Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:11 What's up everyone? You're listening to Snorkeling with Narwals. I am Brian and today I am going to talk to you about a show that bugs me to no end. And truly I can say that I dislike it, which most shows it's like I just either love it, I really like it, or I have no feelings. Um, it's really tough for me to find a show that I hate, but this one is different. It is called Designated Survivor and it sucks. It started in 2016 and I have to give you a spoiler alert cuz I am going to be going through essentially the entire show and talking about why I hate it. So part of it is it just had a lot of potential. Like it got ordered straight to series. They didn't just do a pilot, they were like, we're gonna do a whole season of this right off the bat.
Speaker 1 00:01:01 And it had good characters. Like there's, you know, his, the president himself who's played by Keefer Sutherland, like Keefer Sutherland and his chief of staff and his like speech writer and I guess he was the press secretary, all these cool characters. And it started out with a decent plot. Basically Keefer Sutherland played Tom Kirkman, who's like this random guy in the cabinet and he was the designated survivor for the State of the Union. And there was a terrorist attack that blew up the entire capitol. The president died, vice president died, so he became president. And that was the basic gist of the show. And then they, you know, were trying to figure out who did it, you know, who was behind it, what was going on. And so it started out pretty decently, you know, good couple first episodes and then it just like started to get bad.
Speaker 1 00:01:57 It grew to suck very quickly. Part of that was that they just flew through plots and conspirators, like they would discover a conspirator. There was a dude trying to become the vice president who was involved in the conspiracy to blow up the capitol. And you know, him and his wife are, are just trying to, to basically infiltrate the government and take over. And within a few episodes, like they're dead. They're presented as these huge threats and then just dead, you know, more conspirators, like this random assassin they find dead. It just seemed like when they would introduce like villainous characters, they'd be killed within a few episodes. And you're like, all right, now what are we doing? And then there was just like this random subplot where the president's teenage son was a drug dealer, apparently, I don't know, it only came up that episode and was never brought up again.
Speaker 1 00:02:53 There's just so much where it was like they would fly through it. These are like 20, 20 episode seasons. And so at the end of the first season you find out who the mastermind is, his name's Patrick Lloyd for whatever that's worth. And by the third episode of the next season, he's dead. Like the mastermind of the entire thing is dead. And then there's this random plot where this Patrick Lloyd tried to frame the president's mother-in-law for, you know, taking some loans illicitly. So everything in that ends up working out. But then the president's wife dies. And that was really because the actress playing her signed onto a different show. But she's like, oh by the way, the president's wife is dead now. And then there's another dirty bomb somewhere that they have to find. And then the president has to be investigated because he's going to therapy cuz his wife died and they're investigating him for like how fit he is to be president.
Speaker 1 00:03:47 Then the chief of staff gets shot, but nothing bad happens. She gets shot in the arm. That was like a cliffhanger for the episode. She gets shot and you're like, oh no, what's gonna happen? Oh, she got shot in the arm and it's immediately resolved the next episode. They just, they tried to do so much in this show and the seasons were way too long. 21 episodes, like that's a long time. And so like, eventually it just sucked and it got canceled and I was pumped, you know, one because it just wasn't very good for the reasons I laid out. And also one of the biggest problems I had with it was that Keifer Sutherland was too perfect. Nothing was ever this guy's fault. Like some issue would come up where someone was being investigated in his staff or something. It's never his fault. Like nothing ever fell on him.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 And if something was potentially his fault, it was usually for some like obscure reason or like he ended up being the winner at the very end of it. He just was too good. Especially, and I read this interview, I don't remember where it was from, but like he's supposed to just play this random cabinet member, but when he becomes president he's like, Keefer Sutherland from 24 and from like all these different things where, you know, Keefer Sutherland is awesome. So it's kind of hard to believe him and it's kind of hard to care when nothing bad really ever happens to this guy. I mean his wife died, but then, you know, he finds someone else that he's apparently with Why I bring this up, it's kind of random, like it's a, a pretty random topic to bring up for a podcast episode. Netflix picked it up for a third season and it's gonna be like 10 episodes long. So I think they should have let it die, but if they're going to bring it back, maybe they can fix it. Cuz 10 episode seasons, I feel like that's like the big thing now, but it's also a lot shorter. Like you don't have to rush things, you don't have to fly through plots. You can just like, here's the story, here's 10 episodes about it and then we'll do something else. So I don't know, designated Survivor, start it off Good. Should have been awesome. Ended up sucking. We'll see where it goes from here.
