(This review is written after watching the first two episodes and will be revised if latter developments warrant it -- but that seems highly improbable).
When I sit down to watch a new series about the United States Capitol Building being blown to smithereens with the majority of top federal officials inside it (including the President and his cabinet), I'm not expecting a work of spiritual art like Kieslowski's Decalog. I am fully aware that what I'm in for -- at best -- is some good dumb fun.
With those expectations in mind, this show is so incredibly stupid, so homogeneously driven by bland stereotypes, so mind-numbingly unchallenging, and really just plain offensive to anyone with a normal amount of critical intelligence that its complete rottenness becomes not just about the show itself but about the vacuous, empty chasm at the heart of Hollywood that allows millions of dollars to be spent producing worthless pablum like this.
Let's start with the obligatory disaster-movie nuclear family at the center of this thing. They are perfect: the beautiful wife, the all-American husband, the angelic daughter. Only the troublesome long-haired teenager (however, in fact, milquetoast he actually is in real world terms) presents a fly in the chardonnay. In fact, they aren't real people, and the fact that they are not real people is the clue to what this entire series really is: it's a fantasy about the decency of the white suburban nuclear family triumphing over the terrifying chaos of the big scary world outside. And, folks, that is literally all this series is.
To counterbalance this stereotypical white nuclear family that must be at the center of all things, we are forced to endure the obligatory multicultural cast of supporting characters, grindingly and joylessly portrayed by actors who surely know exactly what is going down: the White House speechwriter who looks just "other" enough with his olive skin to be challenged by police; the jar-headed, pig-brained defense adviser who looks like Beetle Bailey's "Sarge" on steroids; the ethically unimpeachable African-American FBI Deputy Director; the brainy yet stunning Asian-American woman thinking a step ahead of everyone else in very, very tight shirts.
This kind of garbage is hard enough to take in our daily allotment of bank and insurance commercials, but it's unwatchable in an hour-long TV series.
Let's address the realism: there isn't any. OK, we've completed that topic.
No, seriously: do you really think the U.S. government is so unprepared for such a disaster that we would end up the day after with the chief of staff of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development vetting candidates for Secretary of State? Really? I mean do you really think that will ever happen in any world? Don't you know that ever since the 1950's the United States has been prepared for a strategic nuclear strike from the Soviet Union or elsewhere that would not just take out the U.S. Capitol building but 80% of the urban population of the country? And you don't think they have anything in place better than -- hey let's put all the survivors in a room and let them yell at each other until Kiefer Sutherland slips out the back and goes to catch some Pokemon Go in the Cabinet Room?
(No, he doesn't actually do that -- because the people who wrote and produced this show are too dumb, humorless and culturally out of it to include anything that human and real and ridiculous).
And do you think that one becomes the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in this country by being The Best Dad in the World, whose only blemish in life is that he wears glasses?
Why, no, that is not, in fact, how the world operates.
Who this character should have been, and could have been, is a portly, buffoonish (but highly intelligent) master of the shadowy corridors of political power -- Tony Soprano meets Chris Christie meets Al Sharpton. A huge, oversized, compelling character with more skeletons in his closet than an out-of-season haunted house; but someone who also finds himself, surprising to no one more than the face in the mirror, with humility and patriotism when faced with such a daunting task.
But, I ask too much.
So, for starters, how about we just allow the Asian chick to dress like a professional FBI field agent and not like a Victoria's Secret t-shirt model?
When I sit down to watch a new series about the United States Capitol Building being blown to smithereens with the majority of top federal officials inside it (including the President and his cabinet), I'm not expecting a work of spiritual art like Kieslowski's Decalog. I am fully aware that what I'm in for -- at best -- is some good dumb fun.
With those expectations in mind, this show is so incredibly stupid, so homogeneously driven by bland stereotypes, so mind-numbingly unchallenging, and really just plain offensive to anyone with a normal amount of critical intelligence that its complete rottenness becomes not just about the show itself but about the vacuous, empty chasm at the heart of Hollywood that allows millions of dollars to be spent producing worthless pablum like this.
Let's start with the obligatory disaster-movie nuclear family at the center of this thing. They are perfect: the beautiful wife, the all-American husband, the angelic daughter. Only the troublesome long-haired teenager (however, in fact, milquetoast he actually is in real world terms) presents a fly in the chardonnay. In fact, they aren't real people, and the fact that they are not real people is the clue to what this entire series really is: it's a fantasy about the decency of the white suburban nuclear family triumphing over the terrifying chaos of the big scary world outside. And, folks, that is literally all this series is.
To counterbalance this stereotypical white nuclear family that must be at the center of all things, we are forced to endure the obligatory multicultural cast of supporting characters, grindingly and joylessly portrayed by actors who surely know exactly what is going down: the White House speechwriter who looks just "other" enough with his olive skin to be challenged by police; the jar-headed, pig-brained defense adviser who looks like Beetle Bailey's "Sarge" on steroids; the ethically unimpeachable African-American FBI Deputy Director; the brainy yet stunning Asian-American woman thinking a step ahead of everyone else in very, very tight shirts.
This kind of garbage is hard enough to take in our daily allotment of bank and insurance commercials, but it's unwatchable in an hour-long TV series.
Let's address the realism: there isn't any. OK, we've completed that topic.
No, seriously: do you really think the U.S. government is so unprepared for such a disaster that we would end up the day after with the chief of staff of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development vetting candidates for Secretary of State? Really? I mean do you really think that will ever happen in any world? Don't you know that ever since the 1950's the United States has been prepared for a strategic nuclear strike from the Soviet Union or elsewhere that would not just take out the U.S. Capitol building but 80% of the urban population of the country? And you don't think they have anything in place better than -- hey let's put all the survivors in a room and let them yell at each other until Kiefer Sutherland slips out the back and goes to catch some Pokemon Go in the Cabinet Room?
(No, he doesn't actually do that -- because the people who wrote and produced this show are too dumb, humorless and culturally out of it to include anything that human and real and ridiculous).
And do you think that one becomes the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in this country by being The Best Dad in the World, whose only blemish in life is that he wears glasses?
Why, no, that is not, in fact, how the world operates.
Who this character should have been, and could have been, is a portly, buffoonish (but highly intelligent) master of the shadowy corridors of political power -- Tony Soprano meets Chris Christie meets Al Sharpton. A huge, oversized, compelling character with more skeletons in his closet than an out-of-season haunted house; but someone who also finds himself, surprising to no one more than the face in the mirror, with humility and patriotism when faced with such a daunting task.
But, I ask too much.
So, for starters, how about we just allow the Asian chick to dress like a professional FBI field agent and not like a Victoria's Secret t-shirt model?