TV Reviews: Scandal

(Bear with me, I actually watched this pilot over a week ago... The finer points might not have stayed in my brain. You know, like people's names and whatnot. Little stuff.)

This is going to be the short short version of my usual reviews. I'm trying to get back to blogging in a more active way, but life keeps preventing me from doing so.

Scandal stars Kerry Washington as a professional "fixer" who takes PR nightmares and makes them go away. She and her team are kind of the crew from Burn Notice, only instead of disarming bombs and getting rid of neighborhood drug dealers, she keeps compromising information out of the press and shuts up whistleblowers. This is a Shonda Rhimes production and aside from a lack of medical acumen, is exactly what you'd expect from Shonda.

Washington plays Olivia Pope, the best of the best, blah blah blah, who doesn't take guff from anyone and dishes it out with zeal. Again, not exactly blazing a new trail here. She's a former aide to the president and apparently used to be involved with him romantically as well. This is one of the many predictable elements of the pilot, but it also bears the most potential for the ongoing series. Having been spurned by her former lover, the most powerful man in the country, she has an axe to grind. This is where the ongoing story arc comes together. Aside from this, I suspect most of the show will be case-of-the-week type stuff which has never been of much interest to me in general.

The basic concept has some real potential even though the pilot itself was pretty bad. From minute one, the show is so hell bent on telling the viewer what complete badasses these people are that it forgets to give them much substance. Furthermore, if a character is actually cool, I don't need to be told. Raylan Givens is as cool as they come. The show didn't need to tell me that, they showed me that. Scandal simply tells the viewer what he or she is supposed to think about these people then hits them over the heads with it for 42 minutes. Yeah, yeah, I get it already! Telling me someone is cool pretty much automatically means I think they aren't which means that Scandal has a lot of work to do. The dialogue was so oppressive and clunky in this regard that is was actually laughable. Even after such a barrage and an A-plot to further convince me, I'm still not buying it. The cast is fine and all, and Desmond from Lost is particularly nice to have around (best part of the show, brother), but I'm still not convinced. I don't believe that Washington really is Olivia Pope. She didn't do a completely horrendous job and in general, she's a fine actress, I just don't think this was the right part for her.  At least not from what I've seen so far.  I don't know. I can see where she could convince me more over time, much like Mary from In Plain Sight did, but after just the pilot, not only do I not like her character, I don't believe in her character.

The supporting cast didn't get much chance to shine in the pilot and were mostly cookie cutter stereotypes that all such TV teams are required to have. We have the socially awkward computer genius, the attractive investigator, the no-holds-barred prickish alpha male, the charming, disarming womanizer, and the mousy new girl who's learning the ropes. Ugh. Speaking of mousy new girl, I realize it's not just Shonda who does this, but when a show so blatantly has a "I'm the new person who will act as the viewer's window into this world" it drives me absolutely crazy. For a writer, it's just a cheap, easy way to dump plot exposition with as little effort as possible. "I know, we'll just have a new person show up who needs everything explained to them a million times! Genius, I say!" Lazy, I say. I am more than happy to pick things up as I go along. I don't need it all explained from minute one, especially with a concept that is as seemingly obvious and straight-forward as this one. The supporting cast all did a decent enough job, I suppose, but honestly there wasn't much to judge. Desmond had the most prominent role and was by far the most likable character on the show, even if he is embodying yet another cliche. The characters are as basic as their inter-dynamics are and although there's certainly room to grow and adapt, the pilot alone didn't leave me desperate for more.

