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Spoilers Designated Survivor

So, what's the deal with general guy? He obviously has his own motives and agenda but it seems pretty damn soon to be questioning President Kiefer's judgments. The guy even admitted that Kiefer dealt with the Iran thing very well, but then he says that not yet picking a Chief of Staff is "another trigger he won't pull." It hasn't even been one full damn day! There's still smoldering wreckage where the Capital Building once stood, has President Kiefer even really had a full, solid, night's sleep?!

Give it time dude, he'll pick a Chief of Staff and build his cabinet soon enough, but no one's going to put one together inside of a day under these circumstances.
 
The general is hilarious. In the real world, that type of nonsense would have been shut down immediately. The former chief of staff would have told the president that the general wanted to start a coup, and the guy would have been locked up (and interrogated for possible involvement in the bombing) within an hour.
 
Yeah, I hope that thread ends soon and the defacto Chief of Staff reports it to President Kiefer and then Kiefer rips General Treason a new one.
 
The second episode kind of ignored it. So I hope it was just a lame plot of the pilot to try to WOW networks to pick it up.

EDIT - If tonight's episode has the survivor being higher in the chain of command and then all hell break out just to have the guy die from his injuries I'm going to be pissed.
 
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^ I'm surprised that they didn't explore that. And I don't think they guy would have had to die. I think he could simply have been declared mentally or physically incapacitated.
 
Members of Congress, other than the heads of both sides, are not in the Line of Succession. If he had been Speaker of the House or President pro tempore of the Senate they would have said something he'd also be seated behind/around the President and thus not only far less likely to survive given no one in the Line of Succession survived it's have been impossible for him to slip out for whatever involvement he has.
 
Well, looks like they are going to make it look like everyone has their own agenda of sorts with that ending. Still enjoying the show so far.
 
Just a thought..but isn't 36 hours kinda soon for a funeral and for the President, shouldn't they take MORE time to plan and set up?
 
I don't know if I was blindly optimistic about the first two episodes, but this episode felt like a sharp drop in quality as it veered sharply from The West Wing territory into the depths of Homeland and 24 territory.

Aaron goes directly against Kirkman's wishes, knowing full well why Kirkman didn't want to release the video, but all is forgiven and he's made chief of staff. Oh, and surprise, surprise, he's actively working against him still. Conspiracy time!

But to make it worse, the one survivor wasn't even in the chambers at the time of the explosion. Even more conspiracy time!

And then there's the absurdities with the previous president's son as well as Kirkman's own son.

Meanwhile, any real political discussion is mentioned but largely just hand waved in order to focus on melodramas and schemings.

A minor quibble, but in the case of a blackout, shouldn't have the Secret Service immediately burst into the Oval Office and move the president to a secure location?
 
And it was probably more of a symbolic memorial than anything else. And was this episode really the next day after the previous episode? Could be argued a few days may have passed.

It was a good episode, I felt, I liked the stuff between President Kiefer and the former President's son in one of the ending scenes.

I'm not sure how Kiefer being laid off is relevant to anything, he was still officially part of the cabinet and still selected as the DS a selection I doubt the White House takes lightly even though it's a very, very, slim chance it should come into play. My understanding is that in the real-world the DS is take far more seriously than we even see here with the person being selected a few weeks out, given some level of "training" and intel before going into a secret location (which I'm sure isn't a brownstone somewhere in DC with an open window looking at The Hill) and the real-world DS even has the nuclear football with him. So they're not likely chilling out watching TV making quippy comments and talking to their kids on the phone like Kiefer was.

So, Kiefer being the Designated Survior is "official" for all intents and purposes regardless of his future occupational plans and status in the cabinet.

Sort of surprised he went with the guy for his CoS, but his reasoning also sort of made sense, but I expected him to keep the woman around as sort of a "secondary" CoS to also keep his compass aligned.

And you *would* think the military would be highly suspect of this terrorist group breaking into the White House servers to leave behind the video file. I don't care how "well funded" and such this terrorist group is, it's highly unlikely they'd announce their involvement in such a manner and it should be given some suspect.

Good on the FBI guy to lay out Maggie Q's alternative theory.

Of course Chief of Staff guy is "in on" the "grander conspiracy."

Still a good show and one I look forward to each week.

