And here we are! At the end of another season. We can talk about literally anything you want, but I’ll give us some jumping-off points, shall I?
1. Huck-and-Quinn is the grossest and worst pairing ever in the history of anything.
2. Fitz is the whiniest and most awful man-child ever to feel sorry for himself that he’s the president of the United States of America and has a hot wife and an even hotter mistress.
3. UGH THE FLASHBACK TO CYRUS DANCING WITH JAAAAAAMES did you cry? I sure did!
4. Mama Pope is aces.
5. It is REALLY DISTRACTING that we’ve watched, like, 80% of these people die on previous Shonda shows, right?
Tags: open thread, scandal, talk freely, television
I held it out to the end of this season, but I might be done after this. We’ve about reached the Shonda Show Shelf Life expiration date, at which things get too crazy even for a Shonda show, which is saying something.
I defer to this from the AV Club review of the last episode:
“The story of Olivia and Fitz is the story Scandal wants to be telling. It finally clicked for me tonight, watching Olivia defend Fitz against her father and mother, watching Fitz choose Olivia over Mellie: Scandal is telling a story of trying to make a reconciliation and even love between white people and black people possible, in a world and power structure that has never made that possible. It explains to me why Fitz, in particular, is less a character and more of a cipher—a general stand-in for the patriarchy. No wonder their relationship is hot and cold and abusive and passionate—they’re working with a history of great violence.”
Sonia Saraiya is brilliant. I read ‘most everything she writes at The A.V. Club, even for shows I don’t watch.
Shonda Rimes is just the best tv writer out there on race, full stop. There’s this constant white/black, good/bad, dark/light play that affects everything the show does, right on down to wardrobe. They play with race in so many clever ways. It’s so nice to watch a show that is deeply about race without trading in stupid, clumsy caricatures of race. They do the same with gender, too, but to a lesser extent.
That said, it’s no great compliment to say she’s the best writer on matters of race, seeing as almost everyone else just studiously avoids the issue or trades in buffoonery.
So true. And just political issues generally. Grey’s/Scandal say more about the The State of America Today than Girls/HBO generally ever will.
This is pretty much how I felt, from that article:
“The third season barreled straight into the sun without looking back. Restraint is not Scandal’s strongest suit.”
Haha wait, Kerry Washington is pregnant? I’m so oblivious.
That was my favorite part of the second half of this season, if you go back and look there are so many bizarrely placed objects to cover the baby bump, or there are great moments in dialogue when it’s a closeup of Kerry’s face but then like a full waist-up shot of whoever she’s speaking to, it’s brilliant. Not very noticeable until you know to look for it, but once you do, you can’t un-see it, and that’s okay.
Yeah, it took me a little while to cotton on to what the show was really saying – that Fitz, the most stereotypical politician (male, white, straight, Christianish, Republican, married with children), is not just powerful because he is those things, but because he is constantly being managed by people who are otherwise discounted or left out of the equation – a black woman, a gay man, a highly educated and accomplished woman who gave up her career (but not her ambition) to support him. He stands on the backs of the marginalized, which is why it’s so true and frustrating when he gets his way despite not deserving any of it.
The picture with this article should be very sorry and feel bad for itself that it contains random British guy instead of Mellie, who is probably my favorite thing on the show. Particularly when drunk.
Someone can surely photoshop at least her hair in right?
I would watch a show that is nothing but her giving drunk speeches about how men are terrible.
“If we’re going to die, can we do it now so I don’t have to listen to you two?”
– Mellie, speaking for all of Scandal-watching America
A few weeks ago, my husband’s work schedule changed, so now he’s home on Thursday nights while I’m watching “Scandal,” which meant I spent the first night giving him breathless character briefs, and that caused me to stop and think, really think, about how many of these characters have just up and killed someone with their own hands.
FITZ IS THE WORST SO HORRIBLE with that zillionaire’s passive-aggressive gesture of building a house she never asked for or consulted on in a town she never knew existed so he could ponder in his grimy heart the masturbatory fantasy of spiriting her away from her high-powered, high-profile job and into an apron and an orchard THAT GUY IS THE WORST I LOATHE HIM
This show is absurd and I can’t stop watching.
I wanted to be really present in this thread, but we got hit by lightning last night (the house! we’re fine!) and our power has been out since 8pm, JUST AS I STARTED THE SECOND LAST EPISODE.
I had to throw out everyyyyything in the fridge.