Oddly, the most promising aspect of the show and the most off-putting was Olivia Pope's relationship with the president, played by Tony Goldwyn. On the plus-side, establishing a universe for the show where the characters have such high-level connections opens some interesting doors and ups the stakes considerably. That said, if the writers don't tread lightly, they could easily write themselves into a hell of a corner. Hopefully though, they'll interlace high-level drama with the more story-of-the-week type elements and find a nice balance. While Tony Goldwyn does a very nice job as the president (and Jeff Perry does an even better job as the president's aide), some of his interactions with Olivia elicited an eye roll and a sigh. When they are talking in the oval office (or the like) and he backs her up into the corner, all her former bravado (that I was already having a hard time buying) melts away and she becomes this weak, simpering shell of a woman. Ugh. It was disappointing to say the least and only served to undercut her character in the most hackneyed way possible. It always seems to be the case with female characters. Oh, they can be effective and ballsy in one aspect of their lives, but they have to balance that with a vulnerable, pathetic side as well. I can appreciate that they were trying to give her some depth and layers, but for me and my brother, it just pissed us off. To go from a fiesty bulldog in your professional life to a scared, weak, almost submissive, doe-eyed idiot in your love life isn't depth. It's insult. Seriously, my brother was like, "Please tell me they're kidding." They were not. To the show's/character's credit, she managed to get away from the big strong man before completely compromising her position, but it was already teetering before she started breathily asking (not telling) him, "Please don't..." She seemed to get some backbone back toward the end, but the damage had already been done. When it comes to men, she's impressionable and weak-willed. The scenes from the coming episodes helped bolster my perceptions of her strength and character going forward, but here and now, I'm unimpressed. My brother and I spent pretty much the entire episode wishing that Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) were playing the lead role. Gina Torres is a badass. Gina Torres could put Ukranian mobsters in their place in a way I could believe. When it got to the scene with the president, I was like, "Oh man alive, now I really wish Zoe were playing this role. I'd love to see how she'd handle this (i.e. verbal evisceration or a knee to the groin)." To which my brother responded, "Zoe never would have been in this situation." Hear, hear. Kerry Washington is a lovely woman, and a fine actress, but this is just doesn't seem like the role for her (so far).

In terms of the story-of-the-week A-plot, it was predictable to say the least. In fact, at times it was so so obvious that we didn't think they would actually do it, but they did. There were no twists or turns or surprises that hadn't been telegraphed loud and clear at least a dozen times prior. The dialogue was fairly painful and clunky, but I'm hoping that's a product of the newness of the show. Maybe they'll settle in as the series continues? Here's hoping. Based on the potential of the concept, I'll give it another episode or two. There are a lot of shows out there that had terrible pilots and turned into excellent shows. The Vampire Diaries and In Plain Sight, in particular, come to mind. Can Scandal follow their lead? I'm skeptical, but willing to try.

I didn't hate this pilot, but I certainly didn't love it. My brother actively hated it. It has gotten to the point now that whenever a mediocre show comes on, he can't stop himself from saying, "You know, compared to Scandal, this is looking pretty good." I didn't hate it that much, but admittedly, I played Bejeweled during the really painful parts. Which... might mean I actually did hate it as much as he did...

On a final note, my brother and I happened to be discussing the lack of minority representation on TV prior to watching this pilot and while we very much appreciated that they cast an African-American woman as the lead, the cast as a whole is surprisingly white. We got to talking about it because we were noting the number of great characters on TV who are of Indian descent and it underscored to us how woefully underrepresented African-Americans are. What strikes me as odd is that Scandal, which is produced by Shonda Rhimes, an African-American woman who has frequently spoken out on this issue, has nearly as few minority characters as shows produced by a bunch of white guys (i.e. the vast majority of shows out there). Seriously, Scandal has two African-American characters. And that's it. The entire rest of the cast is white, which means the race ratio is nearly 3 to 1 whites to non-whites. Actually, make that whites to African-Americans. From what I recall, there were no other races included either. Now, I'm not saying that just because Shonda is African-American the whole cast should be as well, but I guess I would just expect a non-white writer to be more attuned to the problem and more devoted to representing faces of color on television, like she has with her other shows. Maybe it was a decision based on the politics of DC? Maybe it just kind of happened that way during casting? Whatever the reasons, I applaud Shonda for including casting an African-American as the basis for the show, but I would have liked to have seen (and expected) a bit more diversity throughout the cast.

Anyhow, it was disappointing pilot, but a promising idea. Here's hoping it settles in as the series continues. It has decent bones, and a promising concept, now it just needs to learn how to use them. If they can keep it more on the serialized side of format, I'm willing to forgive quite a lot. If they turn it into more of a procedural, I doubt I'll stick around for long.

So much for the short short version...

Pilot Grade: C-