Let's talk "Scandal"!
It is ending. The Times has published an invaluable interview with Shonda Rhimes, along with the invaluable Kerry Washington, the invaluable Bellamy Young, and the less invaluable Tony Goldwyn. Shonda makes good points. Why wasn't Olivia Pope more of a role model? "Because I saw her as the protagonist--and if you're the protagonist, you get to be cruel, weak, strong, heroic, unpredictable, admirable, appalling. You get to be all of those things." (Ms. Rhimes could say the same thing about "Carousel," which has some PC viewers all in a tither.) Did she wonder if it would be impossible to have a prime time network TV drama with a black female protagonist? To have the likable president murder a Supreme Court justice? To have Olivia quietly persuading a vice president to take poison and die? "I didn't worry about any of this," says Shonda, "because, in my view, nothing is impossible." We learn that basically all black actresses everywhere auditioned to play Olivia, because the last time a show of this sort had featured a black female protagonist, America was trudging through the 1970s. And we learn how offended Shonda Rhimes was with the network's initial offer: seven episodes. Just seven. This was for the person who had created "Grey's Anatomy."
I didn't get show-divorced from "Scandal." It wasn't a conscious thing. I just stopped watching--sometime around the assassination of the president's son. I felt like I understood the various narrative tricks on offer here; the possibilities seemed to have exhausted themselves. (Richard Wright says, in "Black Boy," you ought to "read the author's works until you understand the author's point of view, then move on. When you get it, you get it." That's a preposterous analogy. But, to quote Ms. Rhimes: Nothing is impossible!) What a treasure trove those early years of "Scandal" provided. Season Two was like a national case of hysteria. I mean: It seemed that everyone, everywhere, was discussing Olivia and the president, however briefly. Kerry Washington earned an Emmy nomination. She was a serious contender for a prime time Emmy--despite appearing in something that was pretty clearly a soap opera. Broadway's Kate Burton did wonderfully slithery work as the homophobic Family Values VP (with the closeted gay husband, whom she murders). Lisa Kudrow chipped in. Lena Dunham. The great Lorraine Toussaint--so fabulous in "Orange Is the New Black" and "Middle of Nowhere"--making waves as the wife of a dead MLK-ish figure who (oops!) may have cheated quite a bit. "Scandal" gave us a gay marriage--involving the charismatic and actually gay Dan Bucatinsky--and it let the two partners be something other than heroes. They fought. One was a Machiavellian Republican (and the actor was once married to Hollywood's Laurie Metcalf!) There was no doubt that the two politically opposed men loved each other, and yet they clawed at each other, and one may have had an affair (I can't remember now if that was just rumor, and you could say that about any number of "Scandal"'s baroque stories and stories-within-stories). At the height of Bucatinsky's popularity, Shonda killed him off. This was shocking. These characters were great, almost mythic. Shonda had--and has--big balls.
Among "Scandal"'s greatest fans was the aforementioned Lena Dunham. And, at the height of the popularity of both "Girls" and "Scandal," Dunham did something great. I'll include the clip below. It's from SNL, and it's Dunham as a Hannah Horvath-ish new hire on Olivia Pope's team. The new hire can't understand how things get done here. Olivia commands someone to fly to, and return from, Mexico--and both deeds seem completed within thirty seconds! There's a brief, almost ho hum interlude in which the president appears and reduces Olivia to a trembling mess--"You can't win me, Fitz, because I'm not a prize at the State Fair!!!"--and no one seems fazed by this! Hannah can't take it. "Olivia, I WISH my love problems were that my boyfriend was the president. Instead, like, last month, I had sex with a guy who had a Band Aid on his upper lip? And it was just NEVER EXPLAINED? And I was, like, OK. WHERE did this come from? And then, you know, I ended up with GIARDIA, which is a disease you get from drinking STREAM WATER." (This is Dunham's singular voice. No one else could write these lines.) Also: "A trip to MEXICO? I have LITERALLY a thousand follow-up questions. Do I book the flight myself through Jet Blue? Or some such? Like, how do I get from HERE to the AIRPORT?" (The often-undervalued Sasheer Zamata plays it very straight in this skit, as Olivia, and that's the right way to go. And there's Kate McKinnon, adding her loony, intense detail work, off in the corner.)
In the writing world, people say, "Have a take. Try not to suck." Or: "A piece of writing is a collection of facts and an angle." Shonda Rhimes struck gold. She has a world view that is part Katy Perry music video, part "24." She knows who she is and makes the most of that. In his acting teacher days, Lee Strasberg said, "I don't care if you're a versatile performer. I just want you to find the thing that makes you odd; I want you to find THE EXTRAORDINARY YOU. The essential quality that sets you apart. Then mine that vein for the rest of your life." I take a similar lesson from Ms. Rhimes's work. (I think Lena Dunham, a Rhimes super-fan, would say the same about Rhimes's storytelling.) And so: Advice! You could do worse than borrow some writing tips from the propulsive, outrageous, doing-its-own-thing Second Season of "Scandal."
P.S. How do you gauge the importance of "Scandal"? Among gay men nationwide, "Olivia Pope" has become a verb. A gay male colleague once asked me, "Do you want me to take this file to the downtown campus, or are you just gonna Olivia Pope this shit right down to Fulton St?" This is surely the greatest sentence--the one sentence I'll remember--from my many, many years as a working stiff.
