Designated Survivor: Glasses

The Professor and the President.

Thomas “Glasses” Kirkman (“Glasses” was his Secret Service code) was the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) when the unthinkable happened: the US Capitol was attacked in an unspeakable act of evil (unthinkable, that is, until January 2021). Next thing he knew, he was placing his left hand on the Bible while raising his right hand as the thirteenth member of President Richmond’s Cabinet in the presidential line of succession uttered the words “So help me God” before being taken away by Secret Service into his White House office. What ensued became 21 nail-biting episodes of Season One of “Designated Survivor”, a show available on Netflix in which I binged for three days to completion. Before moving onto Season Two, I could not help but write a blog post about it, noting one item in the TV series that I shared a bond close to my heart: the pair of glasses that Kirkman wore and the interplay between the donning of this ocular apparatus and the lack thereof throughout the series. The symbolism of his glasses in Season One represented a duality of the meek protagonist between his studious demeanor and reasoning required to bring a nation together after an indescribable tragedy and the Machiavellian manipulation needed to survive the political fallout of his designated survivorship. As I progressed through each episode, it became more and…