Two months before the unexpected 2016 election of Donald Trump a television show called "Designated Survivor" premiered with a story about a man who did not expect to become President of the United States who is suddenly thrust into that role.
The new President (Kiefer Sutherland) is temperamentally unsuited to be President, for exactly the opposite reasons Donald Trump was said to be temperamentally unsuited: rather than being impulsive and egomanical, he is overly cautious and simply too nice.
The show is dreadfully written: the dialogue is written by people who never got past "Captain America" comic books--"You are now the President of the United States!" and "The White House has just been hacked!" and "We are now at war! The terrorists have attacked!"
Presumably, some of the writers went to Cornell--the hero wears a Cornell sweatshirt--which only goes to show that an Ivy League pedigree is no guarantee of actual talent.
Long, lingering, simpering, scenes of the new President with his two comic book children are thrust upon the viewer. The President tries cooking breakfast for his two kids and he is a terrible cook. It's just too cute, cute, cute. There is an eight year old girl with a perpetually knitted brow, representing all the eight year old American girls who are worried about bad things in the world, who need Daddy to protect them, and who are constantly being told, "Bad people did some bad things, but we are going to stop them and make everyone safe again." These scenes involve lots of hugging and parents telling children they love them and children repeating back again they love their parents, too.
It's all just so heart warming you could puke.
Then there is the comic book Nuk'em and kill-anything-that-moves general in his uniform, resplendent in all sorts of medals and badges and things, a humorless man who is simply "a bad man."
Watching, as I am, concurrently, Season One of "The Wire" where Deputy Ops Rawls is introduced as a thoroughly malevolent Nuke 'em type of guy, I was again dazzled by how well a character like this can be done. In his most threatening, malicious presentation, Rawls is clearly very funny and he thinks of himself not as the offender but as the offended party. What is so masterful about "The Wire," about a really good TV series, is how many sides of people you are allowed to see, in glimpses, or in significant scenes. The same Rawls sits Jimmy McNulty down later in the season, after McNulty's partner has been shot, and he tells McNulty, "Much as I would take pleasure in seeing an asshole like you suffer, 'cause Christ knows, you deserve it, you were not responsible for this particular fuck up. This was not on you." And then there is a quick glimpse of Rawls, which happens so fast I missed it the first two times I saw that scene, just a glimpse in one episode of the third season, of Rawls in a gay bar. And if you noticed it, you got another insight into what made Rawls so angry.
Nothing like that goes on in the cartoon "Designated Survivor." It starts with an idea I'm sure many of us have had, looking at the State of the Union address, when the House of Representatives, the Senate, the cabinet and the Supreme Court all convene in one room and how many times have I thought, "Wow, one bomb and we'd have no federal government left." And of course, there have been some times, I've thought, looking out over the Strom Thurmonds and the Mitch McConnells and the assorted creatures from the dark lagoons of Louisiana and Mississippi who are arrayed in that chamber and I've thought about that and thought: "Maybe not such a bad idea."
And then you realize: In fact, this is just what all those Rust Belt people thought and that's what they did this past November. And, much as you might revile Washington, what Washington really is about is the the triumph of Hope over experience. It's easy to just blow it up. What takes guts is trying to make it work.
The fact is, as a pageant, our democracy needs gatherings like this: the State of the Union address. We do not have a state religion. There are no royal weddings. But we do have the Capitol Building and every year there is that assembly. And after the attack on Pearl Harbor and after 9/11, there was that in your face assembly, where our leaders said, "No, we are not going into hiding. We are standing right here and speaking to the world."
I'd love to see a show which might explore the dangers inherent in a President who is unsuited to the job.. The descent into attacks on Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, the suffering of people thrown off their health insurance plans, the treachery of promising factory workers back their old jobs only to see robots replace them, all that could be effective, thought provoking television.
Instead with have a President with goofy spectacles and his wife whose zygomatic arches are impossibly glamorous, who gets a phone call from her law firm's client who is about to be deported and within two scenes, that problem is resolved and there is another scene of a mother hugging her children, smiling through her tears. Oh, plueeeze.
The question is whether there would be an audience big enough for something better.
"The Wire" never won an Emmy, and its following was a cult.
