Posted on 06/08/2019 6:32:40 PM PDT by EdnaMode
During Designated Survivor Season 3, every time a person brings to President Kirkman’s attention a video of a citizen’s testimonial, what he watches is never an actor reading from a script but actual documentary footage.
Some of the topics covered throughout the 10-episode season (now available on Netflix) include opioid addiction and the exorbitant cost of life-sustaining medicines such as insulin.
“A mother whose child died of diabetes, people addicted to opioids, people who were in a transgender therapy group…. It’s always real,” Season 3 showrunner Neal Baer tells TVLine of the video clips. “When there are people saying to Kirkman why they don’t vote [in the previous presidential election], those are non-actors telling us why they didn’t vote.”
Describing the incorporation of documentary footage into an episodic series as something that is “very different,” Baer explains, “When I was first starting out, I did a pilot with John Wells in 1991 called Night Life, which integrated documentary footage with people who work all night. It was ultimately not picked up by NBC, but I’ve had this bug in my ear ever since.”
Episode 1 of the new season ends with Kirkman bingeing a slew of videos from generally disenfranchised Americans. From there the videos get more specific, starting in Episode 2 with an American woman who tearfully describes her sexual assault as a 13-year-old bride. Building off of a public relations snafu in which Kirkman unwittingly posed with a Saudi and his child bride (assuming the girl was a daughter), the episode proceeds to expose hard truths, including how child marriage is legal in all of the United States but two (Delaware and New Jersey).
“I haven’t met one person who knows that the child marriage rate in the United States is sort of equal to what’s going on in Saudi Arabia,” says Baer. “That was why that episode is about assumptions, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, it must be worse,’ and actually it’s not. These are all real facts and figures that are supported by the data we have.”
Baer in fact shared said data with series consultant Eric Schultz, who served as Deputy Press Secretary under President Obama, asking why the issue never grabbed a real-life White House’s attention. “Eric said, ‘It wasn’t on our radar.’ I showed him the figures, and he’s like, ‘Whoa. It wasn’t on our radar.'”
Even if it had been on the White House’s radar, implementing policy to change things, as illustrated on Designated Survivor, would prove problematic and face some surprising opposition. “As [Director of Social Innovation] Isobel says, two of the most liberal organizations, ACLU and Planned Parenthood, were against it,” Baer notes. “And that’s all true. That is all out of California.”
24 was one of my favorite shows. I gave up on Designated Survivor after a few episodes.
A White dude, ex-military, quasi-rightwing, natrually.
24 started veering very left too at some point, IIRC. I stopped watching it. They can’t help themselves in Hollywood. It is The Party above all us. Entertainment and ratings don’t matter. Just indoctrination.
Yeah I heard Netflix uncancelled it.
I quit watching it last season, didn’t really plan to I just stopped. Italia Ricci was tasty but..
They was zero mention of the vacant Vice Presidency for an extended period of time, that really ticked me off. Then I saw in a commercial that he appointed some Black woman Mayor of DC as the new VP.
The whole show just rang so false, the President interacted with only 3 (later 5) staffers, one of whom was Kal Penn. A huge number of Independents elected to the House in special elections. An unamed new House Speaker. Republican Senators allowing a vote on a gun control bill (intending it to fail) without doing a whip count (appointed widow of GOP Senator voted aye and passed it). Not to mention David E Kelley style cast changes. It’s like it was made by space aliens who only saw other political tv shows but knew nothing about real politics. We’re talking Hogan’s Heroes levels of accuracy. I wouldn’t mind a liberal bent IF it was good and seemed realistic.
Honestly that frigging show with the mind control insects and Tony Shaloub as a Republican Senator from Maryland was more realistic.
That’s why I wouldn’t bother with shows like that, they literally have no clues as to political realities. It’s one thing if they were doing a nonsensical comedy, quite another if it’s a drama (and they all seem to just be completely divorced from reality - like that one (Scandal) with Tony Goldwyn as a left-wing Republican President, and I just read the actress who played his wife and succeeded him as a “Republican” President was a hardcore Demonrat activist who campaigned for Hillary).
I watched the first two seasons. The first season was interesting. The second season became increasingly lib-preachy. After that, I vowed not to watch anymore. I made the right call, it looks like.
I never watched Scandal, I wasn’t gonna touch a Shonda Rymes show but I heard the President was a California RINO and that his ex-wife became the new GOP nominee, lost, but the winning rat was murdered during his victory speech and his VP running mate (a degenerate fag who married a gay prostitute and was COS to the RINO President, ie not someone who would ever be a VP nominee) was falsely implicated in the murder which somehow lead to the losing Republican being chosen by democrat electors. That’s about as realistic as Klingon Time Crystals.
Haven’t watch Spacey’s House of Cards (might at some point). Haven’t watched “Madame Secretary” except for one episode which had it’s RINO (!) (but aggressively neocon/Woodrow Wilsony) President lose renomination and decide to run as an Indie (only after the new GOP nominee pissed him off on some minor foreign policy issue) and passing over the protagonist Hillary expy to pick a “Moderate Latina Republican Senator from PA” as his VP running mate, (Da Fuq?).
There was another “Let’s elect Hillary” show back some years ago, the one with Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland, she was an “Independent” chosen by an idiotic Republican to be VP, then he had a stroke. I gave up on it halfway through it’s one season. Though to be fair John McCain almost pulled that nonsense with Liarman.
Friggin ridiculous, “VEEP” is easily more accurate than any of that shite.
That’s the problem when you have nothing but deranged Demonrats producing and writing these political shows (nevermind everything else). They live in a total fantasyland. Hollyweird’s refusal to even hire actors, writers, producers, et al, that don’t huff the Stalinist glue means that they lose out terribly in putting together more realistic (and better) products.
I gave up on it when it went from a political drama about who blew up the Capitol to identity politics
I’m glad I didn’t bother watching these shows because they were boring, stupid, and unrealistic.
I didn’t even think about the attempt to indoctrinate, which was an extra reason not to waste my time :)
season 3 was over the top. It was like AOC brought in her team of social justice warriors to write the script.
In Season 3 , it is the white nationalists and conservatives trying to save their base thru minority targeted bioweapons.
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