Scandal has been handled very well
Beneath the shock and drama, show was always about people acting out of complex desires
It’s handled. Thursday night we say goodbye to Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), her gladiators on Scandal and all the fruit analogies that have been used to describe its seven seasons: juicy, pulpy, seedy, ripe.
No more purposeful slo-mo walks shot in black and white. No more belted coats — for a woman on the run, Olivia sure chose complicated outerwear. No more OMG murders — is there a major
Scandal character who hasn’t committed murder?
No more suspect photos slapped onto the artfully cracked glass wall in Olivia’s office. (My favourite parody of Scandal was the SNL sketch with Lena Dunham as Olivia’s new intern, who kept squealing, “But where did you get that photo? How do you know his computer password?” And so on.)
There is much discussion this week about the show’s legacy and that’s legit. Show creator Shonda Rhimes wanted TV audiences to get comfortable with seeing women in power onscreen and especially women of colour. Mission accomplished. (“How does it feel to be the most powerful person in the world?” Cyrus asked Olivia. “It feels right,” she replied.)
Then there’s this: Olivia rigged an election and had an abortion, and there was a lot more gasping about the former.
Washington killed every moment, pushing the drama in her moist eyes and quivering lips right to the brink, then holding it there. She also popularized the practice of casts participating in the live-Tweeting of episodes and that was a gas — it was like being in a movie theatre during a thriller, yelling at the screen and having the actors answer back.
The show descended into absurdity rather frequently. Olivia running across the White House lawn to kiss her lover, departing president Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn), just before he hops onto the helicopter, in front of hordes of reporters?
Puh-leeze.
It was a hoot to watch Papa Pope (Joe Morton) shout and Cyrus (Jeff Perry) scheme, but — don’t hate me — I hope that Katie Lowes, Guillermo Diaz, Darby Stanchfield and yes, even Bellamy Young (who play, respectively, Quinn, Huck, Abby and Mellie) have built shrines to the acting lottery gods, because they got soooo lucky.
Under all the scandals, Scandal was about something really interesting: People are a mess.
We have contradictory desires and intentions. Sometimes we act and, even when we’re certain we understand why, we realize later that we didn’t have a clue. And so far — fingers crossed this holds into the finale — Rhimes doesn’t alleviate her characters’ guilt and shame. She doesn’t redeem them. Instead, she shows us how they live with it, which in the end is more humane.
One of the show’s mantras is, “Everyone is worth saving,” but it has a pretty open definition of what “saving” means.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been as addictive without that Olivia/Fitz smouldering, and Rhimes may have planted a clue to the finale in an earlier episode. “In the end,” Fitz said as Olivia snuggled in his arms, “it’s going to come down to you and me.” Over a cliff, running full speed. We’ll be watching.