S01.E01: Pilot

[CofCinci]

I was bored by the pilot and kept waiting for the Keyser Soze moment, where we learn that President Kiefer was in on it. 

[limecoke]

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And the overall depiction of the military in this show is likely to drive me bat shit crazy. Hollywood has a tendency to be clueless and treats them in a manner that is offensive and this show is well on the way to joining that group.

Thank you.  This was my only major beef with the show.  Hollywood always feels the need to portray the military leaders as the bad guys - heavy-handed, nutty and ready to bomb whoever at a moments notice.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It's really insulting.

Other than that, I liked it and am in for the duration.  I like Jack's...er...Keifer's portrayal of this rather mild-mannered man who appears to have a lot going on under the surface.  

[Hanahope]

On 9/22/2016 at 1:59 AM, Silver Raven said:

Is there more than one nuclear football?  Didn't the previous President have one with him?

Actually, there are 3 footballs.  1 with the president, 1 with the vice president and 1 with another person, maybe head of the secret service?  I assume Kirkman got the third football, that the 2 with the prez and vp blew up.

I liked the premier,  the scene with the blown up capital building was very affecting.  

I expect that there are a couple of people that didn't show up to the state of the union address for one reason or another, but yeah, most of the federal government is gone.

I can see where people in a club may not know right away about the explosion and that was the only 'non-government/police scene shown.  I'm sure the rest of the city/country is in an uproar.

[AbsoluteShower]

On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 6:15 AM, sjohnson said:

Personally, I would have thought even in the bar and the nightclub the sound of such an enormous explosion would have been heard by someone near the door at the very least, not to speak of everyone feeling the tremor. 

Not to mention the room where Tom and his wife were - apparently all they had to do was open the shutters on the window for a view of the Capitol, so they really should have been able to hear the KA-BOOOOOM!!!!!

[J-Man]

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Incidentally, she's the only woman to swear in a president.

Although I'm sure there are MANY more who've sworn AT a president.

[Arcadiasw]

23 hours ago, J-Man said:

Yet here we have people partying in a club, blissfully unaware (or not caring about) the near-total destruction of the Federal government.

If this actually happened people would be out in the streets, or jamming up the phone lines and the internet. NOTHING "normal" would be going on anywhere in the country. That's what I found supremely unrealistic about the show.

 

I agree. That took me out of it. Even with how people feel towards our current government, something like this would cause everyone to stop what they are doing. Even if some people were dancing and ignoring text and calls on the phone, someone would've alerted the DJ or club manager on what's happening.

Other than that I thought it was good start and I'll see where it goes.

[KaveDweller]

8 hours ago, marinw said:

I read somewhere that those glasses were Kiefer's idea. The right pair of glasses can be flattering and enhance a person's handsomeness. Those are not those glasses. And then there is his pre POTUS wardrobe of tweed suits and college hoodies.This makes his transformation all the more dramatic: take off the glasses and put him in a decent suit and the man is HANDSOME.

It's like the male version of the nerdy girls getting made over in teen movies. Take off the glasses, take down the hair, and get someone hot.

7 hours ago, ProfCrash said:

I believe any Judge can swear in the President. I know any Federal Judge can swear in the President. The Supremes would have been killed in the attack but there are plenty of Federal Judges running around DC. I am sure that the White House Protocol Office has a list of all of those folks just in case some thing happens. Remember, LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One before leaving Dallas after JFK was assassinated.

There is an office and a staff whose sole job is to be ready for crap like this. They have plans and back up plans and back up back up plans.

Secret Service should be able to run after the President. As a matter of fact, I think that is their job. I was cool with the hustle the President out scene even though they were not nearly as rough with Tom as they would be. When the time comes to forcefully remove their protectee, the SS does not dick around. The person moves and moves quickly, normally with a series of bodies over them so that the Protectee cannot be hit. Just look at some of the footage from the few times that SS has moved a Protectee in public. It is not comfortable or slow. So Kirkman's spontaneous run to the bathroom would have had a whole team of people with guns drawn accompanying him.

I was actually expecting the conversation with the speechwriter getting interrupted by secret service running in screaming, "Mr. President!"

[shapeshifter]

Five frickin' pages about the pilot?!? Is it renewed yet? 

