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Designated Survivor in the Media: Breaking News from the White House (Set)


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48 minutes ago, ApplePie said:

Audrey and Jack reunited. Kim Raver is joining for an arc. This is probably unpopular, but I never liked her on 24. 

Not unpopular, at least not for me.  I've only seen her on 24 and that was certainly enough. 

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9 hours ago, Happy Harpy said:

Dynasty was given a full season order with a 0.2 in Live+SD by the CW, solely because it has an international Netflix deal. It was reportedly financially viable even before it aired.  IIRC, Designated Survivor has the same kind of deal with Netflix. If ABC believes they can sell their crap to stupid unsuspecting foreign crowds, at least  until they realize that no, foreign crowds don't eat it with a spoon either, DS might as well survive another season.

And I never liked Kim Raver in anything, even though I want to because she sounds nice  and level-headed in her interviews.

Ugh, Dynasty. They unironically used the term “mansplaining” in the first five minutes of the first episode and I immediately turned it off, never to return.

 I haven’t been watching Designated Survivor since episode 2 of season 2. I might jump into an episode to see if it is worth returning, but judging by the chat on here, I doubt it.

 I am intrigued as to the nature and content of those Netflix contracts, because euthanasia would be the kindest response in both cases.

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11 minutes ago, thewhiteowl said:

@Pindrop  lol  I didn't know "mansplaining" could be used unironically.

To use the term, you must first admit you are a hypocritical sexist who impugns  others based on their gender, which makes you a piece of shit. So the only way you can use it is ironically. 

Edited by Pindrop
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On 11/10/2017 at 4:32 AM, Pindrop said:

Designated Survivor has the same kind of deal with Netflix. If ABC believes they can sell their crap to stupid unsuspecting foreign crowds

IIRC DS is airing on the British Netflix. Because the British suffer from a lack of quality TV. LOL.

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On 11/9/2017 at 3:16 PM, Happy Harpy said:

If ABC believes they can sell their crap to stupid unsuspecting foreign crowds,

I think you mean "suckers".

On 11/10/2017 at 6:55 PM, Pindrop said:

To use the term, you must first admit you are a hypocritical sexist who impugns  others based on their gender, which makes you a piece of shit. So the only way you can use it is ironically. 

[No comment]

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Another addition to the cast:

 

http://deadline.com/2017/11/designated-survivor-breckin-meyer-recur-season-2-1202212609/

Spoiler

 

Men at Work creator and former Franklin & Bash star Breckin Meyer is set for a recurring role opposite Kiefer Sutherland in the second season of of ABC’s drama series Designated Survivor, from the Mark Gordon Company and ABC Studios.

Related

Natascha McElhone To Star In Beau Willimon's 'The First' Hulu Series, Will Depart 'Designated Survivor'

Meyer will play Trey Kirkman, the polar opposite of his older brother, Tom Kirkman (Sutherland), in temperament and life choices. Trey is smart, outgoing, a bit of a free spirit but grounded enough to have forged a successful career in the world of finance. He’s been estranged from Tom for years but they reconnect, as Trey becomes an important confidant and counselor to his brother, especially in personal matters.

 

Edited by marinw
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14 hours ago, marinw said:

Audrey!!! At least we know Kiefer and Kim Raver have AMAZING chemistry, so there's that.

Is "rebound" the correct term for widows / widowers that hook up with the nearest warm body?

Kirkman & Audrey Horne would be ratings win win....

Edited by paigow
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On 27/12/2017 at 2:09 AM, paigow said:

ABC Preview S2 E11:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpZYrfJTKkQ

Looks like either Hannah or Aaron is the next Designated Survivor....

 

1 hour ago, Chas411 said:

OK fine, they got me. I think I only watched the (terrible) midseason finale from this season, but I am willing to just delete all those unwatched episodes and start watching again from 2x11, if only to see Kim Raver (whom I love), Michael J. Fox (whom I LOVE) and Aaron and Hannah being hostages (and possibly more?) together.

But I'll give them 2 episodes, tops. They better deliver or I'll drop this show again.

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Not looking forward to Aaron/Hannah even though it's been obvious for a while they were headed there. I'm still bitter they dropped the enjoyable potential between Emily/Aaron and sidled her with Seth. They could have just kept her single. Not everyone has to be paired.

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25 minutes ago, Princess Lucky said:

if only to see Kim Raver (whom I love),

Now I want Tzi Ma to show up. He plays the go-to Chinese Political Guy in about a milion shows, so it's bound to happen. (Ma played Kiefer's and Kim's arch-nemesis on 24)

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2 hours ago, Chas411 said:

Not looking forward to Aaron/Hannah even though it's been obvious for a while they were headed there. I'm still bitter they dropped the enjoyable potential between Emily/Aaron and sidled her with Seth. They could have just kept her single. Not everyone has to be paired.