The throwing everything out is the worst part!! It’s so sad to watch it all go, when you’re not even sure if it’s necessarily bad but don’t want to risk it? (I feel like this comment belongs in the Choose Your Own Adventure thread). Particularly if the power comes back just within that range of “it hasn’t really inconvenienced me yet” but also “oh no, every piece of food is compromised.” I hope it comes back soon.
Yes! The only benefit to being on hour 13.5 is that the gray areas are disappearing. The only survivors are now eggs and baby carrots. I tossed meat in my chest freezer, which should buy it some more time. My toddler keeps saying MOMMY TURN ON THE LIGHTS.
I have tried several times, and there is just no explaining to a toddler why Sesame Street will not come back on but no, we don’t have to throw out the tv, it’s not broken.
Struck.
By.
LIGHTNING?
… okay, Nicole, which god’s will did you flout this time?
Generally I love this show and Mellie in particular but I got reeeeeal pissed off at Olivia being the one to tell Fitz about Mellie’s rape. THAT WAS NOT YOUR SECRET TO TELL. MY GOD.
The only other things I have to say are a) I should not like Jake as much as I do (curse you, Scott Foley’s face) and b) when Cyrus broke down about James at the podium I found myself weeping like a baby, so. Why, James, why did you have to be Publius? 🙁
Also curse Scott Foley’s abs.
Also, I really, really, REALLY did not like how Mellie’s rape became yet another obstacle in the path of Fitz’s and Olivia’s glorious love. In the universe of the show, other characters have also had devastating, world-shattering things happen to them – but most of those things wouldn’t happen in real life, unlike rape, which happens to people all the time. I’ve been on board with the way the show has handled this storyline because “victim” is not even close to Mellie’s defining characteristic, but for the show to equate rape (which, again, REAL THING) with stuff like “my father is the head of a shadow government assassin club” or “you shot down a plane full of innocent people, including my mother” or “you need to impregnate your shrewish wife with a media baby to win the next election” is ridiculous. It’s a discredit to Mellie’s character, who is one of the most well-drawn and complicated people on the show, and it’s insulting to survivors of sexual assault who can’t just toss off that experience as a dramatic plot twist in their personal narrative.
CO-SIGN. Mellie is my favorite character by a long shot, and her trauma was so, so well-done and realistic and true and almost *everyday* — and now they have destroyed it. Fuck it all, burn Fitz with fire.
I stopped watching this show when all the torture shit started, because really, TV? Why does every show I’m watching suddenly have to bust out torture out of nowhere? Deadwood, Copper…even Firefly and Veronica Mars! Sigh.
But I miss this guilty pleasure and most of all, I miss how every Olivia-Fitz phone call played out the exact same way:
The phone rings. Olivia stares at it balefully, takes another sip of wine. The phone rings again. In a rage, she flings it into a drawer / wastebasket / purse and starts to walk away. The phone rings. She suddenly stops, looks back with sad eyes, mouth gently agape. Just as the last ring is sounding, she snatches up the phone. “I can’t do this!” she cries into the receiver. “I need you,” Fitz says quietly, hoarsely. A single tear glistens in Liv’s eye.
Perfect.
She does have “mouth gently agape” down pat.
Oh my god that Cyrus and James montage and when he broke down crying, I’m pretty sure I was already sobbing.
I’m going to go ahead and say that I will never stop watching because the show is crazy, and I likes crazy. But Fitz makes me want to pull my hair out and how Olivia crumbled at the mere touch of him for so long made me wretch.
1. Yes
2. YES
3. Yes
4. Yes.
5. This is my first Shonda show & I do enjoy the craziness but maybe we can tone it down now please?
6. MORE DRUNK MELLIE NOW & FOREVER
1. The Fug Girls have dubbed Huck and Quinn “Squick,” which, like, yeah.
2. Fitz is a CHILD and I hope he dies a PAINFUL and DRAMATICALLY SATISFYING DEATH. It’s Shonda, right? Anything could happen!
3. There is a direct correlation between the size of Mellie’s hair in a given scene and the amount of scheming that she will do in said scene. I have tested this with Science.
4. Sorry not sorry but I find Kerry Washington is really dreadful in this part. She is astonishingly, luminously beautiful, but lip quivering and voice-throbbing =/= acting.
