Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

DVD Review: Designated Survivor The Complete Series

 



Designated Survivor was a show about a HUD Secretary named Tom Kirkman, played by Kiefer Sutherland in his first major role since leaving Jack Bauer behind and deciding not to continue returning to 24. He is named the Designated Survivor (the one cabinet member that does not attend the State of the Union) and becomes President when a terrorist attack wipes out the entire government (almost) on an attack on the Capitol during the State of the Union address. It aired for two seasons on ABC before it was canceled and picked up by Netflix for a third and ultimately, final season.

The first season of the show was great, intertwining two storylines. The first was trying to figure out who was behind the attack on the Capitol. The second storyline involved Kirkman figuring out how to be President, and trying to rebuild the government, and figuring out how to run the country with the majority of the government gone. The two storylines largely remained parallel to each other, only intersecting at certain times. Maggie Q, arguably the second lead of the series, played FBI agent Hannah Wells, who was the lead agent trying to figure out the conspiracy. The White House Staff included Adan Canto (playing the Chief of Staff Aaron Shore), Italia Ricci (playing Advisor Emily Rhodes), LaMonica Garret, (who played lead Secret Service Agent Mike Ritter), and Kal Penn (who played Press Secretary Seth Wright). Penn was also a consultant on the show and provided knowledge of his time working in the White House during the Obama Administration.  The rest of the cast was rounded out by character actors including Natascha McElhone as the first lady, McKenna Grace and Tanner Buchanan as Kirkman's son and daughter, Malik Yoba as FBI Deputy Director Jason Atwood, Reed Diamond as the FBI's version of the head of Internal Affairs, and Virginia Madsen as Congresswoman Virginal Hookstraten, who was the Republican Designated Survivor.

Season two jumped ahead in time one year and focused more on Kirkman trying to govern. The conspiracy from season one was wrapped up very early into season two (which I think was a mistake) and the show tried to shoehorn another conspiracy into the show that I do not think the fans were nearly as invested in. There was some cast turnover in season two (mainly additions to the cast). Paul Costanzo was brought in to play Lyor Boone, a political strategist, Zoe McLellan was added to play White House Counsel Kendra Daynes, and Breckin Meyer was added to play Tom's Brother, Trey.  Michael J. Fox also had a recurring role toward the end of the season, and Kiefer's fellow 24 alumn Kim Raver had a recurring role throughout the season. 

The third season involved another time jump. The focus of this season was the campaign and Kirkman trying to get re-elected. He is also dealing with the fallout of one of the major storylines from season two. There was a lot of cast turnover in this season both with characters leaving and the additions of Anthony Edwards (in his first major role since ER) as Chief of Staff Mars Harper and Julie White as Lorraine Zimmer, the Campaign Manager for Kirkman's election campaign. They also came up with yet another major conspiracy which somewhat bordered on the ridiculous, and was in some ways a bit prophetic given the covid outbreak. And, they definitely made good use of the ability to swear on Netflix as there were a lot of f-bombs dropped. 

For those who get the complete series DVD set, there are 15 discs overall. 6 for seasons one and two and 3 for season three. The packaging is horrible. Instead of giving each disc its own holder, you have to stack discs on top of each other, and they definitely come loose during shipping.  So, you may end up with some scratched discs so you definitely want to play them before the return window closes from wherever you buy them. As some may know, season one got a US DVD release and season two got an international DVD release. Season three had bootleg releases, but no official release until this one. Season one had all the same extras (behind-the-scenes material) as the US release. In the version of season two I had, only had an interview with Paul Constanzo which was not included in this set, but there were some other behind-the-scenes features that were not included on the set I already owned. For season three, there are no extras, just the episodes. There are English and French captions for each season, and the DVD menus are in English and French. 

Overall, I would say the series was good. Season 1 was outstanding, but the show went down in quality each successive season. I think the show would have been much better served to drag out the season one conspiracy longer (at least until the end of season two) instead of revealing it all by the end of season one. I think that made the show suffer from what a lot of shows that were tied up in a mystery faced when the mystery is solved. Namely, where to go from there. The writers definitely used events from the current political climate in the series (although there was no direct mention of t***p, you can tell that the show was in part a commentary on the state of the country under his "leadership"). I think the show was mostly well-written, and always well-acted. While it could not maintain season one's quality throughout, I think it is still worth checking out.

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