Anyone who knows me knows, that when it comes to politics, I tend to geek out a little bit.
Okay, I tend to a geek out a lot. Sure, tons of people know the fifty state capitals, but do they know all 535 voting members of Congress?
My love, or rather my obsession, with policy and the mechanisms that produce it, are well known. What is not as well-known, however, is my infatuation with action and thrillers. James Bond, Mission Impossible, you name it. My all-time favorite TV show, even though it is no longer on the air, is still "24" starring Kiefer Sutherland as the unconquerable Jack Bauer.
Needless to say, my life has been pretty devoid of excitement without the time clock that goes through a twenty-four hour period that began and ended each episode as well as brought the audience back from commercial breaks. Whether it was fighting back terrorists or rogue intelligence agents, you knew that Jack Bauer was going to make it and kick some serious butt in the process.
I've been waiting a while for some appointment television that made me sit down in front of a television set on a weekday evening. With the rise of Netflix, shows like "House of Cards" don't have the same effect on my computer screen that "NCIS" has on the TV in my living room.
A couple of months ago, I was aimlessly scrolling through Facebook (as I am wont to do when suffering from immense boredom or chronic procrastination) when I clicked on a promoted video that changed my life.
With the ominous words of an unfamiliar State of the Union address being
Hopefully you have watched the above trailer by this point, so you know that the show is centered around the most devastating attack on America that never actually happened: the destruction of the United States Capitol that killed every single Senator, Congressman, most of the Joint Chiefs, Supreme Court Justices, members of the President's Cabinet, the Vice President, and the President himself. Only one member of the Cabinet survived the attack: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Tom Kirkman (played by Sutherland) was selected as the Designated Survivor.
For those unfamiliar with this part of American democracy, the Designated Survivor is an actual security protocol that our government uses only during special occasions such as the State of the Union or the Presidential Inauguration. The D.S., or as one episode of "The West Wing" called "The Guy", is a member of the Cabinet who is Constitutionally capable of assuming the Presidency in the case of a catastrophic attack on our Republic in pursuit of the Continuity of Government (CoG). So yes, "24" fans, you finally get to see Kiefer Sutherland as President of the United States. We've only been wanting that to happen for, well, forever.
While the Presidential Line of Succession in these worst-case scenarios is actually very murky, the show not only seeks to unravel these legal issues in time of a crisis but also the relationships between the characters, the reason behind the attack, the identities of the cowardly attackers, while maintaining American security at home and abroad in probably the darkest moment imaginable.
To say I was excited to watch this program is an understatement. To say that I was in love with the pilot that premiered on Wednesday, September 21st is probably the biggest underestimation of me in my lifetime.
I highly recommend that everyone puts this series on their calendar.
You won't regret it.
