 

so was '24', it's what they do, and it works

i really wish they would keep the kid out of it though, i mean seriously, would anyone in this day and age really care?

 

They already have enough plot lines going simultaneously. I don't see the 'son' angle as being anything more than a distraction. And I haven't seen a person play a role as understated as Kiefer since George Reeves as Clark Kent

 

Tell the kid the truth and end that story. We know head FBI is going to tell her not to tell the pres because of his son. We know how this stuff should go. Now let's see if they change it up to keep us interested.

 

I watch the show but it is usually the last thing I choose after the few other ones I have recorded. It is hard to pinpoint but I just feel like it could be a lot better.

 

To me, it feels just like The Blacklist, with unnecessary subplots and incompetent federal agents (who in the last episode couldn't find a way to communicate vital information to the president in private, after being thwarted previously by being in the same room with the suspected traitor/VP-to-be - seriously!!).

Whereas I dropped The Blacklist seasons ago, I'm still on board with DS for now, but high art it ain't!

 

It's a network show, and I feel like the bar has to be set a little lower for a network show.

I had the same reaction regarding passing that vital information to the President. He couldn't just ask the VP guy to leave so that he could have a private conversation with the President, or call him in the phone, or pass him a hand-written note, or pass a message to his chief of staff, or one of a multitude of other forms of communication to let the President know that a man suspected of being involved in the murders of the President, Vice-President, nearly every member of Congress and every Supreme Court justice is his top pick for VP?

 

Maybe so, but I don't grade on a curve.

Agree about the former, but why not the latter? Why can't he call the president directly or arrange for a private meeting? Given the importance of the information and the timing, he should be moving mountains to keep the prez in the the loop! Or he could have leaked the info to Wikileaks via a Russian proxy.

 

I think you misunderstood my post. I ended it with a question mark, though I concede it was a rather long question. I was basically asking why couldn't do all of those things.

 

Ah, I see. I must admit I was a little confused on first reading as I thought you were making a case for why he couldn't do the things you listed in that bravura sentence!

 

At least the Deputy Director now has a face to associate with the nasty conspirators - even if she does have his son captive.

It's 24, all over again, but I'm still watching.

 

The mentioned above inability of the FBI Director to get a message to the President is definitely beyond ridiculous. I'm glad the show is on an every two weeks pattern right now or I may have already given up on it by now.

 

I am starting to feel the same way.

I gave up on The Blacklist during season 2 and gave up on Person of Interest during season 3. They all suffer from the same thing. They get bogged down on introducing more and more questions/plots than they do on resolving one, and the writers can't/won't catch up. And when they do finally resolve one, they introduce 2 new ones, it seems. (Lost, was the same way.) These "Soap Opera" formatted shows are starting to get old. What happened to the days when each 1-hour drama episode was its own independent story? Seems now all 1-hour dramas follow this "Soap Opera" format. Obviously for continuation sake, they do need the main story arc to continue past one episode, but they can at least have individual/independent stories that get told for each episode too that get resolved within the 1-hour.

 

People are interested in continuing storylines. I think the days of standalone episodes are over, with the possible exception here and there. Even the new Star Trek series is going to be a continuing story. The big drawback to the continuing storyline is not being able to just jump in after the series has started or not being able to watch the occasional episode after the series is over. For me, The X-Files was the best of both worlds. Approximately 4 episodes per season were devoted to the ongoing mythology arc, while the remaining episodes were standalone stories.

 

Basically, all of these shows revolve around mysteries -- small ones, big ones, and one big one that ties the entire story together. A lot of the writing boils down to keeping information away from the viewer, and preventing us from finding out certain key facts. The problem for me is that often times, this forces certain characters to act in stupid or illogical ways. I particularly hate it when somebody can't just flat out ask, "hey, why is X not Y?" and spell things out.

The other problem is that many of these borderline sci-fi/fantasy/adventure shows all seem to have to have some kind of vast conspiracy that links everything together. I think there's a kind of sameness and boredom that sinks in once they do that, and it's happened to all the shows you named. Designated Survivor was always about a conspiracy from day one, so the balance the writers have to make is how to sustain the audience's interest while spoon-feeding them little bits of information here and there while not revealing so much that it effectively stops the show. They can give us bread crumbs, but we're never gonna get the whole meal in one gulp.

They're going to have to finally let the other shoe drop and force the weasely VP to admit he's a double-agent. Where they go from there... I dunno. After all, we're almost four years into The Blacklist, and we still don't know for certain whether James Spader is the woman's birth father or not.

 

Some shows can pull it off and last several seasons, and some can't. It's tricky, and it's a challenge inherent to any long-running mystery show. Lost, whether or not people were satisfied with the way it turned out, pulled it off successfully, keeping viewers glued to the set for six seasons. Other shows, like Resurrection, lose viewers quickly and get cancelled when it becomes apparent that the show isn't going to give them anything significant. Some shows, like The Killing, stumble when they try to drag the mystery out for as long as possible but are able to pick themselves up. Fans of The Killing were a bit miffed when the killer wasn't revealed at the end of the first season, but that mystery was resolved, and the show moved on to other mysteries. The X-Files was able to find a balancing act in which there was one long-running mystery, which still hasn't been fully resolved, and weekly one and done stories.

For Designated Survivor to survive the long haul, it's probably going to have to switch gears from season to season. Wrap the central question at the end of the season, and move on to something else, some new mystery, next season. He is, after all, the President of the United States. Obviously, there's a lot that goes into that job and plenty of potential directions for the show to go in from season to season.