Scandal….Listening to my Gut
To close out Black History month, I’d like to touch on the phenomenon known to mankind, as Scandal….the overly popular Shoda Ryhmes television show on Thursday nights (10 PM EST) on ABC.
Now, I just want to touch on a few things…discussions like this can be lengthy, especially for a television show.
For starters, I love Scandal. Yes, the pro-black, pro-fro, pro-woman, pro-everything-that-has-to-do-with-the-succession-of-black-and-brown-people girl loves Scandal.
I love it for the writing. love it for the characters. I love it for the fashion. I love it for the honesty. I love it for how Shoda literally took the formula of a soap opera and made it her own. I love it for having the lead not only be a black woman, but a flawed black woman. Let me explain what I mean by that.
Black women….like everyone else has a certain image to an outsider’s mind. Black women are either so strong that they don’t need, want or care for the third legged kind or black women are weak and needy and loud and disrespectful. Olivia Pope is the exact balance. She is a strong, beautiful woman. She has friends, talents (although a bit strange) and yes, she is not only in love but also sleeping with a married man….who just so happens to be the President of the United States…and a white man *gasp*.
For those of you who can’t stand Scandal because you may feel that it validates infidelity especially with a black woman involved, I get it. I’m not necessarily jumping for joy when Olivia and Fitz have a quickie in some closet or kiss passionately in the Oval Office. But at the same time, art imitates life. What’s great about Olivia and Fitz is that they are really in love with one another. It’s not some lustful experience. They truly do love each other and have happened to meet one another at a later time in life, since Fitz is married. Aside from the love triangle, there are super 3D character arcs with Olivia’s team: Abbey, Huck, Quinn & Harrison. Also, the White House team, Fitz’s wife, Mellie & Cyrus. And of course you have the third party, Jake Ballard and David Rosen. All of the characters
have amazing contributions to the storyline. Phenomenal writing, phenomenal performances….just phenomenal!
We need Scandal, we need reruns of The Cosby Show, we need the balance of all that we can create. We need it.
