History YMMV / DesignatedSurvivor

* CatharsisFactor: The mysterious SmugSnake woman who speaks for TheConspiracy gets [[spoiler:shot dead by Agent Wells and by Jason Atwood, whose captive son was murdered by her and her associates]].

** The scene in the final episode when Isabel discovers she's pregnant with Aaron's child is already ambivalent enough as it is and just became even sadder with Creator/AdanCanto's unexpected passing of appendiceal cancer in January 2024 at age 42 as well.

** Before being best known for playing [[Series/CobraKai Robby Keene]], Creator/TannerBuchanon played Tom Kirkman's son Leo in the first two seasons.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Series/{{Arrowverse}} fans will notice that Mike is [[{{Series/Elseworlds2018}} Mar Novu]] / [[{{Series/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths2019}} The Monitor]] [[{{ActingForTwo}} and]] his EvilCounterpart the Anti-Monitor.

* AcceptableTargets: Kimble Hookstraten is basically the TokenGoodTeammate of the Republican Party[[note]]''so far'', in all fairness[[/note]]. Also mitigated somewhat in that the Democratic Party is occasionally shown to be equally sleazy and corrupt, like with former President Richmond or [[spoiler:Peter [=MacLeish=]]].

* CompleteMonster: Garrett Detwiler and Wouter Momberg, both from season 3, are a [[CorruptCorporateExecutive pharmaceutical CEO]] and [[AmoralAfrikaner South African biochemist]], respectively. Detwiler and Phil Brunton hire Momberg, a war criminal, to synthesize a biotoxin specifically for the purpose of infecting minorities and creating a [[SterilityPlague mass sterilization]] so that the white demographic will be significantly higher in future elections. Detwiler also has a drug approved for one of his companies that he knows increases dependency so he can also have another sold that stops it. They have Aryans work on the toxin, and a scientist is fatally wounded and then burned alive when infected. In order to test the biotoxin, an OBGYN clinic that takes all minorities is targeted among others. Momberg then murders the Aryans and fatally poisons now CIA Agent Hannah Wells to cover their tracks, gleefully taunting her as she lays dying, and then later murders a scientist who catches onto him. When caught, he releases instructions for creating the toxin online and threatens FBI with the toxin, claiming infection is fatal.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Kirkman's big moment of risking his life to vote is undercut a bit by how Washington DC, not being a state, only has ballots for a single non-voting delegate in the House. Kirkman would have to travel to his home state of New York to cast his full vote.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The long-vacant [[NumberTwo vice-presidency]] is ''finally'' addressed in "In The Dark" in Season 2, when new character Ellenor Darby, the mayor of Washington, D.C., is introduced and impresses Kirkman with her [[ADayInTheLimelight handling of a major power outage crisis]].

* IdiotPlot:
** In "Misalliance", Jason Atwood makes a significant investment of time and effort bugging [[BigBad Patrick Lloyd]] and tracking him to his home with listening technology to hear all about the plans of TheConspiracy when Lloyd meets with TheMole from the White House. [[spoiler:Atwood completely neglects to bring any backup, and gets [[DroppedABridgeOnHim abruptly shot]] by Catalan in the woods on the property.]]
** The conspirators kidnap Atwood's son to force him to make a false confession. [[spoiler:Then they kill his son anyway, which means he does not have any reason to stick to his confession and very good reason to tell the truth. This seems to serve no other purpose than to KickTheDog and prove how evil they are, which didn't really need any reinforcement by that point.]]
** In "Overkill", FBI Agent Hannah Wells is sent as Kirkman's envoy to a group of rebels in the mountains of Kunami. She's still clearly distraught and enraged over [[spoiler:Director Forstell's death in the D.C. Metro bombing]], and needs to get talked out of RevengeBeforeReason by a S.E.A.L. team member. What is she even doing half the globe away from the States? Was ''everyone in the CIA'' unavailable?

** The conspirators cross this in the ''very first episode'' by bombing the U.S. Capitol and killing a thousand American citizens to further their own power. This is only reinforced when [[spoiler:they get wind of Atwood's investigations, abduct his son, and blackmail him into taking the fall for Nassar's murder]]. And ''then'' [[spoiler:the conspirators attempt to murder Agent Wells, followed by President Kirkman, in "The Oath"]]. Taken UpToEleven when they [[spoiler:murder Atwood's son as of "The End of the Beginning", just to KickTheDog ''even further'']].

