Scandal

Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) runs a firm of political fixers in D.C. Her group of loyal associates are gladiators. She has a troubled secret relationship with President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn). He has a political convenient marriage to Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young). Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) is the calculating Chief of Staff and David Rosen (Joshua Malina) is the Assistant US Attorney. Olivia hires Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes). Troubled Huck (Guillermo Díaz) and Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield) are two of the associates. Olivia's scheming father (Joe Morton) runs the mysterious shadow government organization B613. Grant assigns Jake Ballard (Scott Foley) to guard Olivia in mid second season.

For a time, Shonda Rhimes owned a night of network television. Grey's is the gold and this is the silver programming. It burned hot for a couple of seasons with overblown plots, and overwrought melodrama. The love triangle is the pinnacle. It definitely burned bright for a time but it burned itself out. By the fifth season, the convoluted story twists and ties itself into a knot. The biggest dead end is Fitz's presidency ending. Even the white hot romantic triangle fades into nothingness. The acting is usually big and over the top. Kerry Washington does a lot of near cry acting with her quivering lips. When a story twists and turns this much, it will almost always go out of control. The last few seasons are simply this show stalling and running in place. Shondaland has an expiry date.

I don't need to add anymore about the horrible writing , summed up by another reviewer who called the dialog "50 Chihuahuas going after one hot dog". This program is nothing more than a 30 minute 70's soap opera saturated with product placement. The premise that Olivia Pope is a power player is absurd. She is a compromised incompetent cluster*@ck that could not solve anything in real life.

This may be the laziest writing and research for technical background I have ever seen on a major TV show. Their lack of knowledge and terminology how thing work in real life is either lazy or incompetent. From " two F-15's are waiting on the Carrier ready to take off" (try Wikipedia) to numerous medical, security and government protocols that could never occur in real life, only shows that this program only wants to be about comical love stories made for 16 year olds.

Unbelievable on too many fronts for anyone to not just laugh.

This is a great show. The chemistry between Kerry Washington and the man that plays the president is superb. Best chemistry i have seen on a show. I love how she is African American and he is Caucasian. Different is finally on television and she is the lead. I love how it's crime, suspense, slight thriller, and most of all romance. When I first saw the previews for this show, I thought oh no another crime show but this is like no other crime show on TV. I was very impressed and now it's returned for a second season, I'm so excited to watch. Abc is taking over TV channels with best shows. It will be hard for other shows to compete with the chemistry between the characters. The only thing I do not like is, for a president, I need him to be a little stronger and vulnerable. He needs to take initiative sometimes on his own but he's gorgeous even though he's older.

The top portion of this review was written in 2012. This portion is of 2015. I no longer enjoy this show as much as I use to. The seasons have started to rush and a lot of things have happened too quickly. Scandal has gone from Olivia fixing Scandals to her being more of an asset than the president. She has been kidnapped, held hostage, etc. This show could have gone longer at a steady paste but it is now a soap opera. Because, soap operas have unbelievable twists and turns constantly. I miss the first season when she and her team would fix scandals.One more thing, It seems like the president, Mellie, Olivia, Cyrus, Quinn, Huck, Abby, etc. all talk the same! They use to not speak the exact same way but now they do. For example: They start talking fast, very fast, like their minds are racing and the person they are talking to starts to call their name in a repetitive state until they get their full attention. Like, Liv, Liv, Liv, OLIVIA! Stop Talking! Many of them have done this over and over! What's up with the characters talking alike?

I was a big fan of this show in its opening season and most the way through season 4. It was clever, with some good writing, interesting characters, and good plot twists. Then something happened and it turned into a soap opera. Rather than being an interesting show with some big moments, it turned into every scene being a yelling feast. I love an intense interaction, but when it's every dialogue in every scene...it's gets old. It's like they turned the volume up to 11 and left it there for 2 seasons. Characters became ridiculous and inconsistent, writing got predictable. Every character intensely flip flops back and forth, usually multiple times an episode. I'm trying to finish the show just to see how they resolve everything but it's basically just suffering through episodes that are mostly unwatchable. Sad to see it fall so far from its first seasons

Scandal (2012-2018) is a movie I watched as it aired on television. The storyline initially follows Olivia Pope as she works as a secret cover-up agency for the national government and often for the president directly. As the show matures the focus shifts from the crafty agency to a relationship between the president and Olivia. They both have demons in their closet that as they unravel shows why their brilliance and character is what it is. This series was created by Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy) and stars Kerry Washington (Django), Darby Stanchfield (Waitress), Guillermo Díaz (Half Baked), Tony Goldwyn (Ghost) and Joe Morton (Terminator 2). The storyline for this the first couple seasons was actually really, really good. Then the storyline started getting a bit too crazy, outside the box and unrealistic. When the series shifted to a love story with tragedy after tragedy and away from Olivia and her agency saving the world and various lives the entire show started falling apart. It's really too bad because the original premise was very good. The show really started to run it's course after season four and was on life support after that. It's amazing it lasted as long as it did. I would score this series a 6-6.5/10.