I really liked Aaron and Emily together and the idea of Emily and Seth is slightly weird, but I intensely dislike that British spy guy they saddled Hannah with, so I'd much rather see her with Aaron if it meant the end of that (and is it too late for that spy guy to die for real?). I do agree, though, it's silly to pair everyone up. That said, they did bring in a bunch of new characters, so there are many single characters still. Including Kirkman, as of late (unless Kim Raver has something to say about that), so it's not as egregious as it would have been during S1.

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3 hours ago, marinw said:

Now I want Tzi Ma to show up. He plays the go-to Chinese Political Guy in about a milion shows, so it's bound to happen. (Ma played Kiefer's and Kim's arch-nemesis on 24)

Asian Sean Bean

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Excited to see Michael J. Fox on the show. Less so Kim Raver, but maybe she'll be alright if they have no romance plans with Kirkman. This mess with Moss hasn't happened yet has it? It's been weeks since the last show now and I forget. I remember him being involved with Charlotte Thorne and falling off the wagon. The guy is pretty messy! 

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That's all speculation in that article - if it is renewed, when would it air, what cast changes might happen, what will be the story line...it hasn't been renewed yet.

Should it get a third season, expect it to premiere towards the end of September 2018 as the previous seasons started on September 21, 2016 and September 27, 2017, respectively.
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2 hours ago, Moose135 said:

That's all speculation in that article - if it is renewed, when would it air, what cast changes might happen, what will be the story line...it hasn't been renewed yet.

 

I stand corrected.It's been a long day. *Faceplam*

Edited by marinw
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On April 26, 2018 at 5:36 PM, Happy Harpy said:

This week's episode dropped to a 0.5.

If it stays there, two options. 1) It's canceled 2) It's ABC's Dynasty and is renewed thanks to its Netflix deal only.

Not that I really care anymore if a show is cancelled, but does it matter that I (and perhaps many others) just watched it last night on Hulu? Also, I did that because ABC wasn't coming in on my over-the-air antenna Wednesday evening, 30 miles north of Chicago.

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11 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Not that I really care anymore if a show is cancelled, but does it matter that I (and perhaps many others) just watched it last night on Hulu?

The single most important viewers are the Nielson families.  Everything else is a long drop from there.

On Demand comes next, I think.  Revenue from On Demand goes directly to the network.

Hulu, Amazon and Netflix count some, so watching there is better than not watching at all.

Edited by jhlipton
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Not a surprise. After this show and Touch, I worry that Kiefer will never get a good TV show agian! I hope to be proven wrong.

I'm sadder about Brooklyn 99 (sob) and The Expanse (more sobs) than this show.

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16 minutes ago, marinw said:

Not a surprise. After this show and Touch, I worry that Kiefer will never get a good TV show agian! I hope to be proven wrong.

I'm sadder about Brooklyn 99 (sob) and The Expanse (more sobs) than this show.

DS really wasted its brilliant cast. It sucks for them.

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31 minutes ago, Chas411 said:

Yeah given what a balls they made of season two can't say I've much sympathy for the showrunners. Hopefully the cast move onto better ventures.

It's a shame, but S2 really ruined all the promise of S1. As much as I loved S1, at this point I can't be too upset because of how lackluster S2 was. Hate it for the cast, though. 

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Post Mortem

I watched most of the first year because the initial premise was interesting but in my opinion it was botched. If such an event took place it would be catastrophic to the nation emotionally and mentally and would take years for the country to recover. I don't recall seeing mass hysteria, unbelievable scenes of grieving mass funerals being conducted. The last I watched they traced the conspiracy to some right wing group...how predictable was that?

Hannah Wells like a graceful cat will land on her feet. Possibly reprising her role.

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6 hours ago, DrewPaul2010 said:

Post Mortem

I watched most of the first year because the initial premise was interesting but in my opinion it was botched. If such an event took place it would be catastrophic to the nation emotionally and mentally and would take years for the country to recover. I don't recall seeing mass hysteria, unbelievable scenes of grieving mass funerals being conducted. The last I watched they traced the conspiracy to some right wing group...how predictable was that?

Hannah Wells like a graceful cat will land on her feet. Possibly reprising her role.