It is ending. The Times has published an invaluable interview with Shonda Rhimes, along with the invaluable Kerry Washington, the invaluable Bellamy Young, and the less invaluable Tony Goldwyn. Shonda makes good points. Why wasn't Olivia Pope more of a role model? "Because I saw her as the protagonist--and if you're the protagonist, you get to be cruel, weak, strong, heroic, unpredictable, admirable, appalling. You get to be all of those things." (Ms. Rhimes could say the same thing about "Carousel," which has some PC viewers all in a tither.) Did she wonder if it would be impossible to have a prime time network TV drama with a black female protagonist? To have the likable president murder a Supreme Court justice? To have Olivia quietly persuading a vice president to take poison and die? "I didn't worry about any of this," says Shonda, "because, in my view, nothing is impossible." We learn that basically all black actresses everywhere auditioned to play Olivia, because the last time a show of this sort had featured a black female protagonist, America was trudging through the 1970s. And we learn how offended Shonda Rhimes was with the network's initial offer: seven episodes. Just seven. This was for the person who had created "Grey's Anatomy."
I didn't get show-divorced from "Scandal." It wasn't a conscious thing. I just stopped watching--sometime around the assassination of the president's son. I felt like I understood the various narrative tricks on offer here; the possibilities seemed to have exhausted themselves. (Richard Wright says, in "Black Boy," you ought to "read the author's works until you understand the author's point of view, then move on. When you get it, you get it." That's a preposterous analogy. But, to quote Ms. Rhimes: Nothing is impossible!) What a treasure trove those early years of "Scandal" provided. Season Two was like a national case of hysteria. I mean: It seemed that everyone, everywhere, was discussing Olivia and the president, however briefly. Kerry Washington earned an Emmy nomination. She was a serious contender for a prime time Emmy--despite appearing in something that was pretty clearly a soap opera. Broadway's Kate Burton did wonderfully slithery work as the homophobic Family Values VP (with the closeted gay husband, whom she murders). Lisa Kudrow chipped in. Lena Dunham. The great Lorraine Toussaint--so fabulous in "Orange Is the New Black" and "Middle of Nowhere"--making waves as the wife of a dead MLK-ish figure who (oops!) may have cheated quite a bit. "Scandal" gave us a gay marriage--involving the charismatic and actually gay Dan Bucatinsky--and it let the two partners be something other than heroes. They fought. One was a Machiavellian Republican (and the actor was once married to Hollywood's Laurie Metcalf!) There was no doubt that the two politically opposed men loved each other, and yet they clawed at each other, and one may have had an affair (I can't remember now if that was just rumor, and you could say that about any number of "Scandal"'s baroque stories and stories-within-stories). At the height of Bucatinsky's popularity, Shonda killed him off. This was shocking. These characters were great, almost mythic. Shonda had--and has--big balls.
Among "Scandal"'s greatest fans was the aforementioned Lena Dunham. And, at the height of the popularity of both "Girls" and "Scandal," Dunham did something great. I'll include the clip below. It's from SNL, and it's Dunham as a Hannah Horvath-ish new hire on Olivia Pope's team. The new hire can't understand how things get done here. Olivia commands someone to fly to, and return from, Mexico--and both deeds seem completed within thirty seconds! There's a brief, almost ho hum interlude in which the president appears and reduces Olivia to a trembling mess--"You can't win me, Fitz, because I'm not a prize at the State Fair!!!"--and no one seems fazed by this! Hannah can't take it. "Olivia, I WISH my love problems were that my boyfriend was the president. Instead, like, last month, I had sex with a guy who had a Band Aid on his upper lip? And it was just NEVER EXPLAINED? And I was, like, OK. WHERE did this come from? And then, you know, I ended up with GIARDIA, which is a disease you get from drinking STREAM WATER." (This is Dunham's singular voice. No one else could write these lines.) Also: "A trip to MEXICO? I have LITERALLY a thousand follow-up questions. Do I book the flight myself through Jet Blue? Or some such? Like, how do I get from HERE to the AIRPORT?" (The often-undervalued Sasheer Zamata plays it very straight in this skit, as Olivia, and that's the right way to go. And there's Kate McKinnon, adding her loony, intense detail work, off in the corner.)
In the writing world, people say, "Have a take. Try not to suck." Or: "A piece of writing is a collection of facts and an angle." Shonda Rhimes struck gold. She has a world view that is part Katy Perry music video, part "24." She knows who she is and makes the most of that. In his acting teacher days, Lee Strasberg said, "I don't care if you're a versatile performer. I just want you to find the thing that makes you odd; I want you to find THE EXTRAORDINARY YOU. The essential quality that sets you apart. Then mine that vein for the rest of your life." I take a similar lesson from Ms. Rhimes's work. (I think Lena Dunham, a Rhimes super-fan, would say the same about Rhimes's storytelling.) And so: Advice! You could do worse than borrow some writing tips from the propulsive, outrageous, doing-its-own-thing Second Season of "Scandal."
P.S. How do you gauge the importance of "Scandal"? Among gay men nationwide, "Olivia Pope" has become a verb. A gay male colleague once asked me, "Do you want me to take this file to the downtown campus, or are you just gonna Olivia Pope this shit right down to Fulton St?" This is surely the greatest sentence--the one sentence I'll remember--from my many, many years as a working stiff.
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