I watched a few episodes of 24, but too much torture for me. I watched every episode of KS's other show with the gifted kid. Bad writing and mediocre acting. But I like Madam Secretary, and this seems more like that, so I'm in for now.

[bluestocking]

When is this set?  In the near future?  Because the US doesn't have diplomatic relations with Iran now.  There's no Iranian ambassador to the US.  There's one to the UN but he's restricted to the NYC area.  I wonder if relations with Iran are going to play an important role going forward.

[marinw]

The Tom Kirkland/ Jack Bauer comparisons are impossible to avoid. It is safe to say that both these characters get very little sleep. Poor Tom, lecturing Alex about the need for  a good seven hours. As if.

Kiefer would do well to emulate the career of Patrick Stewart who will forever be Jean - Luc Picard. But he still has a great career with Prof X and other rolls. Yet I am also thinking of Bryan Cranston who IIRC once said that for an actor to get two great TV roles is such a rare thing.

In either case, Kiefer has in the space of one episode presented us with a character we care about. The fact that we have five pages of discussion already is proof of this.

Edited September 24, 2016 by marinw
Autocorrect is halarious with names.

[marinw]

14 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

I watched every episode of KS's other show with the gifted kid. Bad writing and mediocre acting.

Thank you for mentioning Touch. That show is  so forgotten that I sometimes think it was a product of my imagination.

[Kromm]

13 hours ago, PRgal said:

Except a Hong Kong accent tends to pronounce "Q" more like "keew" than "qew" (few) based on several of my family members'/ family friends' (and their immigrant/still-living-in-HK) accents. 

True. But I think she was more worried about them pronouncing the "L" in "Quigley" as an "R".  It's a cliche, but true enough I could see why it was a concern.

3 hours ago, AbsoluteShower said:

Not to mention the room where Tom and his wife were - apparently all they had to do was open the shutters on the window for a view of the Capitol, so they really should have been able to hear the KA-BOOOOOM!!!!!

Yes, I'd think a true Designation Survivor would be nuke proofed. So in a bunker, and nowhere near Washington at all.

[txhorns79]

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Again - in times of panic, who knows.  Granted that being a 4 Star he'd have had plenty of opportunities to exercise calm in a storm.  But he saw a threat, and moved to stop it in the most (hammer/nail) effective way possible, in the parlance of his own world.

Hasn't it been like a few hours since the explosion and he's already hinting strongly at staging a coup?  That's not really an effective way to deal with the situation he actually was in, unless we were supposed to think the character had an army of blind support we weren't told about.       

[marinw]

1 hour ago, bluestocking said:

When is this set?  In the near future? 

I hand-wave these political shows as taking place in a parallel universe that is similar but not identical to ours. This way we can have a POTUS who isn't Obama, slightly different rules and laws and maybe a couple of fictional countries if you need them. For these shows to be compelling, this universe has to be similar enough to ours to feel real.

[benteen]

I saw the pilot today and really enjoyed it.  Thought it was well-done and that Kiefer was great.  I liked Kal Penn's character too.  I'll definitely come back and check it out.

Was that Ambassadorship that Kirkman was "offered" even real?

This being Hollywood I'm sure the ones behind the bombing will be right wing businessmen and/or members of the military.  This is Hollywood after all and that's who they always blame for this sort of thing.

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1) The Designated Survivor is not going to be in a room by himself with his spouse. There will be Secret Service in the room and the shades/blinds whatever are not going to be opened for any reason. The Designated Survivor is tucked away some place very secure so that there is not a chance that anyone can get even remotely close to said individual.

Not to mention the designated survivor is not going to be dressed like a slob and turning the location into pigsty.  I mentioned this elsewhere but I call bullshit on Kirkman not knowing what a designated survivor was...even if he hadn't been a member of the Cabinet for three years.

Edited September 24, 2016 by benteen

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, bluestocking said:

When is this set?  In the near future?  Because the US doesn't have diplomatic relations with Iran now.  There's no Iranian ambassador to the US.  There's one to the UN but he's restricted to the NYC area.  I wonder if relations with Iran are going to play an important role going forward.

I thought maybe I heard someone say, "...when Obama was in office.." (past tense), and I saw a picture of whom I thought was the president, who looked like a cross between Joe Biden and Keith Caradine (president on Madam Secretary).

