You barely explained why it's implausible, but I'll reply to what little you addressed.
where each family member just has contact to one other person who could get suspicious
I don't understand.
a president is always surrounded by the same three persons and never has to work
Why do you think this? I don't see it implied in the show?
a team of four people is enough to provide 100% surveillance over four independent targets.
I'm not sure the correct term is "targets", but I understand what you mean. That's why they had the GPS trackers installed. All you have to do to keep track is look at a screen. And for the doctor, you just have to keep track of everything they are doing, of course, this isn't even a criticism because the show addresses this many times where they either removed the trackers or in the case of the doctor, did other things to throw them off of tracking her. You're right. For 4 people it's hard to keep track of 4 other's daily lives. Yet, Duncan was trying to drive this point home since the beginning:
"We are in this together. If we do not succeed, we die. If you tattle, we die. If you raise too much of a ruckus, we die. There is no way out. Things are already in motion and you are already apart of this. It is too late to turn back for us, even."
I think a better question would be "Why do they need to track them at all if Duncan is relying on the fact that they are smart and realize if they do anything stupid they die?"
And to that, I would simply say that it's a safeguard. A safeguard from them doing anything stupid. And in fact, the script shows this, because the family does some stupid things. And when you're under those conditions, it's totally understandable. Kill or be killed? Including your children.
Now they are trying to strike a balance and trying to not be killed while not killing, which we anyone could see would be the solution in the end, but the ride was definitely enjoyable.
I see no implausibility here.
It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alien...or it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320
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tb-sch
10 years ago
Just think of all the people who would suspect something is wrong when your family gets kidnapped and none of you would be allowed to go anywhere except school or work. This series tries to make one believe that the son has not other contacts than his drug dealers, the husband just his affair, the mother just her sister and the daughter just her boyfriend - in all of those cases their single contact to the outer world is also their dark secret btw. Plausible writing?
The president never does president stuff. Like politics. He is just sitting around in back rooms with the same three people and his wife all the time, waiting to talk about his operation or that NSA thingy. That is all. 24 hours a day. I see that those are the topics relevant for the series, but good writing would actually manage to show that he is a busy guy, explaining why he can't keep an eye on the things, including the matters of live and death. The show leaves here - and in many other cases - the question why people act like they do to something not defined, which of course one could come up with but what I want the writers to come up with and not just fans who try to love the show (just to look back in a few years and realizing that they just fooled themselves into liking it by what they imagined around it).
The balance of not killing nor getting killed which indeed could be an interesting part is practically anihilated by the idea of the girls boyfriend getting killed. In front of her eyes. Without her showing any reaction. That would be the moment a person breaks down, creating the subplot of the shocked girl who cannot talk to anybody for the next few days. And there you have the answers to both questions directly back to back: Why do people keep watching? Because there is potential and ideas to explore. Why is the show completely implausible? Because it fails to explore those questions. Instead it is really badly constructed and keeps falling over its own long legs on its butt all the time.
Another example of that kind would be that secret service guy, who just realized that there is a big conspiracy with probably some of his closest people involved, then lets one of those guys drive him back and does not get suspicious when that guy stops the car in the middle of nowhere. That might seem plausible when you see people as mere bricks building a story. But good writing means writing plausible characters. One can hardly pretend that such a scene makes sense at all.
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raythorne2005
10 years ago
Wow, this was really well thought out and well written! This is a rare time when I have nothing to counter with. I agree that all of what you said were major shortcomings with the show.
But I still found it enjoyable, and with a few tweaks like you mentioned, it could have been awesome.
It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alien...or it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320
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jstaguypa
10 years ago
To see a disagreement end like this is commendable and utterly disappointing. I expected more from you two. Really.
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raythorne2005
10 years ago
Ahahahaha. Good one!
Actually, I DID NOT even realize that was the same person I was arguing with! I thought it was someone else, because THEY actually made sense, compared to the last messages I responded to. =P
So yeah, I agree with pretty much everything they said in their last message, but the others I still somewhat disagree with. For instance:
the whole assassination plot got more and more implausible - it just would not make sense to pull the thing through in the way the team attempted it
I don't think the assassination plot as a whole was implausible. We were just having a little mind storm the other day about how a president could even be assassinated in this modern society. To be honest, there aren't many options. Somehow getting the president's surgeon to do it is one of the few ways it CAN happen in today's modern world. Even the other way they tried to do it with the sniper in the van was totally implausible in today's world. (that whole episode was pretty iffy)
I think the main plot point of taking the president's surgeon hostage was pretty great actually, and not implausible at all. There were just little side points that can easily be changed that were implausible, like the ones he and I mentioned. How hard is it to drop a line about the family's normal life every episode?
It could be God, the Devil, Buddha, an Alien...or it could be a kid playing a video game. - onn1320
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