One of the better
things that has been found when the great series of the Golden Age reach their
final moments has often come in the last moments when the antiheroes realize
just how far they have sunk. I will never forget the long pause that Vic Mackey
took in the penultimate episode of The
Shield (it lasted for nearly a minute) before finally confessing to all the
crimes he had committed over the length of the series. There was a moment
nearly as powerful in the last episode of Mad
Men, where Don Draper, who had spent the last half of the final season
going on walkabout, seemed to realize what a terrible person he'd been and
confessed to Peggy, the one person who always had the clearest view of him. And
who among us can't remember Walter White's final admission to Skyler in the
finale of Breaking Bad? "I did
it for me. I was good at it. I liked it. It made me feel alive." That was
the true climax of the series.
As anyone who has
read my blog for the last several years, I have utterly loathed all things
Shondaland. But, as a TV critic, I felt obligated to watch the last two
episodes of Scandal, just to see how
low she could sink. I certainly didn't expect to see Olivia Pope, who has spent
the last seven year cleaning up the mess of every politician in the country, go
to the special counsel investigate President Mellie Grant, and then publicly
out B613, the agency that has been doing everything evil in the series, which
she ran for most of the final season. And I really didn't expect her to look
both Presidents Grant in the face, and tell them flat out: "We're not the
heroes of this story. We're the villains."
Honestly, I'd been
waiting the entire series for all of the characters to admit just how corrupt
and rotten the system was. And the rest of Pope's entourage spent the next
half-hour admitting how badly it was they had failed at their goals, including
all her former gladiators willing to go 'over a cliff' in order to try and save
the country. It was almost - not nearly enough, but almost enough - to make Scandal seem like it was finally being
worth the trouble.
And then last night
in the final episode, everybody testified before Congress about all the
horrible things that they had done over the last seven years in the name of the
Republic. (The closest moment to realization of evil came when Huck, asked how
many people had killed, took a long drink water before finally answering 'A
lot.'.) There were also some odd moments of redemption . When David Rosen, the
only purely good guy among the much of the series, confronted Jake Ballard and
looked him dead in the face. This made the horrifying moment when
Vice-President Beene poisoned him, then suffocated him to finish the job. And
even after all the horrors had unfolded, there was one last poigniant moment
when Cyrus, who had been the most contemptible villain of a show full of them,
who had killed or driven away everybody so that he could have the White House,
finally admitted to Olivia before resigning that even getting the Presidency
probably wouldn't have been enough to satisfy him.
Does this make the
series better? Not really. Considering that Shonda Rhimes had originally
planned to end the series with Mellie Grant becoming President, one kind of
thinks that the final season was more of an afterthought as well as an apology
for politics today. She wasn't quite as bloodthirsty as she was in Grey's Anatomy or, for that matter, Private Practice; for all the deaths in Scandal, it's telling that Joshua Malina
was, with one exception, the only regular to die, and that in the last episode.
George R..R Martin would not approve. And despite all the confessions in the
series, it was disappointing to see that Eli Pope's decision to confess took
the characteristics of a deux ex machina - there was no real motivation given
for him testifying, and when he did it, it seemed less a confession and really
more like bragging, like he wanted credit. I was disappointed by many things in
Scandal; that Rowan never got what
was coming to him was the biggest one.
I'm never going to
be convinced Scandal was everything
critics and fans thought it was. It certainly doesn't rate as a great TV series
even from the standards of network television. But, if I am to be honest, I am
glad for what the show represents more than anything else.
Just prior to the
premiere of Scandal in the winter of
2012, Entertainment Weekly wrote a
long article in which they casually noted the series premiere, and the fact that
this was the first network drama with an African-American female lead in more
than twenty years. And that is a
crime. The fact that in an era of Peak TV, black women were still being
underrepresented on that medium was offensive. And it is very telling that
Kerry Washington had left a career in film to follow a role on TV.
After her came the
deluge: such talented black actresses as Octavia Spencer, Regina King, Taraj P.
Henson, Angela Bassett, and of course, Viola Davis would soon be at the center
of the new revolution. Over the last three years, African-American women have
slowly but surely been making a dent in the field of the Emmys. Orange is the New Black alone showcases
half a dozen brilliant black actresses, and I was delighted to see Lena Waithe
finally move forward in running a series of her own. I can only hope to someday see Issa Rae also
accepts an Emmy.
It is very telling that the highpoint of the much
publicized Scandal-How to Get Away With
Murder crossover had nothing to do with the arguments before the Supreme
Court. Rather, it was a moment where Annalyse's mother, played by the national
treasure Cecily Tyson gave credit to Olivia Pope for all the things that she
had done behind the scenes, and all the sacrifices that women like her had to
make so that they could stand where they are.
I really think that some day very soon we will see real excellent series
about black women by black women. And if that is something that Shonda Rhimes
had to do.. well, then I'm glad, for the sake of the medium, that it was
handled
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