You all know Kerry Washington, right? The nice lady from Django Unchained who appears on the covers of magazines and says awesome stuff quite a lot? Yeah, well for some reason none of you all seem too interested in her best work, Scandal.
While popular in America, the TV show hasn’t quite ever achieved the same cult status as say Orange Is The New Black or True Detective over here. Know how I know this? Because every time I watched an episode and went ‘OMG!’ (they make you do that) I couldn’t find one single person to talk to about it, not one.
And admittedly I didn’t try very hard because, you know, I do sometimes have a life and I had more episodes of Scandal to watch but either way, I feel very alone. As a side note if you are a fellow Brit fan then I apologise. In fact, please get in touch, let’s start a Scandal fan club at mine, we can drink red wine and eat popcorn. (That’s an inside joke from the show BTW).
As for the rest of you, Series 3 starts on Thursday so may we suggest this might be a good opportunity to look at getting into it?
To brief you, it’s all about Olivia Pope, a ‘fixer’ in Washington that’s based in part on real life crisis manager Judy Smith. The trouble is, while Liv’s busy putting out fires all over the American government, she’s sitting in the middle of the biggest scandal of them all – as she’s having an affair with the actual president. Yeah. It’s like that.
Anyways, in America, they love it. Twitter racks up about 190,000 tweets per episode and it’s made creator Shonda Rhimes the most powerful womanin TV. Why can’t you guys get on board?
Here’s why you need to watch it.
Shonda Rhimes is basically queen
Not only did the Scandal creator write the screenplay for Crossroads, the Britney Spears-led cinematic event of 2002, she also created Grey’s Anatomy and upcoming legal thriller show How To Get Away With Murder that’s got every TV buff with their knickers in a twist.
Not only that but in Scandal, she’s created a strong black female character and a gay white man, both of whom are more powerful than the white heterosexual president. Let’s hear it for minority representation.
It’s HOT
Is there any higher level to the ‘shagging a man in power’ fantasy than getting down and dirty in the Oval office with the President of the United States? Obviously, it totally depends on who the president of the United States is at the time, but luckily in Scandal we are gifted with the photogenic Tony Goldwyn who, as President Fitzgerald ‘Fitz’ Grant, has got it going on and then some.
Kerry Washington is your new love interest
Sassy, sharp as a whip, cut-throat but vulnerable, Olivia Pope is the kick-ass power bitch you aspire to be at the same time as the doe-eyed damsel in distress you want to save. She is by no means perfect (shagging a married man, engineering plots to save nasty politicians from their rightful comeuppance), but once you start delving into her mind-boggling back story you start to realise it’s a wonder she’s as together as she actually is.
You know nothing
You know in _Gone Gir_lwhen there’s that epic twist in the middle (if you still haven’t read it then WHAT ARE YOU DOING THE FILM IS COMING OUT IN A FEW MONTHS)? Every episode of Scandal is like that. And I mean every single one.
From murders to political scandals to secret government agencies created for assassination purposes that happen to be run by unexpected people, prepare yourself for one hell of a ride. The good news is, since you’ve slacked off on episodes, you can binge watch the whole first two seasons in one go, so you can take all the plot twist punches in one go for maximum effect.
Scandal season 3 returns to Sky Living on Thursday 31 July at 9pm.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.