After watching the first two episodes of Designated Survivor, I’m done.  The writing is not up to that of 24, and Kiefer Sutherland plays a curiously low-energy role.  But mostly it’s the P.C. plot.  Terrorists blow up the Capitol during the State of the Union address, decapitating the entire government except for the Secretary of HUD, played by Kiefer, who becomes president, and a single Republican congresswoman (now, there’s diversity).

The public, of course, suspects Muslims, and the governor of Michigan turns the cops loose on the citizens of Dearbornistan, resulting in a "child" (18-year-old boy) getting kicked to death by cops.  And Kal Penn, a speechwriter at the White House, is stopped on his way to work by two insensitive (is there any other kind?) white male cops for the crime of looking suspicious (dark skin while carrying a backpack).  Imagine: an attack kills the president, Cabinet, Congress, and Supreme Court, but the real tragedy is the backlash against the Muslim community, which is innocent.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is another General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove trying to recruit Kiefer's chief of staff to his plot to depose President Kiefer.  Surprise: All the bad guys so far are non-Muslim white males!  Oh, the evil that lurks within our chauvinist, capitalist, nativist, nationalist, isolationist, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, anti-LBGQRSTUVWXYZ society!

A lone FBI agent (Asian woman) suspects that an unexploded bomb found in the rubble is misdirection meant to throw suspicion on ISIS or al-Qaeda or some other Muslim group.  Her superior, a male, will not present her evidence to the president.  Wait – she has no evidence.  But he is black, so there is hope he will come to trust her woman’s intuition.

Who could be behind this dastardly deed?  Is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs the mastermind or just an opportunist?  Is it clinging abortion-center bombers who decided to up their game?  Could it be climate deniers?  Environment haters eager to dump mercury, arsenic, and hexavalent chromium into every puddle in the land?  ExxonMobil/BP/Shell/Aramco/Rosneft/Lukoil/Valero/Petrobras/Chevron/Pemex/Gazprom/Marathon intent on building pipelines across Native American lands in order to despoil the sacred spaces?  Oh, the suspense!

I can't wait for the plot to unwind with glacial slowness.  I'm Googling for a spoiler alert now.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona.  He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.