[CloverTracey]

Ok, done my best to keep current with conversation, but have not seen anyone comment on alleged "act of war" referred to in premier....really?  If congress is blown up, you cannot have a state of war declared, right?  Agree with previous commentators this show makes good drinking game and....I can watch another episode...

[GinnyMars]

What I'm wondering today is why one term in, Kiefer is suddenly made the designated survivor twenty-four hours before everyone important blows up.

*whispers: I'm telling you, his wife did it!*

[SlackerInc]

On 9/21/2016 at 10:29 PM, numbnut said:

I think there was a scene missing -- the wife was upset about moving to Canada but was in a good mood in the bunker before the bomb. Did I miss something? Also, why would everyone stop to swear in Kief- uh, Jack, er, Tom in a vulnerable White House hallway after a bomb took out an entire DC block? Can't they do that in a bunker? Overall, not a bad start. It's cheesy but compelling. I like Natasha McElhone and Maggie Q. Kal Penn's voice annoys me for some reason.

"Cheesy but compelling" is a good way to put it.  The way the bomb site, bar, and rave scenes looked was very "network-y" (and not in the West Wing sense, which always seemed to have higher production values).  But the White House interiors including the bunker look decent, and I was definitely entertained.

It's definitely true though that they underplayed the way people at the bar and rave were (not) reacting.  "Biggest attack since 9/11"...well, maybe it's not quite as many people killed (although probably close, when you include all the staff), but having the president, vice president, the rest of the Cabinet, some of the Joint Chiefs, and of course the entire House and Senate killed makes it a bigger attack than 9/11 if you ask me (I always wondered, actually, why the 9/11 attackers didn't wait for the SOTU to make their move).

[paigow]

Waiting to see Donald Sutherland and Maggie Q recreate the JFK exposition scene at the Washington Monument, where the conspiracy between CIA and rogue military units is revealed...

[Raja]

8 hours ago, CloverTracey said:

Quote

It's definitely true though that they underplayed the way people at the bar and rave were (not) reacting.  "Biggest attack since 9/11"...well, maybe it's not quite as many people killed (although probably close, when you include all the staff), but having the president, vice president, the rest of the Cabinet, some of the Joint Chiefs, and of course the entire House and Senate killed makes it a bigger attack than 9/11 if you ask me (I always wondered, actually, why the 9/11 attackers didn't wait for the SOTU to make their move).

 

The quotes are buggy this morning. I wouldn't wait for the State of The Union out of fear that the Air Force had read Tom Clancy and actually choose that day to have a fighter combat air patrol over Washington.

[PRgal]

13 hours ago, Kromm said:

True. But I think she was more worried about them pronouncing the "L" in "Quigley" as an "R".  It's a cliche, but true enough I could see why it was a concern.

Yes, I'd think a true Designation Survivor would be nuke proofed. So in a bunker, and nowhere near Washington at all.

Actually, the "l" sound exists in Cantonese (and Mandarin) - the family names Leung and Lee, for example (and, of course, the Chinese name for those delicious pork dumplings (aka soup dumplings), is xiao long bao).  R, however, doesn't exist and many Chinese speakers pronounce it like an "l."  However, I can see why it's an issue - Quigley can easily be pronounced as "Quickly" by Cantonese speakers.  Still, using a Sinocized version of her mom's maiden name could have been an option for her.  And that would have been my choice.  Unless, of course, there's already a Maggie Hermomsmaidenname working in Hong Kong at the time. 

As for your other note:  yeah, in a bunker, far away, or at least far away, in the middle of nowhere and with a phone even he/she doesn't have the number for (wait, would a bunker have cell reception?). 

Edited September 24, 2016 by PRgal

[KHenry14]

a couple of quibbles...

I really hate they put in a warmonger General. That is such a cliche to me. Also, a 4 star general is a political position. Guys who get that far aren't the type to usurp power. 

I look forward to seeing Maggie Q act. I'm only familiar with her work on Die Hard 4, which she did some excellent marshal arts, but she barely spoke. This role will be a nice change.