Same here. I wasn't too against the idea of the conspirators being right-wingers, just that the conspirators really had no teeth. How does a group that successfully takes out the Capitol and decapitates the government (and framing an international terrorist group for the crime), leading to its preferred people being the "designated survivor" and his Vice-President no less, go from being a formidable opponent to some fluky group of men who lack any real motivation or cohesiveness and allow themselves to get picked off one by one by a team of three- count 'em, three- FBI agents. One that gets killed partway through the investigation and another that just seems to enjoy getting kidnapped and leaving her files behind for bad guys to steal.

In real life, such an event would see all kinds of militias and other factions spring up and do their darnedest to take control over the U.S. Civil war would be imminent, and we'd have more than just one treasonous U.S. Governor. The Republicans and Democrats would move to create actual countries for themselves (instead of, what I would argue, "effective" countries out of their political strongholds), and groups of hyper partisans would be fighting each other every day in the streets. The rest of the world would take note, with the biggest countries that are left all taking a side in the U.S.' conflict, just so when the inevitable war happens, their side has the capability of winning and taking power for themselves.

Such a concept could easily take up four or five years if handled properly. Maybe even a decade, but that would be expecting too much. You'd easily have a season's worth of material before things got back to what could be considered "normal".

Instead, what did we really get? For some reason or another, we got a show that hastily and haphazardly glossed over the conspiracy storyline, reducing them to ineffective, toothless caricatures that stopped being smart after bombing the Capitol, just so it could try its hand at being this generation's West Wing. Never mind that The West Wing ended only twelve years ago and that if we wanted The West Wing, we'd just watch The West Wing.

Even still, arguably getting away from the original premise could have worked if the show was committed to making that aspect work, but it didn't. President Tom Kirkman became a Mary Sue, always having the correct answer or the correct move to solve the Problem of the Week. No one who got dressed down didn't deserve it. Everyone who thought they had the upper hand over the President would be proven wrong by the end, often turning into blubbering, apologetic messes by that point, with Tom The Priest ever so kindly telling them "it's OK. You're forgiven". Worse, there was not a single "good" character willing to challenge the President, as those who are on Kirkman's side are firmly on his side and keel over backwards to heap all the praise they can at their most gracious employer.

It doesn't have to be this way. S.W.A.T. too has a lead character, Shemar Moore's Daniel "Hondo" Harrelson, who's overtly passionate, strong, aggressive but also reasonable and compassionate all at once. He'll tackle you or dress you down forcefully but he'll also "big brother" his way into your heart if it convinced you to do what he feels he needs you to do. A very similar character to what Kirkman was like. Yet Hondo repeatedly gets challenged and put in his place when he goes too far, and S.W.A.T. does its very best to show Hondo isn't always right, which even the character himself is forced to admit at times. We've had two straight episodes where a villain got the upper hand on Hondo because he was too aggressive followed by an episode where one of his subordinates kept pushing back at his orders because they didn't make sense at the time, and Hondo acknowledged it.

Yeah, it's not Emmy-worthy writing, but it does make the characters more interesting. When the lead can be shown to be wrong, and it being done in an organic way, it reminds you that your hero is still a human who's got weaknesses that they need to work on like we all do. Furthermore, characters who are not pushovers are simply more interesting, because it serves a reminder to the hero that their charges' opinions and feelings do matter and that if he wants to work with others, it's a two-way street of give-and-take. As S.W.A.T. shows, you can do all that without making your hero appear weak or his co-leads into enemies, as long as everything stems from the hero's natural weaknesses.

(I stress the "natural" part because you get a lot of writers who will stick some random trait onto their character and think it makes their character "flawed" when it doesn't. A character's flaw only matters if it holds them back in the story and the other characters react to it, like a short person trying to reach the NBA)

Ultimately, that's where Designated Survivor failed. It failed to understand characters, and once you fail with the characters, there's no going back. We can watch 100 shows with "drama!" and "action!" but we only stick with them if they have characters we can relate to and bond with, and arguably DS did not.

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11 hours ago, DrewPaul2010 said:

Post Mortem

I watched most of the first year because the initial premise was interesting but in my opinion it was botched. If such an event took place it would be catastrophic to the nation emotionally and mentally and would take years for the country to recover. I don't recall seeing mass hysteria, unbelievable scenes of grieving mass funerals being conducted. The last I watched they traced the conspiracy to some right wing group...how predictable was that?

Hannah Wells like a graceful cat will land on her feet. Possibly reprising her role.

Yes. This should've been an apocalyptic thriller. Instead we got a lite, schizophrenic mashup of West Wing and Nikita.

May future projects for Keifer and the rest of the cast and crew be more worthy of their skills snd talents.

