It was a couple of weeks ago but I just heard. I suppose it was cancelled because everybody felt like I did.
The first season was pretty good, but after that I felt the writers were struggling to fill time. There was no real arc, just a bunch of episodes. Then the “three letters” episode came along, which I felt was shark-jumping. They killed his wife; I don’t know if that was for a shocking plot development or if the actress just got a better deal somewhere else. I quit watching altogether two episodes after his wife’s death.
I never watched 24 but I understand Sutherland was great in that. In DS, he had basically three facial expressions: a warm smile, a concerned look as he put on or took off his glasses with one hand, and a furrowed brow to indicate anger. His reactions were consistently overly restrained, and he seemed to change his mind radically at the first suggestion from one of his staff. I think the direction in this series was gross malpractice.
I quickly got tired of the glib conversations by Emily Rhodes as she sashayed briskly down the hallways.
The introduction of Lyor Boone for comic relief seemed desperate.
Hannah Wells must be the stupidest and most ill-trained agent at the FBI–she constantly takes needless life-threatening risks and never calls for backup.
The only character I continued to like through the whole series was Seth.
Yeah, it was a bargain basement “West Wing”, but the show had heart and I’m sorry to see it go. The Bush years gave us Jed Bartlett, a fictional president whose defining characteristic was his intellectual depth. The trump years gave us Tom Kirkman, a fictional president whose defining characteristic was his basic human decency.
And “Designated Survivor” premiered prior to the election of 2016, but with both shows the lions share of episodes were during the Bush and trump administrations respectively.
But the characters’ defining traits were established before either of those presidents was elected, and in fact before anyone thought they even had a chance of being elected. I think it would be more accurate to say that The West Wing and Designated Survivor were reactions to the Republican Party in general than reactions to particular presidents. And they’re hardly specific to those presidents either, since the typical liberal view of Republicans is anti-intellectual and corrupt.
An interesting counterpoint to my earlier observation is that the Obama years gave us the most corrupt fictional president imaginable, Frank Underwood.
I’ve been watching it, but I couldn’t figure out why they kept the show going after they got the government back on line and rebuilt the capital building. Like, the story’s over, guys… from here on in it’s just a White House procedural, and I’ll watch Madam Secretary for that.
Putting real-life politics aside, I agree with the OP. The first season was pretty good, though there was a downhill slide in quality even then. But this second season has been a disaster from start to finish. I didn’t bother looking up the producers or writers to see what really happened, but it was like a bunch of desperate people decided week to week “Hey, we’re flailing… why don’t we try this!”. Bringing in Michael J. Fox reeked of desperation. There was no consistency from episode to episode regarding characters or procedures.
I watched most of the first season, and some of the second season, by osmosis (i.e., my wife was interested in it, and I happened to often be in the same room).
It was an interesting concept, but it seemed to me like the producers felt that they needed to up the ante every single week, and make the conspiracy more dire (to the point of ridiculousness).
IMO, it would have been much better as a closed-ended, BBC-style limited series, rather than an open-ended story.
Sorry for the mini-derailment, but I do feel that the “other guy” threw the first volley.
But be that as it may, it would have been interesting for the series to go into an election year with an independent incumbent running against both a Democrat and a Republican. Perhaps such an election would end up with an Electoral College deadlock and go to the House.