As someone mentioned earlier, Tom Clancy did this exact scenario in one of his books. One thing he did in the book was make sure the new president spoke to the nation as soon as he could. I think the should have had the swearing in of the new president on national TV. That would reassure America and it's allies that there was somebody in charge. That may have been implied in Designated Survivor, but I would have made a bigger deal of it

BTW, in the Clancy book the Capitol was destroyed by an airliner crashing into the building. After 9/11 he was criticised for "giving the terrorists the idea for the attack" which was of course ludicrous.  

[jhlipton]

I hope that it s pure domestic terrorism vs Islamic (or other foreign) terrorism.  The OK City bombing has been largely forgotten in the wake of 9/11 -- I think it would be more unexpected and cliche.

I thought it was well-written and acted (and I can hand-wave the unrealistic parts). 

[SharonH58]

I have solved the mystery.  Wife didn't want to move to Canada so blew up the Capitol.  Problem solved.  :)

I love Kiefer.  Loved 24.  I liked the first episode but you would think the back stabbers would wait 24 hrs (no pun) to start with the stabbing.  This show has an Aaron but wish it was 24's Aaron.

Edited September 25, 2016 by SharonH58

[OtterMommy]

My husband and I caught this last night--I'll admit I was curious about this show (even if it is basically the premise of King Ralph).  I'll admit that I never watched 24, so I can't make the comparisons there.  But, basically, I thought this pilot was episode was good enough to get me to watch next week.  I liked Keifer Sutherland and Natascha McElhone...Kal Penn was Kal Penn doing the one thing Kal Penn seems to be able to do, Kevin McNally does the antagonist fairly well, but he needs to work on that accents.  The supporting cast was...eh. To be fair, the only one I had seen before was Maggie Q but, for the most part, unless it was Sutherland, it all seemed a bit stilted to me.  However, I'm willing to give that the pilot pass and see what happens next week.

[bluestocking]

On ‎9‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 10:38 PM, benteen said:

I saw the pilot today and really enjoyed it.  Thought it was well-done and that Kiefer was great.  I liked Kal Penn's character too.  I'll definitely come back and check it out.

Was that Ambassadorship that Kirkman was "offered" even real?

Yes the ambassadorship to ICAO does exist.  This is the current guy:

 

https://icao.usmission.gov/mission/ambassador.html

 

What's unrealistic is that the show assumes you get to take up your job pretty much as soon as the President chooses you.  The current guy had to wait 10 months for Senate confirmation and long waits are the norm now.  I'm not sure tho what position the President could offer a current Cabinet secretary that wouldn't require confirmation or be a major demotion.

[Guest]

I just watched the pilot, but hadn't idea what the show was about going in. I really enjoyed it and will definitely keep watching for now!

[Black Knight]

On 9/23/2016 at 7:38 PM, benteen said:

I mentioned this elsewhere but I call bullshit on Kirkman not knowing what a designated survivor was...even if he hadn't been a member of the Cabinet for three years.

That was Kiefer Sutherland's note to the writers for the pilot. Initially they didn't write anything so stupid, but KS wanted this to make the point that the character is not a political animal, as if everything else wasn't enough to show that. I rolled my eyes when I read that part of his interview; he has no awareness of how silly that is. Stick to acting, Kiefer.

I watched the pilot only because I wanted to see the attack and the immediate aftermath, with public hysteria and the new POTUS being hastily sworn in and all. That was reasonably well done. I got what I wanted, but I suspected that I wouldn't be back for more, and I won't be back for more. The show is fine and I like the cast; I'm just not big on political or espionage dramas, and this show looks to be a hybrid of both (with an annoying subplot about a drug dealer son thrown in).

[scarynikki12]

It's also a weird note to have only a few scenes before Kirkman tells the General that he made a point of paying attention during the cabinet meetings and knew that the Iran maneuver wasn't unusual (though certainly bad timing).  I have a hard time believing that man wouldn't also know what the DS was.  Didn't he watch West Wing?  It would have made more sense for his wife to ask the question, or just have him be pissed about being the DS and explain its function while expositing that he knew he was the choice due to the day's events.

[NutmegsDad]

When Kai told the President that glasses weren't.... Presidential, I snarked that FDR and Teddy Roosevelt frown on his shenanigans, and NutmegsMom mentioned Harry Truman -- an "accidental" President with glasses.

Oh, and we have had a non-elected President: Gerald Ford.

