Author Archive: jsomers

That’s right, Imma about to write about the ABC show Scandal starring Kerry Washington. The TL:DR version is: I never would have watched this unless forced to by The Duchess, then briefly found it balls-out brilliant, and now not so much.

Here’s the long version: So, like I said, The Duchess commanded one day that we check out Scandal because people were talking about it and The Duchess loves her some zeitgeist. And I do what I’m told or things get broken. So we started to watch.

Right about here is where spoilers might start happening. Just sayin’.

At first it was kind of dumb: The editing tricks were headache-inducing, and the whole idea of the super-connected Olivia Pope schtupping the President in secret was only mildly interesting. I find a lot of Shonda Rimes’ writing tricks a bit shopworn and annoying at this stage; any attraction they had for me eleventy billion years ago when Grey’s Anatomy launched has been worn away. But it was serviceable, and The Duchess liked it, so we hung in. And for a short period of time, during the Defiance Arc, as it’s known, this show became so adorably fucked up insane it was absolutely entertaining.

The Defiance Arc was brilliant because just as you assumed the whole point of the show was OMFG THE PRESIDENT IS SCHTUPPING OLIVIA POPE! the show set you up and then hit you over the head with a conspiracy that stole the election that elected President Fitz-whatshisname. A conspiracy that involved the First Lady, a Supreme Court Justice, a Texas Oilman, the future Chief of Staff, and Olivia Pope – but not the President, who thought he’d won the election fair and square. This was such a demented plot twist that it carried the show for a while solely on the fumes of its audacity. Along the way, the President murdered the Supreme Court justice while she lay dying of cancer in the hospital, to give you a hint of just how demented it all got.

That was then. The Defiance Arc was resolved and the show must go on, so it’s been casting about for other ways to distract us from awe-inspiring awfulness that is the central relationships of the show (and the fact that the main character is so lacking definition she basically does batshit things all the time for no reason and does not in any way resemble the character introduced in the pilot at all unless you count consuming red wine in volume, in which case, a little bit). These ways have so far involved creating larger and more ridiculous straw villains who Rule the Universe – even more powerful than the President! – who also have intimate connections to Olivia et al. It’s so hammy by this point I fully expect Olivia to wake up in the shower one day and it was all a dream.

The reason Defiance worked was that the central idea was demented, and wonderfully so – but the mechanics of it were mundane. The way they stole the election? Simple, clean, and small-scale. It made sense, once you suspended disbelief sufficiently. The new arcs are now so soapy and silly I’m cleaner after watching this show and that DOES NOT happen when I watch TV, usually.

Ah well, I just wrote 550 words on a TV show no one will remember twenty years from now. I feel dirty.

I’ve been a huge fan of Breaking Bad throughout its run, and so I watched the finale, Felina, with a mixture of joy and horror, because it was very well done and it also meant it was ending. You don’t often see television shows that have 60+ episodes that are all reliably excellent. Of all the episodes of Breaking Bad, the worst ones were still pretty damn great. Grading them, I don’t think there would any below a B- in my book, and even those would be rare.

So, yeah: I’m a fan.

The Internet encourages instant reactions to things and then a quick Forgetting. Breaking Bad was a few weeks ago and it’s already fading from the Internet like a dim memory from childhood. But I’ve been thinking about it still. Because the finale was great, and because I think it accomplished something truly amazing. So let’s talk about menace.

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