** The conspirators [[AdultFear abducting Atwood's son]] in "The Traitor", complete with a SmugSnake operative taunting him about it. [[spoiler:And later they execute his son anyways.]]

** The show’s third season deals with a pandemic arc[[note]]inspired by UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra South African biological weapons program [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast Project Coast]], according to executive producer Neal Baer in two spring 2020 interviews[[/note]] which parallels the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic and its surrounding fears and conspiracies that it was bioterror-related. The show also touches upon the fictional pandemic’s disproportionate impact on people of color in much the same way as coverage of the real-life pandemic.

** The show opens with the bombing of the United States Capitol, which serves as the basis of the plot. On January 06, 2021, thousands of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's supporters unlawfully stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. Five people died and explosive devices were found at the scene, though thankfully they were safely removed before they could be detonated.

** The show's opens with the bombing of the United States Capitol, which is the basis of the plot. On January 06, 2021, thousands of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's supporters unlawfully stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. Five people died and explosive devices were found at the scene, though thankfully they were safely removed before they found be detonated.

* BrokenBase:
** The post-[[spoiler:[=MacLeish=]]] half of the first season. As opposed to the first ten episodes, where the entirety of the cast is focused on capturing the Capitol bombing terrorists, the second half delegates those duties almost exclusively to Wells and Atwood's storyline. As a result, Kirkman's storyline has shifted to more policy-of-the-week based plots. It also doesn't help that Aaron's resignation basically throws out the ''[[Series/TheWestWing West Wing]]'' character dynamics that, for some, made the initial episodes so interesting. At the same time, a common complaint about the early episodes were that they were ''too'' focused on TheConspiracy -- with little hope of much progress, [[SpoiledByTheFormat given the length of the season]] -- and there was not enough exploration of the political realities of getting an entire country's federal government up and running again after such a calamity.
** Also, over whether or not the series has a case of WriterOnBoard pushing it to a liberal viewpoint:
*** On one hand, basically every prominent Republican in the series has been an antagonistic {{jerkass}}, TheStarscream, or DesignatedVillain -- except for [[TokenGoodTeammate Kimble Hookstraten]], who ended up catching ChuckCunninghamSyndrome for the second season -- and TheConspiracy that drove the first season turned out to be [[spoiler:a bunch of {{Right Wing Militia Fanatic}}s]]. Meanwhile, the show spends plenty of time dwelling on current issues like arts funding, gun control, or wage inequality.
*** On the other hand, Kirkman is actually a registered ''independent'', the traitorous [[spoiler:Vice-President Peter [=MacLeish=]]] was a Democrat, and other Democrats continually cause problems for Kirkman in the second season, to the point of ganging up with their Republican counterparts in EnemyMine situations to try and arm-twist him into doing what they want him to do. If anything, Kirkman is portrayed as ''more'' liberal, under normal circumstances, than the Democrats in the House and the Senate (except when he orders a retaliatory strike on [[{{Qurac}} Kunami]]).
** Dante Evans' revelation that [[spoiler:he is HIV positive and didn't tell his boyfriend until after they had sex. Made worse by the fact that he doesn't seem to care that he took away the choice from said boyfriend to make; saying he was safer than somebody not infected.]]
*** It gets worse; [[spoiler:because we are suppose to sympathize with Dante and think his boyfriend is being unreasonable for being scared of HIV.]]

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: The tendency to blame the "scary brown people" for terrorism is thoroughly nailed to the wall, in a quite timely message.

* CompleteMonster: Garrett Detwiler and Wouter Momberg, both from season 3, are a [[CorruptCorporateExecutive pharmaceutical CEO]] and [[AmoralAfrikaner South African biochemist]], respectively. Detwiler and Phil Brunton hire Momberg, a war criminal, to synthesize a biotoxin specifically for the purpose of infecting minorities and creating a mass sterilization so that the white demographic will be significantly higher in future elections. Detwiler also has a drug approved for one of his companies that he knows increases dependency so he can also have another sold that stops it. They have Aryans work on the toxin, and a scientist is fatally wounded and then burned alive when infected. In order to test the biotoxin, an OBGYN clinic that takes all minorities is targeted among others. Momberg then murders the Aryans and fatally poisons now CIA Agent Hannah Wells to cover their tracks, gleefully taunting her as she lays dying, and then later murders a scientist who catches onto him. When caught, he releases instructions for creating the toxin online and threatens FBI with the toxin, claiming infection is fatal.