"Celebrity Apprentice" and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" found more Americans tuning in.
Thus goes the American Century.
The new President (Kiefer Sutherland) is temperamentally unsuited to be President, for exactly the opposite reasons Donald Trump was said to be temperamentally unsuited: rather than being impulsive and egomanical, he is overly cautious and simply too nice.
The show is dreadfully written: the dialogue is written by people who never got past "Captain America" comic books--"You are now the President of the United States!" and "The White House has just been hacked!" and "We are now at war! The terrorists have attacked!"
Presumably, some of the writers went to Cornell--the hero wears a Cornell sweatshirt--which only goes to show that an Ivy League pedigree is no guarantee of actual talent.
Long, lingering, simpering, scenes of the new President with his two comic book children are thrust upon the viewer. The President tries cooking breakfast for his two kids and he is a terrible cook. It's just too cute, cute, cute. There is an eight year old girl with a perpetually knitted brow, representing all the eight year old American girls who are worried about bad things in the world, who need Daddy to protect them, and who are constantly being told, "Bad people did some bad things, but we are going to stop them and make everyone safe again." These scenes involve lots of hugging and parents telling children they love them and children repeating back again they love their parents, too.
It's all just so heart warming you could puke.
Then there is the comic book Nuk'em and kill-anything-that-moves general in his uniform, resplendent in all sorts of medals and badges and things, a humorless man who is simply "a bad man."
 |
| who designs these uniforms? |
Watching, as I am, concurrently, Season One of "The Wire" where Deputy Ops Rawls is introduced as a thoroughly malevolent Nuke 'em type of guy, I was again dazzled by how well a character like this can be done. In his most threatening, malicious presentation, Rawls is clearly very funny and he thinks of himself not as the offender but as the offended party. What is so masterful about "The Wire," about a really good TV series, is how many sides of people you are allowed to see, in glimpses, or in significant scenes. The same Rawls sits Jimmy McNulty down later in the season, after McNulty's partner has been shot, and he tells McNulty, "Much as I would take pleasure in seeing an asshole like you suffer, 'cause Christ knows, you deserve it, you were not responsible for this particular fuck up. This was not on you." And then there is a quick glimpse of Rawls, which happens so fast I missed it the first two times I saw that scene, just a glimpse in one episode of the third season, of Rawls in a gay bar. And if you noticed it, you got another insight into what made Rawls so angry.
Nothing like that goes on in the cartoon "Designated Survivor." It starts with an idea I'm sure many of us have had, looking at the State of the Union address, when the House of Representatives, the Senate, the cabinet and the Supreme Court all convene in one room and how many times have I thought, "Wow, one bomb and we'd have no federal government left." And of course, there have been some times, I've thought, looking out over the Strom Thurmonds and the Mitch McConnells and the assorted creatures from the dark lagoons of Louisiana and Mississippi who are arrayed in that chamber and I've thought about that and thought: "Maybe not such a bad idea."
And then you realize: In fact, this is just what all those Rust Belt people thought and that's what they did this past November. And, much as you might revile Washington, what Washington really is about is the the triumph of Hope over experience. It's easy to just blow it up. What takes guts is trying to make it work.
The fact is, as a pageant, our democracy needs gatherings like this: the State of the Union address. We do not have a state religion. There are no royal weddings. But we do have the Capitol Building and every year there is that assembly. And after the attack on Pearl Harbor and after 9/11, there was that in your face assembly, where our leaders said, "No, we are not going into hiding. We are standing right here and speaking to the world."
I'd love to see a show which might explore the dangers inherent in a President who is unsuited to the job.. The descent into attacks on Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, the suffering of people thrown off their health insurance plans, the treachery of promising factory workers back their old jobs only to see robots replace them, all that could be effective, thought provoking television.
Instead with have a President with goofy spectacles and his wife whose zygomatic arches are impossibly glamorous, who gets a phone call from her law firm's client who is about to be deported and within two scenes, that problem is resolved and there is another scene of a mother hugging her children, smiling through her tears. Oh, plueeeze.
The question is whether there would be an audience big enough for something better.
"The Wire" never won an Emmy, and its following was a cult.
"Celebrity Apprentice" and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" found more Americans tuning in.
Thus goes the American Century.
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