If DS doesn't clean up its act pronto, I likely will quit watching. Neat idea for a show but I have never been able to tolerate Hollywood forcing their crappy politics down my throat. The gun control storyline is irritating at best. I mean, all I need to do is figure out where CNN or MSNBC is in my PS Vue menu and tune in if I want to hear people yapping about the "evils" of guns.

Agent Wells' storyline is way more interesting than all the political BS.

My kids still like it and we've talked thru some of the political issues (with the older son saying in this last episode "shouldn't the republican senators be trying to get more judges they agree with on the Supreme Court, why does that make them bad guys?") so that hasn't been too bad to this point.

But as the conspiracy starts to unfold more and more, it becomes more ridiculous. Those guys all looked pretty amateurish, kind of a cross between a camping group and survivalist/prepper group, not part of a conspiracy which blew up thousands of people. Up until the chopper landing I thought they might be setting up a red herring with this group because they seemed so unlikely to be the big bad guys.

The whole notion of there being some event like this and it NOT being Islamic terrorists is patently ridiculous, but of course we don't want to have a plot where we single out Muslims as the bad guys even though they're the only realistic group that would actually do something like this. But now the die seems to be cast that it's going to be an almost exclusively white, right wingish domestic terrorist group, and I just don't see how you play it remotely straight politically and have that end up being the outcome.

Here's a tip for the Designated Survivor writers, you may have some intent to present this show from an independent perspective, but when there is literally never any criticism of the democratic pols or liberal positions, nor any justification for rep pols or conservative positions, and all of the bad guys are some combo of military, white, and right wing, then all you've done is dress up the stereotypical Hollywood politics in a thinly-veiled disguise.

Agent wells starting her ford focus (that was 30 feet away) with her cell phone might have been the most jarring and ridiculous product placement effort i've seen in awhile.

TennAg said:

---

Agent wells starting her ford focus (that was 30 feet away) with her cell phone might have been the most jarring and ridiculous product placement effort i've seen in awhile.

---

Her running around in platforms after her escape was hilarious.

TexasAggie_02 said:

---

gag me. so the terrorists are now the "Alt-right?" And they are led by a billionaire?

---

ABC isn't beating around the bush about where their political loyalties lie. All their shows drop these subtle bombs.

My favorite plot line is the POTUS is supposed to be an non ideological pragmatic but his politics are left of Hiklary, LOL.

You can still count the number of times a democrat has been the "bad guy," either politically or in the terrorist plot, on the Venus De Milo's hands. I tend to think there is at least some intention by the show-runners to be somewhat neutral, but I just don't think they know how to do it. This is one of the problems when the vast majority of writers and show-runners you hire come from the same, insular political bubble.

Conservatives are only "good" in the show when they are going against the "worse" conservatives or betraying their conservative principles. Liberals are "good" for just being who they are, and all of their principles are worthy and lauded.

Similar, although not quite as severe, breakdown in racial/gender issues. Big bad guy is white, as is the white house traitor, the deceased VP, and the bad guy senator. Much more of an emphasis on diversity among the good guys.

This is all to be expected in our pop culture however, and there are more egregious examples in other shows.

There are a couple of things which make it more irritating in this show, however:

First, the show pays lip service to playing it down the middle, without ever actually playing it down the middle. As I said, I think at least some of that is they have no idea how playing it down the middle actually looks.

Second, the whole ridiculous conceit of the underlying plot being a bunch of survivalists or whatever the constantly changing description is has caused huge problems. They've created such an unbelievable and inconsistent villain. They really are making it up as they go in large part, and that's created a number of inconsistencies and plotholes, and that could have all been avoided if they hadn't contorted themselves intellectually to try to create a plausible right-spectrum villain. Islamic terrorists, or the only Americans who are currently rioting and committing political violence on a significant scale, the left, would make much more believable villains. And if you had a more believable villain you could write the show with some consistency. They made a deliberate choice to sacrifice good plot development in order to manufacture a right-wing villain... all for a show that says it's being neutral.

Renewed for a second season.

Sentinel said:

---

Renewed for a second season.

---

So long as trump is in the white house.

So the moderate independent POTUS went for gun control, arts funding, Muslim refugee resettlements.

Not allot left for his agenda for next year? What's a moderate to do? I guess UHC is an obvious one....

The production at this point is just bad. Why would the terrorists leave the keys in the van with Hannah Wells? How did Lozano get out of the pentagon when it was under lockdown? How did he get out of the car so fast after getting t-boned?

This doesn't deserve a second season.

The second half of this season was a total let down. Some storylines just disappeared while others had insanely preposterous leaps in reality. Shame because I really wanted to like this show