Shut up, Richard Woodhull channeling General James Mattoon Scott. He's your President and Commander-in-Chief. Coup now or STFU.

[Biggie B]

I liked it! As with pretty much any made-for-TV drama, I suspend my belief and don't dwell very much on what's unrealistic, unless it's seriously and completely 100% wrong to the point of being outrageous. I just let most of these shows wash over me for fun and entertainment. It's less stressful and sometimes more enjoyable. I don't want to necessarily have to think so, so hard when watching stuff like this, athough I don't mind it when a show makes me think, of course!

When they showed the previews for next week's episode, the actor who plays the son looked different to me than the one we saw in this pilot. He looked older, taller, and prettier than the young man in the pilot. I could absolutely be mistaken, but it really jumped out at me.

I watched every single moment of every single '24' and 'West Wing,' so in some ways, it's interesting to see a mish-mash of both shows. I thought I was going to have trouble seeing anyone but JACK BAUER, but I was pleasantly surprised that that didn't happen. I definitely bought Kiefer as a soft-spoken, intelligent (not that Jack wasn't intelligent), academic sort of fellow. No real opinion on the wife yet. I could see her chafing at the restrictions placed on her - she'll likely fight hard to continue working, even though that will cause all sorts of issues.

I've never heard of or seen Maggie Q before. She made little to no impression on me. It does indeed seem clear that Scott - whoever he is - will figure into this mess somehow, otherwise why would we have been shown her calling and calling him? He may not be involved in the bombing, but his status - dead or alive - seems as if it'll affect the Maggie Q character greatly, perhaps clouding her professional judgment in some way?

Don't have much more to add to the many previous posts, I think all the salient points have been raised. I will continue to watch, let's see where this goes.

[OtterMommy]

2 hours ago, Biggie B said:

When they showed the previews for next week's episode, the actor who plays the son looked different to me than the one we saw in this pilot. He looked older, taller, and prettier than the young man in the pilot. I could absolutely be mistaken, but it really jumped out at me.

 

My guess is that there was a significant amount of time between the filming of the pilot and when the show got picked up and they began filming the series, so this doesn't really surprise me.

I will say, though, that the one part of the show that I really hated was the son.  Cute younger kid I get--it humanizes Kirkman.  But the drug dealing older son is just drama that I don't think this show needs.

[AZChristian]

According to IMDB, the pilot and 5 other episodes in the first season feature the same actor playing Leo.

[Former Nun]

4 hours ago, NutmegsDad said:

Oh, and we have had a non-elected President: Gerald Ford.

...and EIGHT others.  Rather than give their names, I'll give their numbers:  10, 13, 17, 21, 26, 30, 33, 36...all as the result of assassination or illness resulting in death.

[Moose135]

3 minutes ago, Former Nun said:

...and EIGHT others.  Rather than give their names, I'll give their numbers:  10, 13, 17, 21, 26, 30, 33, 36...all as the result of assassination or illness resulting in death.

The difference is that those eight were elected to the office of Vice President.  Ford was appointed VP after Agnew resigned, and became President after Nixon resigned.  He is the only one not elected either POTUS/VPOTUS.

[ProfCrash]

Ford was elected as a Representative from Michigan and was the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives when he became the Vice President when the Democrats, who controlled the House at the time, insisted that Ford be named the new VP.

So while he was not elected on the national ticket, he was elected by some segment of America and approved of by the House of Representatives.

[Partly]

1 hour ago, Moose135 said:

The difference is that those eight were elected to the office of Vice President.  Ford was appointed VP after Agnew resigned, and became President after Nixon resigned.  He is the only one not elected either POTUS/VPOTUS.

I had a friend who insisted that VPs are never elected, they just get brought along.  It's not a completely wrong idea, you vote for the Presidential candidate, not the VP. I've never heard of anyone who voted for a Presidential candidate they didn't like just to get in a VP they did. 

1 hour ago, OtterMommy said:

 But the drug dealing older son is just drama that I don't think this show needs.