Also, Dammit Counter: 2
 
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Trekker4747 said:
I'm not sure how Kiefer being laid off is relevant to anything, he was still officially part of the cabinet and still selected as the DS a selection I doubt the White House takes lightly even though it's a very, very, slim chance it should come into play. My understanding is that in the real-world the DS is take far more seriously than we even see here with the person being selected a few weeks out, given some level of "training" and intel before going into a secret location (which I'm sure isn't a brownstone somewhere in DC with an open window looking at The Hill, and the real-world DS even has the nuclear football with him. So they're not likely chilling out watching TV making quippy comments and talking to their kids on the phone like Kiefer was.
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It comes down to optics, especially in this day and age of social media (as the episode briefly noted). It doesn't matter whether or not there's any legal precedence for whether Kirkman's presidency is legitimate, because it comes down to how people feel about a man who may or may not have been fired taking leadership of the nation. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has the means to blast their opinion publicly. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's also driving those who are working against Kirkman.
 
Well, that's all true but they keep talking like this, doing this, saying that, or whatever could be the end of his presidency which I don't see how is possible given that there's no Congress and no Supreme Court so there's no means for action to be taken to remove him from office. So any "damage" he does now will certainly be erased in the next, we're told, 3 years when he's up for re-election. Because by the time the government *is* running again the questions on his presidency will be forgotten. Hell, they were essentially forgotten inside of a day with the release of a viral video.

Oh, and something else: Something of a deal is made about Maggie Q's character circumventing 4th Amendment rights to hack into the woman's cloud and access her shared photos. Couldn't it be "argued" that this was done legally through the USA PATRIOT Act which allows for warrant searches and investigations into people? The woman wasn't likely seen as being part of the terrorist plot but the USA PATRIOT Act has been used for far more sinister stuff on shakier ground that wanting to get a photo of a potential lead on what happened in an incident that wiped out our entire government.

I would think Maggie Q would mostly be in the clear here, again, citing the USA PATRIOT Act. Not that I *agree* with those uses and motives of the Act, but they do exist and have been used.

So where did survivor guy go in the Capitol building in order to survive? Was he meant to survive? Because it seems like a rather big gamble to take given whatever his motivations are or the motivations are of whomever is behind the conspiracy that within a few minutes he could get from the chamber to a spot in the Capitol building where he'd survive the explosion and collapse.
 
Trekker4747 said:
And it was probably more of a symbolic memorial than anything else. And was this episode really the next day after the previous episode? Could be argued a few days may have passed.
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Well, they said 36 hors had passed....and the time for finding any survivors is running down...
 
Morpheus 02 said:
Well, they said 36 hors had passed....and the time for finding any survivors is running down...
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Must have missed/forgotten that. So things are happening "in real time" or in an "one episode=one day" manner.

New
Uh... wasn't iPhone woman dead? Who do they have to serve papers to? It's a murder investigation.
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You're still entitled to your privacy even when you're dead. The next of kin or whomever gets control of the remaining "life" after the death would be the one be violated on the behalf of the deceased.
 
Maybe, maybe not. But then, it's a government issued/controlled phone if she's a congresswoman. So there's that
And in a murder investigation, I don't think next of kin has any control over possible evidence.
 
I don't think she was a Congress-person given where she was seated and that she was so gleefully taking a picture of the room.

And next a kin wouldn't have any control over possible evidence in a murder investigation so long as a warrant is utilized to obtain said evidence. It's not free to grab simply because the original owner died, when you die your life is handed over to someone else to manage. So the government could obtain it but they'd need a warrant to do it, legally.
 
Trekker4747 said:
Members of Congress, other than the heads of both sides, are not in the Line of Succession. If he had been Speaker of the House or President pro tempore of the Senate they would have said something he'd also be seated behind/around the President and thus not only far less likely to survive given no one in the Line of Succession survived it's have been impossible for him to slip out for whatever involvement he has.
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There are other members of the Cabinet who are higher-up in the line-of-succession, and they would likely get seats far from the President. Also, it's only the VP and Speaker who sit behind the President. The President Pro Tempore of the Senate would not sit up there.
 
Is the PpToS not sitting somewhere in that general area? I know he's not around the dais where the President speaks, but certainly he's not in the general seating area. And while there's people higher up in the cabinet in the line of succession, even over the DH&UR, no one in Congress other than the heads on both sides. Again, I think it's safe to assume given the premise of the series no one above President Kiefer in the Line of Succession survived; and if anyone did Kiefer would still be President until the person was fit to serve -Cheney was sworn in as President multiple times while Bush was having surgery or other medical procedures done- and, again, given the premise of the series the person wouldn't survive.
 
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