"Commander and Chief" follows the storyline of Vice President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) as she suddenly finds herself in the President's chair after the sitting president dies. The first ten episodes of the season touch primarily upon Mackenzie's place in the White House and the whole "female president" issue as it climaxes with a crisis in North Korean waters where a U.S. submarine has just gone down. The second season picks up at this moment and each episode follows suit as "Commander and Chief" is just a series of major issues, one after another, as opposed to focusing on the day-to-day life in the White House at any one moment. Instead we have missing missiles, drunken First Gentlemen (that still makes me laugh) and major diabolical plots to bring the President to her knees.
I was happy that the show didn't consistently focus on the "female president" issue because that really would have gotten boring, but it never manages to find an identity and none of the characters bring anything special to the production. Great, Mackenzie Allen is a female president, Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland) is a mean speaker of the House, Rod Calloway (Kyle Secor) is a sniveling First Gentlemen, the president's kids are unbearable and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as one of the President's advisors is as annoying as they get.
If I was to search for a silver lining I would find it in Harry Lennix as Allen's Chief of Staff and Ever Carradine as the President's Press Secretary. In most roles I am not a major fan of Lennix, but I would have much rather seen him as President here than Geena Davis, and as for Carradine I thought she brought something different to a role that was obviously going to be compared to Allison Janney on "The West Wing" and I think she holds her own in that comparison considering the storylines that surround her character.
As for special features I found it odd that the two audio commentaries aren't even mentioned on the packaging considering they are the most intriguing, most notably the one that accompanies the "Pilot" episode, which cannot be viewed without the commentary. On this episode show creator Rod Lurie explains a lot about his ideas for the show and where he wanted to go with it. He also talks about how he wanted to go a different direction than "The West Wing" and not focus so much on the day-to-day bits of the White House, but he forgets that he is already different than "The West Wing"... he has a female president! Oh well, missteps will be had. There is also a useless gag reel, deleted scenes and a short interview with Geena Davis, none of which are worth your time.
Overall it is obvious why this show was cancelled, even after winning a mid-season Golden Globe. Sometimes it goes to show how much those awards really mean when they come to television.