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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
27
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
As a standalone episode of television, Survivor’s pilot is nothing to cartwheel over, but as it lays out the show’s premise, it becomes obvious why network executives would snap it up. It’s destined to become one of fall’s biggest network hits, and all because Sutherland accepted his role as the elder statesman of the small screen action thriller.
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Sep 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The pilot does everything it needs to, checking off the necessary boxes for the unwilling American hero-president in efficient, compelling scenes. This show isn’t going to be for everyone, but it comes with one of the highest-quality pilots broadcast is offering this fall, and it’s ABC’s strongest drama.
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Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Sutherland is impressive as a nice guy exercising his backbone for perhaps the first time in his life. He works hard to get past one of the most iconic roles in television. The idealism is palpable, even if the show seems a bit too idealistic. The supporting cast seems stuck taking predictable positions.
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Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
That B-plot is where Designated Survivor has the potential to adhere most stringently to formula, with Wells chasing down leads and interrogating suspects Bauer-style in order to prevent further chaos, but even that traditional side of the series is deftly introduced. Ideally, it will remain in the background; Sutherland is where the show soars.
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Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The problem is that Kirkman’s unexpected rise to power is just a little too grim to make that outcome worth fully celebrating. ... There’s no question that the political side of Designated Survivor is the more fascinating one, but there’s something clever about a network show combining the day-to-day concerns of The West Wing with the paranoid conspiracies of Homeland.
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Sep 20, 2016
Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
For the first half hour or so, Designated Survivor feels a lot "The West Wing"--and that's about the highest praise I can give a show. But then things start to deteriorate. There's a rather ridiculous plot involving Kirkman's son. Worse yet, there's a plot involving one of the generals who seems to be plotting a coup--and he's a cartoonish villain if ever there was one.
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Sep 20, 2016
Season 1 Review:
While the acting government is scrambling to reset itself, Designated Survivor spends a lot of time on Tom's wife, Alex (Natasha McElhone), who is trying to buoy his spirits (he was fired 15 hours earlier and then, well, you know); the Kirkmans' cute daughter, who can't figure out what's going on; and teen son Leo (Tanner Buchanan), acting like an obnoxious teenager and stuff. Yes, we need to know about his family, but not for all the minutes we're given in the pilot.
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Sep 20, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The execution of this premise, which takes up not quite the first half of the pilot, is taut, fast-moving and reasonably believable, offering some promise that Designated Survivor could develop into an entertaining hybrid of political thriller and family drama. Once Kirkman arrives at the White House, though, the momentum fades as various tedious-looking subplots are introduced, and disbelief becomes more difficult to suspend.
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Jun 7, 2019
Sep 22, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The problem comes in the second episode, along with a suddenly increased capacity to resist everything about Designated Survivor. Here we come up against the show’s message, or more precisely its gross political tendentiousness. ... Mr. Sutherland may not have been the best choice for the role of a virtuous milquetoast concealing a heart of steel--the milquetoast part dominates even when the steel is flashed.
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Sep 21, 2016
Season 1 Review:
It’s a strangely unbalanced experience. The portions of the show dealing with one man thrust into the highest office in the land and rising to the occasion are practically Capraesque in their vision of a regular American learning to lead on the fly. And yet what lip-service the pilot episode, airing Wednesday night, pays to the actual upheaval that would be going on is dully by-the-numbers. It’s as though the show can’t, or won’t, meaningfully consider the very disaster at the center of its premise.
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Sep 15, 2016
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