Scandalous Fun

The week Donald Trump was elected president, I started my first binge watch of the Shonda Rhimes show Scandal. I’d watched most of it before, though not as a binge - I sort of kept up with it as it was released, occasionally missing episodes and having to catch up or falling behind for entire seasons. But in the winter of 2016, when things felt chaotic and bleak, I absolutely tore through it.

I would later binge watch it again in late 2018, at the peak of the Trump presidency. The news was full of separated families, racial injustice, government shutdowns, and foriegn conflict, and all I wanted was to fall into the competent arms of Ms. Olivia Pope.

Scandal is a show where the world just makes sense. It’s not necessarily that the “good guys” always win. In fact, Scandal includes lots of dark plot arcs where the good guys lose, give up, or wake up to find themselves transformed into the “bad guys.” Beloved characters die, idealistic characters become disillusioned, and even my beloved Olivia Pope makes bad choices and ends up on the wrong side of righteousness.

What makes sense in Scandal isn’t the guaranteed victory of the good guys - it’s the fact that there are any “guys” at all. In the world of Pope & Associates, everything happens for a reason. Even deaths that seem accidental at first turn out to be the result of behind-the-scenes machinations, schemes, and powers. Every act, good or evil, has a name and a face attached.

Whenever concerns were raised about Trump’s behavior, people would often claim that he “isn’t allowed,” or that “they” won’t let him do that. But who are we really talking about? What forces actually allow or forbid certain things? Who is the “they” we hope to appeal to? Over the last four years, Americans have discovered that our laws and institutions are more fragile than they seem, and that there is no immutable power behind them.

This is, at once, a terrifying and liberating prospect. Reality is chaotic, and there is no ultimate judge who prevents the unacceptable from taking place or dispenses justice when it’s obviously deserved. Sometimes, things that happen when they really shouldn’t. Not every wrongdoer is held accountable. We’re all just muddling through and trying to do our best in a complicated and opaque system.

Not in Scandal. Shonda Rhimes gives us stories where the “just world fallacy” isn’t a fallacy at all - it’s an undeniable fact. There are all-powerful forces that can shift the course of human events to suit their whims. The show revolves around people who are able to take effective action whenever they determine that the fate of “The Republic” is at stake, or when they think something needs to change about the government, the law, the economy, or their own personal lives.

This isn’t always a good thing, of course! Shadowy organizations like Scandal’s fictional B613 are the stuff of nightmarish conspiracy theories, and it’s probably for the better that we’re not actually at the mercy of the “deep state.” Characters on the show have people murdered, reputations destroyed, and elections stolen - not things I actually think people should have the power to do!

But it certainly makes for excellent television. The notion that someone, somewhere, has the will and the capacity to “do something about it” is a satisfying one, especially when faced with the untouchable nonsense of the Trump administration. If B613 was real, we’d have to assume that they would be on hand to prevent some of the worst effects of a bad presidency. The notion that certain people can decide that “enough is enough” is a comforting one, even if I’m glad it doesn’t extend past my TV screen.

Not only is Scandal a fantasy of a world where those at the top keep each other in check, it’s also a fun, thrilling show. It starts out as a “case of the week” that lets viewers cheer on the lawyer and fixer Olivia Pope as she saves babies, protects whistleblowers, and looks after her ragtag crew of associates. I love a character who can think circles around everyone else, and Olivia’s clever scheming is one of my favorite examples.

But Law & Order is not exactly the blueprint for this guilty pleasure! Later, the show gets soapier, focusing on elaborate plots, unraveling deep secrets, and drawing in new characters like the incredibly sexy Jake Ballard. I unapologetically love this show, but I will be the first to admit that it frequently goes off the rails. Most people cite the infamous season 4 plot where Olivia gets kidnapped, spectacularly gaslit, then sold on some kind of terrorist eBay as their example of Scandal’s storylines getting out of control, but my favorite way to capture the twisted web of the show is by explaining the following (spoiler alert):

By the end of season 6, we have learned that Olivia’s father is actually the head of a secret spy organization to which her boyfriend belonged, and that her boyfriend was the one who shot down her mother’s plane on her father’s orders. This is because her mother was actually an international terrorist. We are led to believe that Olivia’s boyfriend killed her mother on her father’s orders, but we later find out that her mother is actually alive. Also, Olivia’s other boyfriend (there’s a multi-season love triangle situation) also belongs to this secret spy organization and is framed for the murder of her first boyfriend’s son, which actually happened on her father’s orders.

Confused? What if I told you that these are only a few plot threads from the show, and that it gets much crazier when you add in the overlapping backstories of Olivia’s friends and enemies? Most of these plot lines don’t intersect for a while, though, and all of these reveals take place over multiple seasons. It’s only in a condensed summary that the completely bonkers nature of the show is obvious, and that’s also why it makes for such an excellent binge watch.

We’re in a new administration now, and I wonder whether Scandal will continue to be my go-to when I need something fun and entertaining. I do love watching it with new friends - if I find out that you share my tastes in TV and haven’t watched Scandal, you can bet that I’m making time to show it to you, which has the added benefit of giving me an excuse to binge it again! I’ll never pass up a chance to spend some time watching Olivia Pope pull the strings of power and bend the world to her will.