‘Designated Survivor’ episode 3 preview: Enter conspiracies

We live in an era where boredom is a commodity: There’s a lot of it, and people cherish it like it is a Christmas gift or a free reward for spending enough money at a coffee shop. One of the reasons why is that boredom affords the opportunity to create social change on the internet, often in the form of some long, thought-out opinion that doesn’t have much basis in fact. How do you think so many Twitter conspiracy theories are formed? Many of them may stem from the minds of people who want to take their own turn at playing puppetmaster.

Within the world of ABC’s “Designated Survivor,” President Kirkman is not immune to such practices, especially when you stop and then for a moment about the possible viability of them. We are looking here at a man who would only because the Commander-in-Chief if a series of elaborate, specific events were to take place — and they did. The most extreme situation led him to stumble into this role, and it is only inevitable that someone would take advantage of their precious commodity to create a theory online that he was a part of the conspiracy to bring the country to its knees. This will be a discussion point in Wednesday’s new episode, and there could be actual people as opposed to Twitter eggs suggesting the whole Kirkman-is-involved theory by the end of the episode.

Now, let’s get out of the conspiracy game for the remainder of this preview.

One of the other appealing parts of this upcoming episode (entitled “The Confession”) is Kirkman stepping in front of the public for his first television interview since taking the job, while at the same time trying to keep a high-level security breach of the White House. Doing television interviews with ambitious (at times overly-so) journalists is difficult under any circumstance for a leader in this position. For Kirkman with his limited training in the spotlight, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.

While you watch Wednesday’s episode, one thing you can rejoice in (no matter what happens onscreen) is that the show has been picked up for a full season already