5. On the topic of acting on this show, has anyone else noticed that a lot of the actors have the same weird quirks of delivery? Kerry Washington, Jeff Perry, Joe Morton, and Guillermo Diaz (Huck) are the biggest offenders, but really it’s everyone. Scott Foley was initially the exception but apparently Shonda-land vocal tics are contagious because even he’s started to pick up this weird, affected-but-aspiring-to-naturalistic speech pattern. The most recognizable tic is phrasing that elides the end of the sentence/thought with the beginning of the next one, which forces the actor to take a big, emotional gulp of breath in the middle of the thought. IT IS SO WEIRD AND THEY ALL DO IT. Like, is there a director on set encouraging them to do that? Are they all in fact aliens doing a close-but-not-quite approximation of human speech patterns? WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!
6. Shonda is the greatest and I admire her so much.
“Squick” is amazing and utterly apt. They are so gross.
I always say, if you cut out the number of times characters repeat phrases within the same speech or sentence, Shonda’s shows would only be 30 minutes. You can’t beat them for over-the-top melodrama, but the writing and acting styles are pretty grating after awhile.
Huh. Apparently I am not in fact caught up on this show!
Oops. Back in an hour.
If Shonda kills Scott Foley (or Handsome Scott Foley, as we call him in my house) AGAIN I will be quite put out.
The Huck and Quinn thing is SO gross and SUCH a train wreck that perversely I totally love it. It’s just like WHAT? That didn’t happen. NO. YES. WHAT.
Huck has historically given me all the Feels, because I know dudes with PTSD, but I do not approve of Huck/Quinn. I mostly just ignore it.
Fitz is a stupid head and I wish that stupid bullet had killed him. Having said that, I have some empathy (less now than in early days) for Olivia, because I too, have been in love with a man who was completely inappropriate but whose calls I could not stop myself from answering.
There are a lot of Shonda alums, but also in early seasons a lot of Gilmore Girls alums showed up. Also I think at least two Heroes alums.
But mostly, I’m still here for Handsome Scott Foley. I will stand in the sun with you, Jake. I will stand anywhere you want me to.
Wait, am I seriously to only person that LOVES Huck and Quinn together? What does that say about me?
Kate, me too.
Curses! I could not post at work and have so many things to say! I started watching about a month ago and quickly sped through so I could be caught up for the season finale. My thoughts: Mellie is the best and I love her the most, Fitz is the worst and I hate him the most, I love Huck (and I even kind of sickly love Huck/Quinn but I also am a slight masochist in my own sex life so there’s that), I hate that their Union Station is not the Union Station in DC that I go through every day, I love Mama Pope and even Papa Pope, and I vaguely loathe Olivia.
I am kinda glad that the older boy child is dead–the kids kind of sucked as characters. Like, get out and let the grownups manipulate each other.
Mellie is really the best, though. I love her. And isn’t she like the only non-murderer left?
I used to want Huck and Finn together, but NOT LIKE THIS.
I used to want Huck and Finn together, but NOT LIKE THIS.
Huck and Quinn to me are every relationship that ever started by wanting to fix the bad boy with the power of love, and then getting sucked into whatever made him the bad boy and becoming bad yourself. Huck’s super fucked up, and Quinn gets fascinated by his fucked-uppedness and wants to be a part of it, and it will all end in tears, as these things do.
I suppose I’m not against it for the same reason I’m not against the terrible, terrible idea that is Olivia and Fitz – because who among us has not known this terrible idea in real life? I mean, obviously both of these are extreme examples, but hey, it’s a dramatic show, what do you want?
Ok but WHERE is Cyrus and James’s baby in all of this?? We never see her or hear about her and it’s driving me crazy.
Ok but WHERE is Cyrus and James's baby in all of this?? We never see her or hear about her and it's driving me crazy.
I really like Huck. I liked the earlier episodes that traced his story, it made him one of the easiest characters to sympathize with, you knew his history and the origin of some of his quirks. I think the whole finding his family bit would have been better placed around there, because at this point there was so much else going on in the show that it was like oops, aaand we slipped this in there too, but we don’t have time to deal with the implications of it so there ya go! I liked Quinn (slightly) better earlier in the show when she followed him around like a puppy, it would have been a slightly better relationship then, but now…yyeah. Not even their coworkers want to imagine that it’s going on, and not in a “but-you’re-chainging-the-office-dynamic!” way.
Also, worst event of the season for me was James’s death. I loved James, he did some backhanded things but so little compared to what everyone around him was doing, all he wanted was to love Cyrus and his baby! He was so good at loving his baby! And he can make Cyrus cry, that’s the only proof I see in this show that Cyrus might have a soul. I kind of love him, but he constantly stoops so low, he needed James to counter that.