Scandal (TV Series) Review

Olivia Pope was a former White House Communications Director who now runs her own crisis management firm as a fixer and quickly realising that uncovering secrets and making things go away doesn’t always work out well. Her close relationship with the President is another factor in her life.

Seasons 1-7

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I need to hold my hands up and firstly start off by saying that I am very late to this party considering Scandal was from 2012-2018, but never mind I eventually watched it. Which was probably due to also eventually catching up with Greys Anatomy and then moving onto this other Shonda Rhimes created drama, and it certainly is very dramatic from start to finish. I more than made up for catching up and binge watched all seven seasons in quite a short space of time, which pretty much took up all of my October viewing. I quickly became obsessed!

Number of episodes per season
Season 1 = 7
Season 2 = 22
Season 3 = 18
Season 4 = 22
Season 5 = 21
Season 6 = 16
Season 7 = 18

Everything about Scandal is truly dramatic and we are well taken in by Olivia Pope, who is nearly always called by her full name. It’s one of those special shows where you can never get comfortable with a character, believe everything at first sight or have much hope. Obviously being in and from the UK I don’t know much about US politics, only that of which we see on the news. It does make you wonder if it is really this wild?

I was fully taken in by the relationship between Olivia and Fitz, you know just the married President of the United States. Then you throw in his wife Mellie and Cyrus Beene who had been part of a team when Grant was still a governor, along with Olivia. The complex nature of the story shows how past actions can have an impact for many years and you will never get past lying or cheating on anything quite frankly.

It makes you wonder what a professional fixer does and it certainly pushes the boundaries on ethics and morals. Olivia’s team made up of Abby Whelan, Quinn Perkins, Huck and Marcus Walker will all do anything for one another and regard themselves as Gladiators. I really liked that aspect of it and it is also interesting to see at different stages and events which occur even those Gladiators can turn against one another.

I found myself fully engaged with all of the characters but couldn’t help but feel sorry for Huck the most, his backstory was rather tragic and difficult to watch at times. With him being fully in with B613, even though he was so traumatised at one point he couldn’t remember anything about that or who he used to be, therefore seeing himself as saved by Olivia.

The relationship between Olivia and Fitz is so incredibly intense and at times it just hurts to see them going back and forth all of the time. Not forgetting some of the truly awful things they said to one another, yet you could not deny that the love was actually pure. Which may seem like a very strange thing to be saying given the fact that he as married to Mellie.

Honestly though it is another true gem from Shonda Rhimes who really does seem to deal as much pain and suffering to her characters and in particular the leading female within her productions. It’s a toss up of who had it worse off between Olivia Pope and Meredith Grey! On another note I loved the crossover episode with How to Get Away with Murder, which means that I actually had seen Olivia Pope before watching Scandal, I just didn’t realise until watching this and having Annalise Keating rock up!