I willing to see where they go with it.  After all, the child of a "unimportant" cabinet member who is selling some drugs is a totally different animal than the son of a President who is selling drugs.  Even if he would be adult about it and confess and swear off ever doing it again, the fact that he did it and people KNOW that he did can be a huge complication for President Kirkman.  Although with people (White House aides/speech writer's none-the-less) openly saying that the President was nothing but a "glorified real-estate agent", I'm pretty sure Kirkman doesn't need any more things to make the transition difficult.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Partly said:

I had a friend who insisted that VPs are never elected, they just get brought along.  It's not a completely wrong idea, you vote for the Presidential candidate, not the VP. I've never heard of anyone who voted for a Presidential candidate they didn't like just to get in a VP they did. 

I willing to see where they go with it.  After all, the child of a "unimportant" cabinet member who is selling some drugs is a totally different animal than the son of a President who is selling drugs.  Even if he would be adult about it and confess and swear off ever doing it again, the fact that he did it and people KNOW that he did can be a huge complication for President Kirkman.  Although with people (White House aides/speech writer's none-the-less) openly saying that the President was nothing but a "glorified real-estate agent", I'm pretty sure Kirkman doesn't need any more things to make the transition difficult.

The thing is real life and speculating on the show people will know as the customers who once may have made a blog post and the opposition's channel be it FOX or MSNBC might have run with it on a slow news day. However the First son's criminal past would be sold to the highest bidder and when the rest of the press started in on other customers quickly confirmed. So the show might deal with his being outed as President Kirkland is proving he is worthy rather than some lame and impossible attempt to cover it up. I guess the next couple of weeks will tell if this is another Shondaland ABC show or something more.

[secnarf]

12 minutes ago, Raja said:

 I guess the next couple of weeks will tell if this is another Shondaland ABC show or something more.

Shonda Rhimes has nothing to do with this show, at least as far as I could tell.

I agree that the plot point I'm really not keen on is the drug-dealer son. There is nothing about that storyline that I want to see - I hope it doesn't end up tainting the whole show for me. I like Kiefer Sutherland, and I am enjoying the rest of the show so far, despite its unrealistic aspects.

[formerlyfreedom]

Please take further VP conversation over to Show world vs Real World, and come back to the episode there, thanks.

[BW Manilowe]

8 hours ago, Biggie B said:

I liked it! As with pretty much any made-for-TV drama, I suspend my belief and don't dwell very much on what's unrealistic, unless it's seriously and completely 100% wrong to the point of being outrageous. I just let most of these shows wash over me for fun and entertainment. It's less stressful and sometimes more enjoyable. I don't want to necessarily have to think so, so hard when watching stuff like this, athough I don't mind it when a show makes me think, of course!

When they showed the previews for next week's episode, the actor who plays the son looked different to me than the one we saw in this pilot. He looked older, taller, and prettier than the young man in the pilot. I could absolutely be mistaken, but it really jumped out at me.

I watched every single moment of every single '24' and 'West Wing,' so in some ways, it's interesting to see a mish-mash of both shows. I thought I was going to have trouble seeing anyone but JACK BAUER, but I was pleasantly surprised that that didn't happen. I definitely bought Kiefer as a soft-spoken, intelligent (not that Jack wasn't intelligent), academic sort of fellow. No real opinion on the wife yet. I could see her chafing at the restrictions placed on her - she'll likely fight hard to continue working, even though that will cause all sorts of issues.

I've never heard of or seen Maggie Q before. She made little to no impression on me. It does indeed seem clear that Scott - whoever he is - will figure into this mess somehow, otherwise why would we have been shown her calling and calling him? He may not be involved in the bombing, but his status - dead or alive - seems as if it'll affect the Maggie Q character greatly, perhaps clouding her professional judgment in some way?

Don't have much more to add to the many previous posts, I think all the salient points have been raised. I will continue to watch, let's see where this goes.

Maggie Q starred in the CW series Nikita, which was based on the film La Femme Nikita. Last year/season she starred in the CBS series Stalker, with her now-fiancé, Dylan McDermott. That's just her TV work.

[KaveDweller]

On 9/25/2016 at 7:36 PM, scarynikki12 said:

It's also a weird note to have only a few scenes before Kirkman tells the General that he made a point of paying attention during the cabinet meetings and knew that the Iran maneuver wasn't unusual (though certainly bad timing).  I have a hard time believing that man wouldn't also know what the DS was.  Didn't he watch West Wing?  It would have made more sense for his wife to ask the question, or just have him be pissed about being the DS and explain its function while expositing that he knew he was the choice due to the day's events.