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(edited)

I see it has (unsurprisingly) been cancelled. I stopped watching two episodes into Season 2 when it was clear the interesting initial premise had been completely forgotten and the one-woman action-hero crap was still a large discordant part of the show. 

I have said before that they horribly wasted a great high-concept idea in Season 1. 

What it should have been: -

Season 1 arc: After the bombing, Texas secedes and other states threaten to follow. There are real anti-Union antagonists that the President must contend with (rather than petty straw-man Republican caricatures for the Democrat writers to hit with sticks). Civil War is on the horizon and the President must use all his guile to prevent it. Meanwhile as a B plot the FBI/CIA (not one woman) hunt down the bombers.  

Season 2 arc: It seems that civil war has been averted by the unmasking of the bombers, but the US has lost its standing and influence and must rebuild, while on a world stage the lost influence has created tumultuous times in many US protectorates, an emboldening of US enemies and worldwide recession. Europe is under increased pressure to fulfil the lost US role and a wave of red is sweeping in from the east. 

Much better. 

Edited by Pindrop
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On 5/11/2018 at 5:09 PM, Happy Harpy said:

DS really wasted its brilliant cast. It sucks for them.

I loved most of the cast, but the plotlines didn't make sense. The show had so much potential to become a new West Wing. I didn't like how every week, there was some new problem that was solved in 40 minutes. They should have made the female speaker of the House the new VP. The new VP showed up out of nowhere & tried to have him removed from office.

14 hours ago, DrewPaul2010 said:

Post Mortem

I watched most of the first year because the initial premise was interesting but in my opinion it was botched. If such an event took place it would be catastrophic to the nation emotionally and mentally and would take years for the country to recover. I don't recall seeing mass hysteria, unbelievable scenes of grieving mass funerals being conducted. The last I watched they traced the conspiracy to some right wing group...how predictable was that?

Hannah Wells like a graceful cat will land on her feet. Possibly reprising her role.

The conspiracy storyline could have lasted for several seasons.

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On 5/11/2018 at 1:51 PM, marinw said:

I'm sadder about Brooklyn 99 (sob) and The Expanse (more sobs) than this show.

B99 is moving to NBC and there's a good chance Netflix will pick up The Expanse.

9 hours ago, Danielg342 said:

President Tom Kirkman became a Mary Sue, always having the correct answer or the correct move to solve the Problem of the Week. No one who got dressed down didn't deserve it. Everyone who thought they had the upper hand over the President would be proven wrong by the end, often turning into blubbering, apologetic messes by that point, with Tom The Priest ever so kindly telling them "it's OK. You're forgiven". Worse, there was not a single "good" character willing to challenge the President, as those who are on Kirkman's side are firmly on his side and keel over backwards to heap all the praise they can at their most gracious employer.

Worse, he would threaten world leaders and they would capitulate before the glory of Tom Kirkman without further protest.

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6 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

B99 is moving to NBC and there's a good chance Netflix will pick up The Expanse.

I doubt DS is being "shopped around". Some things aren't worth saving.

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1 hour ago, marinw said:

I doubt DS is being "shopped around". Some things aren't worth saving.

"The needs of the Kiefer outweigh the needs of the many...or the few"

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4 hours ago, marinw said:

I doubt DS is being "shopped around". Some things aren't worth saving.

"Shopped around" seems to mean "the showrunner is meeting with network or streaming execs and begging them to save the show".

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https://www.tvinsider.com/689506/ask-matt-lucifer-cancellation-rise-designated-survivor/

 

Quote

Question: Designated Survivor was appointment TV for us—I say was, because we never watched it again after the winter hiatus. Seeing that it didn't get renewed, what do you think was the primary cause of death? The long hiatus, the first lady's death, or the constant churn behind the scenes (I lost count of how many show-runners they had)? — Unsigned

Matt Roush: My own take on Designated Survivor was that soon after its gripping pilot episode, the show never really figured out what it wanted to be: a political procedural, a conspiracy thriller, a family drama. The elements didn’t mesh easily—or worse, authentically—and I never felt the series truly lived up to its intriguing premise of an unlikely leader rebuilding a government after a horrific attack. ABC’s decision to put the show on ice for so long didn’t help, and killing the first lady seemed a needless tragedy and a desperate call for attention. So I’d think all of those elements, along with disappointing second-season ratings, led ABC to conclude there wasn’t much growth potential here. I can’t disagree.

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Guest

Perfectly said. The show was a mess. It never figured out what the show was meant to be - rebuilding a government took three episodes. Oh except for the whole pesky season long no Vice President thing. Budget meetings in between the one woman FBI doing investigations, etc.

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