* CompleteMonster: Garrett Detwiler and Wouter Momberg, both from season 3, are a [[CorruptCorporateExecutive pharmaceutical CEO]] and [[AmoralAfrikaner South African biochemist]], respectively. Detwiler and Phil Burton hire Momberg to synthesize a biotoxin specifically for the purpose of infecting minorities and creating a mass sterilization so that the white demographic will be significantly higher in future elections. Detwiler also has a drug approved for one of his companies that he knows increases dependency so he can also have another sold that stops it. They have Aryans work on the toxin, and a scientist is fatally wounded and then burned alive when infected. In order to test the biotoxin, an OBGYN clinic that takes all minorities is targeted among others. Momberg then murders the Aryans and fatally poisons now CIA Agent Hannah Wells to cover their tracks, gleefully taunting her as she lays dying, and then later murders a scientist who catches onto him. When caught, he releases instructions for creating the toxin online and threatens FBI with the toxin, claiming infection is fatal.

*** On the other hand, Kirkman is actually a registered ''independent'', the traitorous [[spoiler:Vice-President Peter [=MacLeish=]]] was a Democrat, and other Democrats continually cause problems for Kirkman in the second season, to the point of ganging up with their Republican counterparts in EnemyMine situations to try and arm-twist him into doing what they want him to do. If anything, Kirkman is portrayed as ''more'' liberal, under normal circumstances, than the Democrats in the House and the Senate (except when he orders a retaliatory strike on
** Dante Evans revelation that [[spoiler:He is HIV positive and didn't tell his boyfriend until after they had sex. Made worse by the fact that he doesn't seem to care that he took away the choice from said boyfriend to make; saying he was safer than somebody not infected.]]
*** It gets worse; [[spoiler:because we are suppose to sympathize with Dante and think his boyfriend is being unreasonable for being sacred of HIV.]]
[[{{Qurac}} Kunami]]).

*** On the other hand, Kirkman is actually a registered ''independent'', the traitorous [[spoiler:Vice-President Peter [=MacLeish=]]] was a Democrat, and other Democrats continually cause problems for Kirkman in the second season, to the point of ganging up with their Republican counterparts in EnemyMine situations to try and arm-twist him into doing what they want him to do. If anything, Kirkman is portrayed as ''more'' liberal, under normal circumstances, than the Democrats in the House and the Senate (except when he orders a retaliatory strike on [[{{Qurac}} Kunami]]).

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Patrick Lloyd]] is the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive head of a now-disbanded military firm]] who creates [[TheConspiracy the secret Pax Americana movement]] in order to [[RightWingMilitiaFanatic stage a hostile takeover of the US]]. He obtains numerous high-powered explosives, authorizing the use of one of them to blow up the Capitol building during the State of the Union address, killing nearly everyone inside. Lloyd arranged this through his possession of electronic blueprints of the bombing that were created to prevent such an attack, and also has access to other blueprints made intending to set up other possible attacks, including one on the Golden Gate Bridge. His additional crimes include having the terrorist Majid Nassar, who was paid to take the blame for the attack, murdered to [[HeKnowsTooMuch silence him]]; having FBI Director Jason Atwood’s son abducted and threatened to force Jason’s cooperation, later [[spoiler:having the boy [[WouldHurtAChild killed]] when [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he is no longer valuable]]]]; and trying to have HUD Secretary-turned-President Tom Kirkman assassinated in order to put newly sworn-in Vice-President Peter [=MacLeish=] into office on Lloyd’s authority. Lloyd also plans for Abe Leonard, the reporter he and Whitaker manipulated to cause trouble, to be eventually killed; while that doesn't come to pass, at the end of the season, Lloyd escapes capture and gains a large amount of military information from the Pentagon, which enables him to hold the country hostage and to target any other country at his own whim.