‘Scandal’ keeps missing opportunities to address Olivia Pope’s mental health

STACIA L BROWN

NEW YORK: Recall, if you will, the buzz surrounding Scandal’s 2012 debut on ABC. Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope was the first black female lead star in a network series in nearly 40 years, and viewers – especially black women viewers – were giddy with anticipation. We rushed to Twitter on Thursdays, tweeting our affirmation of Olivia’s outfits and our gasps at the show’s many twists and turns.

Back then, Liv was a classic nighttime television heroine: on top of her game professionally and a bit of a mess whenever she left the office. But the last few seasons have turned both her professional and personal lives into something increasingly uncomfortable to watch.

In the first two seasons, we loved watching her solve political power players’ problems and swill wine in her mostly- white wardrobe. We loved that she’d amassed a staff at Olive Pope and Associates who would’ve fallen to terrible fates, had she not intervened and made “gladiators of them”. In short: Scandal was a good time. Even when it went dark with the occasional murder and cover-up, even when Olivia’s torrid affair with President Fitzgerald Grant seemed to eclipse any other plot points the show tried to offer us, it remained an addictive viewing experience.

Things started to go bad a few seasons back, when Olivia’s parents were introduced. Her dad, Eli Pope (Joe Morton), made a frequent practice of dressing her down with the kind of long, impassioned monologues we’d grown accustomed to watching Liv herself deliver to powerful men and women in the past. In the face of her father’s disapproval, Liv would cower. Then her mother – international terrorist Maya Pope (Khandi Alexander) – came along and she too made a practice of either cowing or tricking Liv.

Then, at the beginning of last season, Liv was kidnapped and sold at auction. Even for a show that had introduced convoluted domestic terrorism and counterintelligence plots, kidnapping, psychologically torturing, and selling the series star seemed not only far-fetched but illadvised.

The fallout of that plot arc has continued into Season 5, and it hit peak preposterousness Thursday night when Liv bludgeoned a man to death with a metal chair.

As Scandal draws closer to this season’s finale, it’s difficult to root for any outcome other than Liv walking herself into an in-patient counselling facility. – Washington Post

● Scandal is broadcast as The Fixer on M-Net. The series resumes with episode 18 on Saturday April 23 at 3am and on Prime Time May 2 at 8.30pm, starting with episode 18.