Speaker 1 00:06:05 So one of my biggest problems is that I am afraid of a lot of things. You know, I've got the common fears, spiders, um, thunderstorms, things I don't like, but a lot of my fears are existential, you know, things that you can't actually see, but things that are really bad to deal with sometimes. My big one at the moment is starting new jobs. Like it freaks me out. Um, it always has, but recently it's gotten worse. Two years ago I had a full-time job that I will not say their name, um, to protect them, but it did not work out and it kind of left me like with this messed up feeling basically that I'm going to fail. Like I'm just going to fail. And some of it is me doing it to myself. Like I know that this is the way I am and I think I'll kind of overreact, like just like, oh, like you're gonna mess up again.
Speaker 1 00:07:08 Like let's go full into self-pity mode. But then a lot of it is also just genuine fear of failure. Um, you know, I've seen on Facebook things like if, you know, you know, I'm one of those people where if I don't succeed at something immediately I think I'm a failure. And that's kind of true for me. And usually it ends up working out, you know, like after a few days of being confused or worried about this job, I'll start it. I'll just like dive right in and I'll get used to it. But there have been a couple times where it didn't, the first time I don't think it ever was. And then another time I didn't give it enough time to actually work out. And so it's kind of messed with me, you know, people can tell me like, oh no, you're doing fine. Like, you'll be fine.
Speaker 1 00:07:52 It's one of those things I guess I kind of just have to deal with it and like get through it on my own. Uh, like I don't really have a point to this story, you know? I guess if there's any, it's, you're not the only person out there who's afraid of things like this. I mean, I guess part the point is kind of just I wanted to to talk about this because like I feel it a lot and you know, the Bible says Don't be afraid. And there's some great songs that I try to listen to to calm me down. So Afraid by Bebo Norman, that's more of like a spiritual fear type song, which is also a big thing for me. Don't Be Afraid by Brandon Heath and Afraid by 10th Avenue North. They all have it in the title, but that doesn't always help me.
Speaker 1 00:08:38 Like, I guess this is gonna sound really bad, um, from someone who says they're a Christian. But I guess like, I don't know, like I should say that God is, you know, the big one to trust for like, dealing with fear. And I'm not saying that's not not true, I'm just saying that for me it doesn't seem like it is. And I guess I've gotta figure out where I want to go with that. You know, trust in God to deal with, to help deal with my fear maybe. But a lot of it too is I get, I I just have to work through it. Like my big thing is if I can work through it and just like get over why I'm afraid of this job and I'm just talking generally not about a specific job, then I'm usually fine. But yeah, like I am scared to death of new jobs and a lot of other things. Maybe I'll bring those up in other episodes. Maybe not, who knows.
Speaker 1 00:09:38 So that's it for today's episode of Snorkeling with Narwhals. Hope you enjoyed it. My rant about Designated Survivor and my talk about being afraid of things, especially new jobs. Um, once again, every Wednesday is the day that I'm going for to release new episodes. You can check out the Facebook page Snorkeling with Narwals Twitter at snorkel cast website bt mckay.com/s w n and it's now on iTunes. It for sure is on iTunes. You can either subscribe via iTunes, apple podcast, whatever, or uh, a feed reader, just search for snorkeling with Narwhals. Hopefully that works. Anyway, I'm Brian. This is snorkeling with Narwals and I'm out.