I thought it was weird he didn't know because I remember learning about the DS in high school. And hearing about it during various State of the Unions where a reported commented on someone not being there. I assumed everyone knew about it. But I talked to other people about the show, and they asked if DS was even a real thing or if the show made it up. Of course, they are not politicians or people working in Washington.

[morgankobi]

On September 23, 2016 at 5:57 AM, Haleth said:

Every time I see a mention of "Aaron" in the context of a supporting player to Kiefer, I can't help but think of our favorite Secret Service agent from 24, Aaron Pierce.  If only he could show up.

As it was, as it is, and as it ever shall be. Amen.

 

I exclaimed out loud that I would love if it were the "real" Aaron when I heard the name as well. In my mind, dear Aaron Pierce is happily with Martha at some peaceful retreat.

[blackwing]

I greatly enjoyed the premiere.  It was compelling and eminently watchable.  I was a big fan of 24 and it will be fun watching Kiefer assume the leadership role.  

The mystery aspect will be interesting as well, although honestly, why must every new show have a mystery revealed in the first episode that won't be solved until the end?  Seems particularly common on ABC shows.  How to Get Away with Murder - check.  Quantico - check.  Agents of SHIELD - check (who died in the spacecraft).  This one.

I know we are supposed to dislike the general, and, well, I did.  It didn't help that he is played by the same actor who plays the truly asstastic Richard Woodhull on "Turn".

[Kromm]

11 hours ago, ProfCrash said:

Ford was elected as a Representative from Michigan and was the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives when he became the Vice President when the Democrats, who controlled the House at the time, insisted that Ford be named the new VP.

So while he was not elected on the national ticket, he was elected by some segment of America and approved of by the House of Representatives.

That bit about Ford being elected somewhere is true, but it's also a bit of a copout if anyone was really using it as a real world justification for a President truly being elected. 

I mean for all we know, Kirkman could have been elected Dogcatcher or a City Councilman somewhere. Does it really make a difference? And Kirkman, as a Cabinet member, also required Senate approval (just as much as Ford did to become a replacement VP). 

2 hours ago, blackwing said:

I know we are supposed to dislike the general, and, well, I did.  It didn't help that he is played by the same actor who plays the truly asstastic Richard Woodhull on "Turn".

It was sloppily done though with how overt his villainy was. It needed at least a shade of "what if he's right" and we got none. 

[sjohnson]

^^^There is no way to present that fool as right. Of course the script is going to have Kirkman's macho posturing "succeed," so that the Iranian boats cower. But suppose the writers had been writing a real plot, instead of setting up a fake heroic scene. Suppose the Iranians had not withdrawn within three hours because they were afraid of the "hard charging" carrier group from a destabilized hostile power catching them at harbor, like sitting ducks? Then Kirkman is bombing Tehran, and starting a war. What happens if it turns out the perpetrators of the real assault, the slaughter at the Capitol, were Islamic State et al.? Iran is one of the key states fighting Islamic State, versus the IS allies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and indirectly the US. For no particular reason at all, Kirkman committed to the US to a possible war against Iran when Iran's military influence could very well play a vital role in a war against the true enemy!

Perhaps the show is committed to cobbling up similar fake triumphs, where badassery rules. If so, I for one won't be able to tolerate much of that. But maybe casting Bauer was the announcement of where they're going?

[Syndicate]

I don't think I liked the pilot very much, mostly because of all the political fluff that seemed to bore me. Unlike others here, I was actually rather interested in both the scheming general and the drug-dealing son. I'm especially wondering how the son knows "Mike" on such a first name basis. That moment definitely got my attention. I'll keep watching because I wonder if this show might actually become really soapy in certain ways amidst all of the politics.

[Biggie B]

Quote

Maggie Q starred in the CW series Nikita, which was based on the film La Femme Nikita. Last year/season she starred in the CBS series Stalker, with her now-fiancé, Dylan McDermott. That's just her TV work.

Thanks, BW Manilowe; I'm not familiar with either of the shows you mention, so this show is still the first time I'm seeing or hearing of her. Clearly, she's quite established.

[StarBrand]

I like the concept of this-man lowest possible on the totem pole suddenly gets thrust into the spotlight as the President. But where will they take this, and for how long is what I'm wondering.